This weekend we wrapped up on Messy Grace series and brought it full circle in this six week series. It’s a powerful creative and focus tool for a team to use when it seems appropriate.

In our case, we circled back to our Messy canvases we introduced on week 1 of the series. You can read about that entire journey here. Because we had multiple canvases from the services we were able to integrate one of the canvases on stage so that our communicator could interact with it. Shane, our Lead Pastor, closed his message (and the series) by talking about the fact we all share the mess of our lives and the need for grace. He demonstrated that collective thought by placing his hand in a pan of paint and pressing a hand print onto the canvas.

We capped off the moment by redoing the original song that accompanied the piece, “Grace Will Be My Song” sung by Terry Kelley.   It was a great wrap to the series. But we wanted to stretch the idea into the lobby.

We then encircled one of our large pillars in our lobby with another one of the canvases. We provided ink pads of various colors (paint would have been potentially too crazy and out of control) and asked everyone to add their thumbprint and signature to the canvas.  After each service the lobby was filled with individuals adding their print to the process and aligning together.

One of our consistent patterns is creating moment markers for people in the midst of our worship experiences. Modeled after the biblical pattern of building altars, celebrating feasts, and more, we are consistently inviting our people into a moment that marks their journey. Our mission statement is “Helping People Discover Jesus and the Journey” so as often as we can we lean into that. This was one of the moments that mark a journey through grace we have all been on together.

Don’t forget where you’ve BEEN in the rush to get where you are GOING

Learnings:

• Find ways to put a “period” on a series creatively.  Often times it is recapping or remembering moments along the journey.
• Be hands on when you can. Inviting people to participate will cement the ideas and moment in their mind like nothing else. They don’t have to be complicated. Even the simple can create a lasting marker.
• No matter how large or small your church, interactive moments are still possible and always powerful.

Set List:

• Only King Forever
• Sinking Deep
• Ever Be
• Special: Grace Will Be My Song
• How Great Thou Art

Run Sheet: