This is sort of my way of decompressing after finishing a 15 week-long study through the book of James at Skull Church. In this video I give the resources that were helpful to me during the series, the reason we called it high fidelity, and why I chose to go through this book at a service that is explicitly evangelistic in it’s focus.

If you are on a mobile device you can watch the movie on vimeo with this link: http://vimeo.com/m/#/12498843

In Psalm 23 David blogs about how great it is to be a sheep in God’s flock. I just spent the month of May combing through these 6 killer verses and here are some thoughts about the series and some resources that helped me along the way.

We also had some live sheep at both of our theatre’s for the launch weekend which made the messages come to life with the sounds and smells of livestock. And to send the message that it’s not just David that is apart of God’s flock–we are God’s sheep too–we had “sheep yourself” cutouts where people could take pictures of themselves as happy lambs before and after services. No end to the fun.

We just kicked off a five week study of Psalm 23 on the weekends at Fresh Life. This series will last for the month of May and will hopefully be a refreshing and invigorating time of growth and transformation. I know God has been quickening my heart and pruning back the unruly growth of winter as my soul has been steeping in these 6 familiar verses in preparation for the series launch.

What better way to experience the season of spring on the inside than exploring this beloved passage? Alexander Maclaren once said, “The world could get along without many a large book better than this sunny little psalm.” It is written from the perspective of a stoked sheep who is so pumped about his Shepherd that he takes to his blog, bragging about how awesome He really is.

As a whole, our art and graphics tend to have a dark and somewhat macabre feel to them (it’s kind of a part of our vibe–we do have a service called skull church…) And our series media, by and large, tends to be either very hard-hitting, in your face and explosive, or melancholy, mysterious and a little haunting. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, it’s what we like and we are good at it. But an unguarded strength can become a double weakness.

In a creative planning meeting a while back we were talking about how any one style can be fatiguing and lose it’s impact if it is employed exclusively. We decided that we would go in the exact opposite direction for this series. (As much as I personally would have loved to see an emo sheep shuffling through the valley of the shadow of death to a song in a minor-key.) One important thing to remember in life and in art is to change it up every once in a while and not get stuck or defined by any one style.

So we declared a month-long moratorium on dark colors, war-drums, thundering anthems, and challenged ourselves to paint with a different atmospheric palette. I reassured my creative team that this wouldn’t be permanent, and that they could get back to producing media that depresses people and scares children soon. I begged for some sunshine, lollipops, and a few woodland creatures–just this one time. The end result was a happy “spoonful of sugar” type of a campaign that makes me smile every time I see it. Enjoy.

For the series launch we had live sheep, in pens, at the entrances to both of our theaters to set the pastoral mood as people arrived at church. It was a lot of fun.

What are some things you have done or could do to change the vibe up in your world?