Video Transcript: Universal Design in Worship Part 2

And I'm not a pastor. I'm sure that that's painfully obvious. You know, to certain degree I, I know pastors, I know theologians, I'm a special education teacher who spent a lot of time thinking about this area of worship. So as we think about this, here are some suggestions and certainly some that I have gleaned from people who actually stand up each week and lead that worship service. 

So again, I mentioned this before, I'm going to mention it again. Watch your wording. You can say please stand. You have now drawn a line, remember? Between those who can do it and those who, for whatever reason, are unable. So, please rise in body or in spirit. Please kneel in body or in spirit. It invites people into the act of worship without forcing that physical act of moving. Another thing, provide some worship postures, some postures that people can reference as they enter in to a time of worship. 

Having in your mind, as a leader, one big idea really does help. So if you know that your big idea is going to be about we need to choose courage, and God gives us courage to trust Him even when it's hard. There's my big idea. If I can label the big idea, it often allows a pastor or a worship leader to think now about multisensory ways that we can think about that big idea, reminding you, right, God's idea in the first place to think in that multi-sensory way. Baptism, again, another multi-sensory piece, it's a part of so many of our worship services, that allows us to involve more of our senses than just hearing words. 

So a couple of ideas for you to think about, again, I take in these, how, how can we say I love you as part of a worship service? How can we say that to God? Could we waive it? Do we have to sing it? Are there other ways that we could assume a posture of praise? And that's our, that's our goal, is to be the posture leader for that day? How are we going to convey that? Again, I know this depends on your denomination and the traditions within your service. You may have to be my translator into that particular setting that you have. I'm aware of that. 

Would it be helpful to have something that represents that big idea that’s in a treasure box? And as part of the worship service, sometime, you're going to open the lid of the treasure box and reveal God's big treasure for us today. What could we put in there? Maybe we're studying the oaks of righteousness. And sure enough, in there, we've got some oak leaves or a branch. Maybe we're going to be talking about how amazing it is that God knows each one of our names. And as part of our worship, we all had a chance to write down, or have somebody write that for us, and put it in that box, either because we walked it forward, or people were collecting them through the aisles, and now, at some point, we reveal the beauty of God knowing each one of our names; it's the treasure. 

You could do the same gift with the gift in Scripture.  I will tell you for engagement, as soon as you set a treasure box down or a wrapped gift, you now have people right here, they're listening to you. And it's an easy visual, you're going to have to change it out, but knowing that big idea allows you to do that. And you could set up a museum along in a certain area in your community that remembers together those key items that were in the treasure box or the wrapped gift, so that people can review and remember the messages over time. 

I would say this is another universal design feature. Maria Courno, who I spoke about when I was talking about those cultural differences, highly recommends the idea of at least choosing one shorter song, or a repeated song as part of worship. If somebody is coming in and the language of church is unfamiliar or the language is unfamiliar, or for whatever reason, words are difficult to have one short song as part of that service can be really, really helpful. The other thing that I saw one church community do was they sent out… they had printed on their website.... I think it's called Spotify here... I should have grilled my children before I came here, my sons, my adult sons, but again, they were links to the songs that were going to be part of worship that day and people could just click them, hear them, practice them in advance and it was a lovely thing. 

Pairing pictures or gestures with words can be helpful during singing. We've talked about having icons or video clips for an emphasis. Using a signer during times of singing or speaking - it's a very expressive, almost form of worship as I watch them many times, those individuals upfront. So how can we pair pictures or gestures with words to make that, again, a multi-sensory opportunity for people? I'll talk about the speech button later, but that's another great tool that we can bring into our worship times to be really helpful. 

All right. Rapid fire through lots of ideas. Thirty minutes, at least, of idea after idea; tools that we can put in place, content for worship. I know that the section was smaller. I needed to save some time for this idea of vertical habits as we head into one of my favorite sections. You're reading about it in the homework section of this course, but really wanted to take some time to think about vertical habits as we think about universal design for worship.

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