FAQ: What is Experiential Worship and Teaching?

In a nutshell, experiential worship and teaching is not about giving students information about God through a message or lesson.  It is about giving students an experience of God Himself.  By allowing students to participate in and experiment with spiritual disciplines and self-guided teaching times, they will come away, not with a sermon they will never remember, but an experience they will never forget.

It is our ministry’s goal to carve out a place and time for students to meet with God.  We do this through environment, creativity and interactive elements; being sensitive to different learning styles and using all five senses as well as music, media, prayer stations, meditation and the written Word, we bring a passage or theme alive and draw worshipers into the presence of God.  Students are not simply expected to be spectators while someone else speaks or sings about God.  They will be the participants; reading, praying, meditating and encountering God for themselves.

 *For more information about this kind of worship and teaching read :  Emerging Worship by Dan Kimball   and /or  Experiential Story Telling  by Mark Miller

Or visit these links www.smallfire.org or www.alternativeworship.org and read and see more  

FAQ: How Is This Different?

There are thousands of great speakers out there with wonderful and inspiring messages about God.  And there are thousands of Christian bands and worship leaders that lead us to sing beautiful songs about and to our Savior and Lord.  But many times the people of God do not need a speaker or a band.  The people of God simply need God.  In order to meet this need we want to allow students to come into the presence of God with as few distractions as possible.  So the direction of an authoritative speaker or worship leader will be minimalized and personal participation maximized for a better opportunity to directly encounter God.  Experiential Encounters’ job is not to bring the message or lead the worship.  Our job is to create an interactive environment where students can be still and engaged and then we allow God to bring the message as the students interact with the biblical elements of the encounter.  The worship comes from the students as a natural response to their encounter with God.

The idea is to give students a chance to encounter God, to experience Him personally right then and there instead of just learning about Him or hearing a speaker’s message.  Hopefully students will walk away with more than a CD and a decision card.

FAQ: Will Non-Christians be able to get anything out of this?

Absolutely.  It as been our experience that unchurched students are able to connect with God more than they would in a traditional church environment because the experience is between them and God.  All the distractions of traditional church (authoritative preacher/teacher, choir or praise team) are removed and they are left face to face with God Himself and not with what they might see as a cheesy or boring representative of God.

FAQ: What Does A Typical Experiential Service or Teaching Time Look Like?

The space or room is set up with different prayer or teaching stations along the walls, leaving the center of the room available for maximum seating.  Each station connects to a biblical passage and somehow relates to the theme of the service.  Some stations will be active (drawing, sculpting, writing, etc) and some will be more meditative (prayer, silence, reading).  The goal is to have at least one station that incorporates each of the three different learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) and all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch and smell).  Each service is organic so it is difficult to lay out an over arching structure, but the elements of a typical structure of the service might look like this.   We begin with a brief time of praise and worship intertwined with videos, scripture readings, songs and or an opening activity (the praise and worship is sometimes lead with a live musician and sometimes with video or CD).  Then there would be a short introduction of the theme or passage of the service followed by a brief introduction of the stations and instructions on what to do.  After this students are free to explore all, some or none of the stations individually (this exploration usually lasts somewhere between 25-40  minutes).  Then we come back together for a time of sharing with the large group.  After that there is a time of worship and response (singing, prayer, writing or silence).  These responses will signal the close of that encounter.