When we curate weekly worship, I find we typically have one goal in mind: the formation of people into the likeness of Christ. Our hope is that through throughtful gathering and ordering of stuff we will create a meaningful narrative through which the Spirit will choose to move and speak, drawing close the ones he loves.

When we curate more involved events – a Good Friday stations of the cross, for example – most of us include the same goal of spiritual formation, with perhaps the additional bit of hope for mission thrown in.

But, aside from formation and mission, there is another goal to consider when putting together a worship event. That goal is leader development. The process and execution of curated worship provides excellent opportunity for mentoring, imparting vision to, and attracting, new leaders. Though leader development may never be our primary concern for any event, I suggest that we would be amiss – verging on being horrible stewards – to not approach each act of curation with some clear ideas about how leaders will be multiplied and matured in all that our planning and designing entails.

I lived in Denver for one year. I was called then to work with a team of missional strategists and a church called Adullam in the role as one primarily concerned with worship. There, I found a diversity of artists who had not been officially recognized, encouraged, or gathered in any capacity. I felt compelled to draw them together, imagining the possibility of an art collective that would impact our local church body as well as our neighborhood and the greater city of Denver. How to initiate such a dream? I used the curation of a stations event as an excuse to gather, create, and curate together.

There were four steps I used to move these scattered and unrecognized artists toward becoming an organized and mobilized collective of artists.

Cause?
I first located our cause. What would be our purpose? Why call these people together? To what end? For me, it was the desire to see artists come together for two reasons: liturgical innovation in the local church and artistic experimentation in the broader culture.

Call
Next, I made contact. One’s chosen method of contact should depend on a number of factors, including: one’s clout in the community, the contact information one has, and the time available to invest. I chose Facebook. Not only do I like the medium, our church had a very active Facebook page. My approach included sending out a message that basically said, “I’m Eric (remember me?) and I’m really interested in gathering any and all who consider themselves artists at Adullam.” I clarified. “By artist, I mean those with professional, college, or job experience in some kind of art medium. Serious hobbyists also qualify. Please respond if this is you and I’ll let you know what else I have in mind.” (Notice, I didn’t layout my whole plan. I said just enough to create some intrigue about my secret agenda.)

Commune
My “call” received about twenty responses – more than I had hoped for in this church of about one-hundred! The next step was to bring them physically together. Naturally, I planned to share with them my heart and ideas for what we could accomplish together. But, I knew it couldn’t just be all about doing. There was only one thing to do to ensure our time was communal as well as informational: order pizza! We gathered for the first meeting, many of us unfamiliar with one another, and we ate together. I also made sure that our first time together included a healthy dose of discussion – time for everyone to share about themselves and their own desires for art, worship, and mission. After a couple hours together, I knew we were going to do/be something great!

As expected, when I called the second meeting, less than twenty showed up. This was disappointing since I wanted everyone at the first meeting to return. At the same time, I was encouraged because I knew those who did come back a second time meant business. There must have been something about the initial meeting that made ten people sacrifice another evening of their busy lives to investigate further the possibilities. I laid out my specific plan in this second meeting. Though my eventual goal was to engage greater Denver with art events beyond worship – I knew that we needed to start with something more tangible, something we could get our heads and hands around and accomplish with success. I proposed designing a stations of the cross experience for Good Friday. Ten people were all in. We had about two months to brainstorm, assign, build, and present the event we called Via Crucis.

Curate
Our curation process was a group process. This allowed for diverse input and total buy in, as everyone had a voice. We started with a discussion of the traditional stations of the cross. We used a document I had prepared which listed them out, including scripture texts. We sat on couches in a circle and discussed each station, one by one, including the narrative texts, the literal actions, and metaphors contained in each station theme. Next, we stood up and in groups of two or three, the artists took five minutes at each of fourteen large post-its hung around the room. The assignment: brainstorm as many creative ideas as you can in five minutes. Soon, we had a lot of silly station ideas and some really good ones that could be assigned to everyone present. We ended up doing twelve of the fourteen traditional stations -  a couple of us taking responsibility for designing and implementing more than one.

Why curate this way? I could’ve have just picked twelve people, assigned stations and said, “Meet you back on Maundy Thursday for set-up.” Instead, I chose to view this stations event as an opportunity to empower latent artists, mentor them through action together, build unity through a common, imminent goal, and discover each other’s artistic gifts as we moved through the process of curation together.

images of Adullam Arts Collective’s 2009 Via Crucis by © Andrew Silk