Nelson: The best way to learn something is by experiencing it, and experience focuses on the sensory. We are sensual people, literally. God created us with five senses; unfortunately most sermons are asensual. They really focus on cognition but very little else. And I think what we need to move toward is designing into our messages or our services experiential components — which allow people to touch, smell, hear, and see — so that it has a deeper embedding and it goes beyond pure intellect and cognition.

On Palm Sunday we were kind of weaving an arc — with me leaving the church along with the Holy Week focus — and we talked about the triumphful entry. So for us it was “Pom Sunday.” Although we had palm leaves in the lobby outside, once they got inside we handed them a pom — a miniature pom-pom on a stick — and we played sports music which focuses on the ears. It was tactile in the sense they could hold the pom-pom and encouraged them — non-charismatic to boot — so we encouraged them on good points to wave your pom-poms. And we used it as a modern metaphor for celebrating.

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You know when Jesus came in to Jerusalem they celebrated Him. In the church we need to celebrate more. When we leave sometimes you mourn, but we need to celebrate the good things God has done in the last niine years. At the very end we had stations where people could give an offering, so they could get out of their seats and move. We had stations where they could take communion, which involved their taste and smell. Then we had these white charts around at different stations where they could take a marker and write on these pieces of paper — pages of big post-it note sheets — things they wanted to celebrate or things they were thankful for, things they wanted to praise. In the back room we had a DVD clip with music going on a song that lasted six minutes.

So in our service we had six minutes of experiential worship where the people weren’t singing — they were actually taking communion, giving offering, writing, and in between we had the pom-poms there. Those would be some experiential components that allow the people to participate — not just to be spectators but to be participants.

Preaching: Do you do much with visual images or video in connection to worship and the message itself?

Nelson: I think a growing number of people are using the whole imagery thing, whether it’s a cutout on stage or whether it’s a media clip. A variety of ways — not just media, not just movies but a variety of ways of creating visual or symbols. Maybe you have a single symbol where people are focusing. You go to a GenX conferences or emergent church seminars and they are really into visuals. They have visuals going, in fact, that have nothing to with the message per se but they are just kind of going in the background, I think because it gives them a sense of stimulation while they are being spoken to. I think variety is important, and I think as much as possible we can give people metaphors — maybe for every message have a singular metaphor that says this is what this is about.