So – today let’s talk about animals in services. Live animals. In particular, goats. I think there’s a reason that goats are used as the bad example in the Bible. In addition to having those weird rectangular irises in their eyeballs, they are – shall we say – hard to handle. Two examples from my personal experience:
Goat #1 was being used along with a man dressed as a shepherd. He got loose backstage [during the service], ran around to avoid capture and left a number of smelly “presents” for us to locate and clean up. I am convinced that, had we not caught him, he would have made it to every nook and cranny of our building [including the tip of the steeple, as in the photo below…];
Goat #2 was an animal actor in a large scale Christmas drama. In this case, he was unfortunately placed next to a woman who was playing a flower merchant. Said goat decided to sample the flowers, and found them to be delicious. The woman tried to pull them away, whereupon the goat jumped up on her [not unlike goat yoga] and ate an amazing amount of flowers in a very short time.
That being said, I have seen goats behave very respectfully as parts of living nativities – I guess that they take that role a little more seriously…
Hmmm - well, let's see...
I'm a Christian, a husband, a dad, a son, a pastor, a consultant, a musician, a writer, and bits and pieces of a bunch of other things. My work life has followed three main phases - business to teaching to church. I was the Weekend Services Pastor for nine years at Northview Church, an awesome church in the Indianapolis suburbs. I used to work for Willow Creek, another awesome church in the Chicago area. Plus I've written for various magazines and websites, and other freelancy sorts of things... My life mission is to help the church be as excellent as it can be.
Oh yeah - the name's Greg. Greg Wallace. But not the race car driver or the major league pitcher or the British celebrity chef. Just the creative worship guy. Hi.
It's my hope that these ideas, musings, rants, raves, etc... will inspire you. They're just my opinions - but again, I hope that they'll help to inspire you. Because the church really, really needs inspired creative types. If you're a creative type (and most people are, deep-down), ask God for help. Then take any ideas that are useful to you - borrow them, nab them, use them, adapt them - and make them into something greater...
You can head over to my Instagram site for an abundance of shorter posts: creativeworshipideas. If you're looking for consulting - especially on weekend services, team leadership or multi-site strategies - I'd love to help. Just message me here, and I'll be in touch - Greg
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