A New Day, acrylic on canvas; by Erice Liu

You could be forgiven for thinking a new projection system isn't worthy of a whole lot of fanfare. But to hear it from Karl Digerness, there is a lot to be excited about. This weekend (Sunday, September 22nd), our Sutter site will begin using projection during services; projection will be coming soon to our 23rd Street site, too.

It all sounds very low-key, until we dig a bit deeper to think about why we are doing this now, what it means for and in the church, and what we are able to do because of it. This new projection system will be used primarily to display lyrics to the songs we sing together. As time goes on, we may look at adding more of the liturgy, but for now we're keeping it simple.

This new system has been the subject of thought and discussion and prayer for a while now. As we thought about using projection in our services, we didn't want to make a decision based on popular trends, or the latest technology, but rather our ongoing commitment to understanding what would best serve our particular context and congregation at City Church. And we kept coming back to one word over and over again: formative.

As we are trying to help people more deeply enter into the story of Jesus (as told by the church year), we wanted to move past the "Iconoclastic hangover" the Protestant church has undergone and employ the visual arts to engage our sense of sight and wonder. This move toward using projection is a move toward shaping spirituality through the visual arts, something that has been done for millennia in the church.

There are two goals behind the launch of this projection system, and both have to do with locating ourselves in the story of the Scriptures and the life of the church. The first goal has to do with telling a story through art. Art is one of the most formative ways of, as writer David Taylor puts it, "discipling the eyes." In this day and age of image saturation, we look to art to retrain our eyes to see past the simulacra and into what is real. As Jamie Smith reminded us a couple of weeks ago, worship itself is formative--the more we engage the senses, the more we can enter into the greater story. To that end, we will be working with visual artists to commission pieces that follow along with the church year. Erice Liu, a member of our congregation and an artist, has done a piece called "A New Day" for our use during Ordinary Time and is working on several pieces for Advent. With the ability to project these images, we will be able to disciple our eyes in the way of truth and beauty.

Secondly, we are beginning to use projectors as a way to engage bodily in worship. We will still have worship folders available at our services--they are important for liturgy, for hospitality, for use during the week--but for those who want to set the folders down while they sing and engage their hands in worship, the projection system will free them up to do so. For some folks, it will be important and freeing to be able to have their hands free while they sing--to raise hands, clap along, and be able to look up in worship. The postures we take when we worship together influence the state of our heart, and for some that will mean raising hands. For others it will mean continuing with the worship folder. This is the story of worship in our very bodies.

We are telling stories always, and this projection system allows us to continue in deeper storytelling with our art and with our bodies. The stories that shape our church services will shape us as well, as we stay true to who we are as a church community and what it means to follow Christ to renew the city.