What does the visual metaphor do?
The classroom image stayed on screen while the minister preached. Near the end of his sermon, he asked people to open their bluebooks and journal about three questions: • How are you being tested? • How’s that going? • What do you specifically need to ask God’s help for? “We were asked to come up for communion and lay our bluebooks on the altar. It was immensely powerful,” Radosevic recalls. You might wonder why worship planners didn’t simply project classic art about the Temptations of Jesus or aerial photos of Old Jerusalem. “Digital storytelling works best when it incorporates metaphors or offers complementary sounds and imagery to a story. There are aspects of stories we don’t get because of our distance from biblical events. A visual metaphor works like a bridge from our world to the biblical world and culture,” says Tim Coombs, who co-pastors Trinity Presbyterian Church in Scotia, New York. He describes himself as a cultural missionary. He’s found worshipers absorb more when he t
