Many of the worship teams I know began planning their Christmas season months ago—mapping out songs, creative participation ideas, sermon titles, and special events. Whether they and their congregations observe the entire season of Advent, or gear up all of their resources for a fantastic Christmas Eve or Christmas Day service (or a combination), all seasoned worship teams recognize that the Christmas season is a special time of year for us as believers and understand the significance of this season to a world looking for redemption.

As I sit in planning meetings, I've discovered that, many times, the media elements used throughout the service are almost an afterthought, considering the substantial amount of care given to planning the right spoken words, light transitions, and song tempos. Worship team media designers are becoming savvier, and the postmodern culture we work inside of has given us countless resources for crafting services that are compellingly extraordinary. Christmastime, the uniquely sacred Advent season, gives us a beautiful canvas to paint images and tell stories that awaken our worshipers to the wonder of this time—but how can we use media elements to fulfill this opportunity?

William Saroyan, the great playwright and author of the Depression era, noted that "Christmas is sights, especially the sights of Christmas reflected in the eyes of a child." Saroyan was most noted for his works representing poverty and the beauty that can happen inside the experiences and imaginations of the most destitute. His imagery is powerfully reminiscent of our human plight, especially in this pre-Christmastime. His statement is perhaps an over-simplification of all that we believe about the Christmas experience as followers of Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, but it is a simple reminder from one artist to countless others about the power of the visuals of the season. How many images are conjured up in the mind at the mention of Christmas? How many of them represent the mystery, paradox, and hope of this season? These mental images, especially as represented in our childhood memories and the child-likeness this season invites us to, can be our greatest allies—or our biggest obstacles—when crafting meaningful Christmas media.

This is a great time for us, individually and corporately, to evaluate our concepts of Christmas and the Advent season. To super-impose benign and placid ideas over this scandalous and sacred event robs us of the kind of transformation that worship invites us to enter into.

As you and your team craft your media elements for the Christmas and Advent season, here are a few thoughts to consider:

1. Create a "muse-board." Basically a sort of visual brainstorming tool, a muse board is a great way for planning teams to come up with visuals based on seasonal concepts. Start with word mapping and be creative, out-of-the-box, and reflective. Write down the expected words: joyful, hopeful, stars, angels, shepherds, glory; and then move to the more unexpected: paradox, terrible, mysterious, sacred, breaking in, dirt and grime, ramshackle stable, and so on. There are so many ideas from this season that can only be communicated visually, so when these words come together on the board, start to attach conceptual images and photos alongside your words. This brainstorming technique is a great way to conceptualize the visuals you want to use in your Christmas or Advent services. This tool is often underused and underappreciated by many visual designers, but it is an invaluable aid to help shape the intention of our holiday season, and to help us expose the underlying tensions to our audiences.
   
   
2. Think of yourself as an interior designer. As people involved in media ministry, we do more than just craft backgrounds and videos for information; we create sacred environments. Take advantage of the "free space" in the worship service flow to introduce some pertinent but unexpected media pieces. Draw from your vast imagination and memory to pull up images that evoke that unique Christmas anticipation. Perhaps it's something as simple as a loop of falling snow during scripture readings, or a backdrop of the twinkling night sky during the message.
   
   
3. Re-imagine the clichés. Candles, angels, and manger scenes are expected and carry a certain amount of nostalgia. Their beauty is undeniable, but because of the cultural saturation, many of these images have become one-dimensional and benign. Re-introducing them with a slightly different twist brings an entirely different response. If your congregation is immersed in the contemporary culture, iconic imagery is a magical contrast; if you come from an artistic team that is more liturgical and traditional, images that introduce the sacred in the everyday awaken our congregations to the paradox of this very real Christmas event. When used as stills behind our typical Christmas service elements, these kinds of contrasts renew the sense of mystery and challenge our overly comfortable ideas of a passive Christmas event.
   
   
4. Introduce strategically placed monitors. This is especially helpful and powerful if you are a normally contemporary service that is bringing in more traditional or high-church elements for the Christmas season. These monitors can serve as artistic and elegant guides to the flow of the service. You can use them to cue the congregants about the intention of each segment of the service using words from your muse-board, or more concrete terms that would communicate the order of service. Naming each section of your service and using those titles on monitors around the room heightens the participation, educates people on worship, and creates a greater sacred intention to your worship space. This can be done with split cables, an extra laptop computer with an inexpensive program such as PowerPoint, and one additional presentation team member. It is a little bit of effort with a big impact.
   
   
5. Stay consistent with the things that matter. Theme, tension, and intention, and should flow and be represented in the images and connective elements. Play around with the style, source, and content of imagery. For more ideas on design matters and a brush up on some great fundamentals, check out Greg Atkinson's article on "Using Motion Backdrops in Worship." Much of what he talks about is pertinent to the design of the whole service, but especially as it pertains to tying together the function and the creative elements of media design.
   
   

Advent marks the beginning of our Christian year and walks us through a gamut of emotions and intentions. We have an exciting and humbling job as designers and worship leaders to give voice to those things that are often only felt or experienced, and also to guide, teach, and lead our congregants into a profound encounter with the mystery and tension of this season.

Check out the full FaithVisuals.com Christmas Collection.

Jodi Adams is a teacher, author, and visionary for community worship. She has served as a worship pastor in an emergent church setting and now serves a number of Denver-area churches as a consultant and teacher, working to equip worship leaders for transformative worship. Jodi is a contributor to GiftedforLeadership.com and speaks regularly on the convergence of cultural issues and worship. In 2006, she began the Stained Glass Project as a forum for worship leaders and pastors who are seeking community and new frameworks for worship conversations. She and her husband live in Denver with their three children and with Karma the Wonder Dog.