Digital church opens new ways to involve the congregation and allow them to contribute or create together. Look for opportunities to build on interactive possibilities in your ministries.
One example is to include visual prayer images from the congregation in the community prayer section of your online service.
Concept:
Create interactive visual prayer requests for the community prayer section of an online church service.
Background:
The physical separation inherent with online church services can result in a feeling of disconnection. The medium often makes it difficult for people to feel truly involved in the service. This visual prayer concept allows for contributions to the service from the viewers/congregation members. And it adds a visual element to prayers, which engages and connects the viewing congregation.
How it Works:
This idea creates a visual interactive prayer experience for viewers/congregation members that enables them to contribute prayers and images. Then this visual prayer practice can become an ongoing part of your online worship experience.
Invite people to email their prayer requests to you before the Sunday service and ask them to include an image. This image could be a personal picture from their phone or something from the internet that represents the thing they want prayer for.
Gather these requests and images and put them into your graphics program, or Power Point (or Keynote) presentation if you don’t have graphics. Then you’ll show those images with the requests during the online service.
A sample Power Point is available here: Sample Visual Prayer PP . A script that goes with that Power Point is here: Online Visual Prayer Sample Script
You might designate a piece of art that can serve as the base or frame for a collage of the visual images that represent the prayer requests. The example in the Power Point attached is a mosaic originally designed as a collaborative artwork (originally physical, not digital) with the congregation. (See the details of that original Mosaic Project here.) It originally had an empty space in the center (in the shape of a heart). People were invited to add their own piece of broken pottery there. But in this digital Visual Prayer practice the prayer images were placed digitally in the formerly empty space on the mosaic.
You might have an artist create an artwork as a frame for the collage, or simply put the image collage together with no frame.
We then transferred the final collage of prayer images onto a printable card, sending it out via email to visually remind people to pray during the week. And this card also reminds the people who submitted the prayer requests that the congregation is praying for them.
Repeat the process and make a new visual prayer collage each week.
Online Visual Prayer is a wonderful way to connect the prayers and requests of your congregation with personal images. This creates connection and emotion for viewers and adds to your service. The resulting collage helps people feel loved and cared for.
Contribute your Creative Church Arts Ideas and projects HERE.
CreativeChurchArtsIdeas.org is the official blog of New Renaissance Arts Movement, a non-profit organization through ACT Intl.
If you find this website helpful please consider donating to our ongoing efforts of promoting and resourcing creativity and arts ministry in the local church.
