Stephen Proctor (@worshipVJ - www.worshipvj.com)  just posted this; and I want to emphasize it here too.

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As my journey continues & I’m having more and more conversations about all-things-tech/church/culture/worship/etc…i have had a growing burden to gain a clearer understanding of what true, biblical worship is. i have much to learn and more scripture to dig into than i can comprehend, but here’s some of the main things i’ve picked up along the way:

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• Worship is our response to a revelation from God…specifically, Who He is, what He’s done, and what He’s promised to do.

• “We breathe in the wonders of God, and breathe out our response.” – paraphrasing Matt Redman

• Worship, by nature, is 3-dimentional (picture an X, Y, Z axis): UP (Godward/Intimacy), ACROSS (Communal/Relationships), and OUT (missional/Kingdom)…all three working in motion & together..never independently.

• ” ‘Missions’ exists because worship doesn’t.” – John Piper

• Worship stems from the heart…it’s not what we do, but how we live.

• “Religion (worship) that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit widows and orphans in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” – James 1:27 (ESV)

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If you have anything to add to this, please share it. But I’d like to bring attention & focus to one aspect of this conversation and ask:

What is “visual worship”?

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We feel like there is a giant pendulum swinging back towards using visuals in the worship service to tell stories, away from the ‘sola scriptura‘.  The danger that we feel is that without bringing these discussions up and talking about WHY we are doing any of this, the pendulum will, in a way, swing back to when the fear was that people were worshiping the actual images, instead of God.  Technology is making this VERY easy to do – projectors are affordable, lighting is popular – and we all want our worship services to be slick and polished…

Also, it seems that the ‘worship service’ has just a comfortable place in a lot of communities where the Body can worship – and while that’s not wrong – we feel that it might be seen as the only form of worship.

So, from the bottom of hearts; we are trying to learn, share, and grow ourselves, so we can journey with others and hopefully shine some light on how visual worship fits in today’s church communities.

For me; visual worship is using forms of visual expression (light/darkness – candles – still imagery – motion imagery – text/scripture – icons – paint – glass – color – fabric – etc..) to tell the story of Christ and worship and glorify God.  Simple as that.  I am approaching this from a corporate worship service setting, with fellow believers in Christ.  In order to glorify  God, I feel that you have to have relationship with Him first…

The visuals in worship are meant to be seen through, not watched.  They are there to, as impossible as it is, see some part of God and Christ that maybe you haven’t been able to visualize before.  It’s like…there is something in our spirit that is brought more to life with certain visual elements.  It’s like something is connected with our spiritual and physical.  Our feeble human attempts to represent the glory of God visually will never ever ever come close, but our heart behind what we do is what is important.