Absurd story about worship...

Say, for some reason, a major shift occurred in your church and the leadership decided that the best way to worship corporately on Sunday mornings was through drawing. This shift could have taken a day or hundreds of years, but that isn't important.

So, instead of hymn books, chorus sheets, or projected lyrics, sketchpads and pencils became the primary way that people came together in worship. There would be large old chalkboards in front of traditional churches. (Some would be electronic drawing boards that just look and draw like the old chalkboards. Many younger churches would use marker boards and really cutting edge mega-churches would have a computer running Illustrator in the front.

There would, of course, be people that were better than others at drawing. So, these people would be asked to stand in front, while they draw. Sometimes everyone else would follow along and draw what they were drawing or sometimes, like during offering, they would draw and everyone else would just watch--perhaps applaud at the end (either affirming the worship drawn in picture or just because they are really good at drawing--we can't really know)

Eventually, the need for better drawers would lead the church to hire professional drawers and a drawing leader, with a college degree in drawing. Any volunteer stage drawers would be required to draw together during the week and attend occasional seminars by well known drawers in their area.

A great many contemporary drawers would opt for simplicity of a paper pad and pencil. In a large enough church, a small video camera would be attached to the lead drawer's pad to pick up his drawing and project it on a big screen. Often, really gifted pencil drawers will switch between multiple pads of paper, of different textures and colors, during the worship service. Occasionally, the lead paper drawer accidentally drops his pencil or rips his paper, so it is always good to have extra on hand.

The rest, with varying degrees of drawing ability, would draw what the leaders were drawing. Some would doodle in the margins a bit more than others (usually those people sat in the back so their doodles wouldn’t disturb the other drawers) and some would barely make an outline of the drawings of the day. People who were really bad at drawing would be consoled with, "Don't worry, God sees your crooked line as a beautiful landscape, even if we don't."

In larger churches, there would be copies of the drawings made for the elderly who couldn't get to church that day and a room with screens where people could see what is being drawn in the service while they take care of their children. Some would have people explaining what was being drawn to the visually impaired in the congregation.

Of course, there would also be division about what styles of drawing were acceptable or more spiritual than others. Questions like, "does God like lines that are curved or straight" or "should a number 2 or 4 pencil be used while drawing to God" would be debated. Even questions like, "is it better to draw the same line over and over again" or "do all your lines have to be different." Some churches, with a lot of young people, would have boisterous drawing times with markers and spray-paint instead of pencils. (old ladies would usually complain about how the spray paint smells so they would build a Plexiglas paint booth with an exhaust system for the lead sprayist)


Styles would change through time as well, to keep up with famous worship drawers. Some churches would insist that we should only do drawings of paintings by Rembrandt, because they are so colorful. Other, seeker sensitive, churches would even have people draw works by Picasso and Warhol, you know, to relate to those outside of the church.

Some churches would set up ministries to help support the Sunday morning drawing time. They would find someone that is good at music, so that the drawers did not have to draw in silence. The church leaders would feel pretty good about including misunderstood musicians from the edges of their church fellowship. Often this music would be instrumental and quiet and in others it would have words that support the theme of the drawings for the day. In most, though, the church secretary would just tape a song off the radio to play during the drawing time.

Of course all of this music making has to be done on the musicians' personal equipment, because there is not budget for musical recording equipment as all the worship budget was spent on maintaining the beautiful old chalkboard in the front of the sanctuary.

In larger churches, the musicians might be even asked to help write a song to be played as telephone on-hold music in the church answering system or in the lobby of the church during the week. Again, though, most churches would just buy collections of songs on cd's or get the off the radio.

I don't need to go into any more detail, I hope you get the point by now...