Slideshow image

Media presentation is a core aspect of Spirit Alive! each Sunday worship, and it is hard to imagine worship without it. But, early in Spirit Alive’s history, it needed some attention. That’s when Dave Jordan jumped in: “I noticed they had no one doing PowerPoint except the pastor.”

As he jumped, Dave noticed that media was more than a way to simply avoid printing costs. “For a few years it was very wordy,” he recalled, “but then I thought, ‘why not pictures?’” Pretty soon, Dave built a belief that media is meant to enhance how we worship. With society more visual-oriented than ever before, adding video and still pictures stimulate a deeper connection to the words sung and read aloud.

But more importantly, Dave saw that media was a way to reach people as they come. At many churches visitors struggle with knowing the ins and outs of worship. “Media helps you to come as you are. You don’t have to have inside knowledge of how to worship correctly,” Dave names. “You should be able to worship without having to flip pages in a book or know where to turn.” Having media on screens removes the barriers all the stuff in peoples hands to be able to open themselves to worship freely.

Personally, it also helped expand his own experience of faith. As an ordained pastor, there was much in his training that he thought important. Media in worship allowed Dave to “move beyond things I thought were center. To move beyond liturgical actions to the function: to sing, pray; to bless, and to be blessed.”

Spirit Alive! would not be the same without projected media—“It’s in our DNA,” Dave named—and it is much more than just simply having words on a screen. Media allows God’s grace to flow more freely to all who gather.

We give thanks for Dave’s dedicated energy in developing media usage at Spirit Alive!, making faith that much more simple for those hungry to gather in beloved community!