Preaching: As a pastor, you were one of those really creating the model for the multi-sensory experience. Tell me a little about the Encounter service you led.

Martoia: Encounter for us was just an amazing several-year experiment. What we committed to doing with Encounter was to monthly create a venue for anywhere from sixty to ninety minutes that was almost exclusively experiential and interactive. If we had any talking heads during the service itself it might be two to three minutes of instruction of where we were headed next. Almost everything else in the sixty to ninety minutes was done either by questions posed on a screen or video direction; I don’t mean a talking head on a screen, I mean questions posed or experiential opportunities given: poetry, things that enabled people to come in and immerse.

The immersion part was mostly environmental. Sometimes we did this with no chairs in our auditorium, sometimes cushions, sometimes we were sitting in a big desert. I think that is the most well known example, where we brought in a ton-and-a-half of sand and created a dessert with cactus and everything. It might be where we created a huge reflecting pool in our auditorium and floated candles.

All of these environments that we created were really trying to help people connect a biblical theme to something they could experientially do. Usually there was some sort of artifact they could take home from the services – a polished stone, a piece of wood or a fragment from a painting that we had corporately painted, a piece of polished glass that was used to make a corporate mosaic or a square of clay they used to put their thumb print in to represent that they are God’s workmanship and unique, Eph. 2:10. We always tried to have an interactive part which had communitarian dimensions and part which had very much individual dimensions.

I think what was most interesting was that our people were more apt to invite non-churched friends to Encounter than to Sunday morning. Sunday morning was usually very experiential. It had the ambiance, lights, bands, video and all that stuff. But the interactive, minimal talking head approach seemed to be a huge attraction for people who were not going to come to a conventional church service.

Preaching: Looking back on that experiment, was it overall a very positive venture – something that you would do again? And is there a downside?

Martoia: Oh yeah, it was an amazingly positive experience. Would I do it again? Sure. I think there are churches that are experimenting and continuing to do those sorts of things.