Written by Jeff Grosskopf, youth pastor at Bellingham Covenant Church
At Bellingham Covenant, we spend quite a bit of time creating a visually engaging worship space for our congregation. We’ve found that visual media is an unexpected language of our congregation. Unlike music, which has the ability to divide a congregation over style, visual media seems to be a unifying element for our church. For our Hope event, we wanted to create an atmosphere that would immediately draw people into the ongoing narrative in the DR Congo.
In our foyer, we built a large industrial awning over the child sponsorship area and installed peg boards in our windows with sponsorship packets and images of Congolese children hanging from them. This was a new look to our foyer, so people immediately noticed that something different was about to happen. We also created three string art projects with the words PRAY, HOPE, ACT and hung these in the foyer.
In our sanctuary, we have three projectors that are dedicated to architectural projection. What is architectural projection? Simply put, it’s using video projectors to project images and videos onto the walls of the sanctuary. It works great for us because our space has no natural light, and we have huge walls. We projected images of children on the side walls and created an altar presentation that brought visual focus to the front of the room.
All of these things became a simple backdrop for what the morning was all about…giving our congregation an opportunity to respond to the need in DR Congo.
I’ve preached at multiple services before. Typically it’s two services back to back, broken up with a coffee hour or Sunday School session. There was even the odd church a few years ago that asked after the second service, “Are you all set to go for our third, evening service tonight?” (news to me there were three!). But I’ve never preached at two separate churches on one Sunday.
In the past, I have led our youth in the 
Most Sunday’s when I go out to speak at a Covenant church’s Hope Sunday event, I am invited to give the message, answer questions at coffee hour, and maybe share a little bit in Sunday School. This past Sunday at Northbrook was not a typical Hope Sunday. Not only because I was able to give the message alongside Tom Beckstrom, who was my pastor growing up, but also because I sang in the choir. It’s been a few years since I joined the choir, but when we arrived at church that morning they were short a couple basses and baritones and asked if I could jump in. Once I arrived in the choir loft, I realized I was standing next to Chet Larson, former missionary to Congo, and his wife, Jean. In between rehearsing the anthem, Chet told me a little about his time in Congo – at mission stations from Gemena, Karawa, Wasolo and beyond. After worship ended I had the chance to catch up with Jean, too, who shared about learning Lingala, the national trade language, alongside Congolese women. It is always incredible to hear stories from the Covenant’s past as we see how God is unfolding the kingdom of God through the Covenant into the future.
© 2013 The Evangelical Covenant Church |