Advent Prayer Stations: I put together some Prayer Stations that remained up in our Narthex during Advent in 2014, and one of the prayer stations was filled with advertisements and Christmas catalogs, and an outline of an icon. We encouraged people to cut and paste the advertisements onto the icon to create something beautiful out of all of the materialistic/consumeristic distractions from the Advent and Christmas seasons.
Creative Prayer: I’ve also incorporated art, doodling, drawing and other forms of art into creative ways to pray. While some people are reluctant at first (they may think they aren’t artists), most find the opportunity to pray through art and drawing to be a very welcome alternative to traditional prayer practices they were used to.
Bible Blackouts: Stealing a creative idea from another artist (Austin Kleon), and then adapting it for the church, I created a modern form of lectio divina (divine reading) and called them Bible Blackouts. This is a creative way to read scripture and see what words and phrases stand out at you, and to try and discern what God might be saying to you through specific passages. You can read about how I used it in my ministry here.
Drawings for Children’s Moments: It’s not easy to pull off a good Children’s Moment. They are often used as a way to put children on display and make them say cute and funny things in front of the church. My normal approach involves simply telling the story from scripture, but recently I’ve wanted to always send the kids home with an image and drawing that would help them remember the story. Below you can see a few examples of the things I’ve given to the children.
