The "Why"
When describing sermon series art packs to pastors for the first time I often hear, “that must take so much work.” Maybe? Perhaps our process is not typical. But, in a designer’s world, upfront investment in good design has some advantages. For me, it is simply the process I’m familiar with.
But why apply it to church?
Through my designer eyes, buildings and congregations have some similarities. They are complex systems, have lots of layers, have structure, have programmatic pieces, benefit from planning, are connected with people’s hopes and dreams, require a significant financial investment. People have to figure out how to navigate a building, how to navigate church.
When sitting down with an architectural client for the first time, a designer often hears stories and sees lists of future spaces to be built, and they are compared to spaces used previously. There are hopes and dreams, budgets and expectations.
The next step the designer takes is to sit down and sort through the hopes and dreams, needs and codes, and begins to organize them into programmatic categories. Categories of use: offices, meeting spaces, classrooms, storage, mechanical space, etc. Then the numbers come in. How big are the ideal classrooms? How many offices? How does that dream list compare to the budget or the site restraints? Priorities now enter the picture. Which spaces are sacrificed for the top priority spaces?
The next part is my favorite. How can the programmatic pieces be organized? How will the building design go? If the spaces were to be pulled out from their categories and scattered about in a confusing or complex way, the building would be harder to understand, navigate, invest in, maybe even harder to build. Something confusing is hard to buy into. The upfront planning work makes things easier down the road, as people have to put together and then inhabit the spaces.
If the spaces are organized in an understandable way - perhaps simply, or perhaps in a clever pattern, it is more intuitive. Grouping programmatic pieces together is an easy and common approach. Offices together, classrooms together, etc. It is possible for others to describe the building, how to use it, where to go, appreciate it. Engage. Want to be there. Perhaps there are visual cues of color, finish, or signage to drive home the themes and patterns. Each building has its own language.
Group things together, organize them, provide visual cues to help communicate the big ideas. Does it take a lot of work? That’s not my favorite question. For me, the questions are along the lines of:
“Does this help people learn themes and support them in easily sharing those ideas with others?”
If yes, then that is the WHY behind the art and sermon series work. And it is fun to do the work, see the results.
Some examples:
Perhaps you have selected the “What Child is This?” Christmas series. You have now selected an organized group of ideas for the Christmas worship services. This series is based on the epistle lessons from the pericope. So, it is a small grouping in a much larger structure. The architect in me loves this. Historical. Context.
What now? Visual cues that reinforce the ideas. You can use the art on your screen, worship folder, postcards, and social media. Art provides visual cues to help pull together all of the connected pieces that you want grouped. It’s like signage. (Some of us are visual learners.) No need to source extra art, keep it simple. One piece of art per week is great by me.
Perhaps your theme continues outside worship. Devotions? Emails? School chapel? Bible studies? A building’s one design language is applied all over the site. You can teach one big idea in several ways at once. Share the series ideas ahead of time with members.
Members can now easily share the ideas for the series with neighbors and family - pointing to the postcard or using a facebook event invite. The worship planners select hymns and choir pieces to coordinate with the themes. Shut-ins are given postcards and feel included (some of ours watch the coordinating sermons on facebook!)
Maybe this happens every year at Christmas for you. But what about the middle of summer? This past summer, we used the Bible Stories series. Grouping together Old Testament readings allowed us to revisit old Sunday school lessons all season. Some members heard these stories for the first time. Some found they applied in an entirely new way at a different season of life. It is easy to invite a neighbor by saying, “We are studying bible stories at church this summer, I think you’d enjoy it. Would you like to join me?” If they see and hear how it’s organized - it’s easy to engage, easy to share.
Design isn’t just work to do. Design DOES work for you.
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Below is a sample of a postcard we use at St. Paul’s. It is an invitation for any member to share with friends and neighbors. It goes into goody bags at live nativities and is handed out canvassing. It coordinates with the art for Christmas worship.
We like to have a collection of these cards. This is just one example. More on our love of postcards another day.
- Corissa
