At the start of each new year, we like to center the conversations in our church around health — mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual. This year, we did a six-week deep dive into how we can take care of our souls in a collection of talks called Happy, Healthy, Holy.
Based on teachings from Christian philosopher Dallas Willard, our soul can be broken down into four components:
Heart — our will and spirit
Mind — our thoughts and feelings
Body — our appetites and habits
Relationships — our social context
Each of these areas influences the others, with all of them constantly informing who we are at our core. Understanding each part helps make an abstract concept more digestible, leading to practical, real-life applications. When we understand our soul, we can begin to steward our soul.
Soul work is hard work, and we are always looking for opportunities to support people along the way. For each collection launch, our design, social, photo, film, communications, and web teams work in tandem to present a holistic offering that spans beyond the Sunday experience.
A core component of each collection is a resource site. This web experience creates a central space we drive people to for more information and next steps. This collection site had three main components:
1. WATCH
Each week’s sermon is housed directly on the resource site. This gives an easy opportunity for someone to rewatch messages and share with people in their community. The messages are accompanied by a short summary and a couple of application questions to help prompt deeper contemplation.
2. REFLECT
We know that these introspective collections bring up organic moments of reflection. Life change happens when we take time to pause and allow the Holy Spirit to uncover areas of our lives that are out of sync with God’s pace of grace — part of the journey to becoming happy, healthy, and holy anchors in these reflection moments. This section creates an opportunity for people to digest what they are hearing and reflect on how it applies to them personally.
3. LEARN
A call to action for site visitors to take next steps by discovering spiritual formation classes and resources. From VOUS Care Classes to recommended reading, this is a space for us to continue the conversations that start on Sunday.
Beyond our website, we also worked closely with our entire creative team to develop art direction that complemented the underlying message and meaning of Happy, Healthy, Holy.
We started with a guiding language framework which helped drive art direction overall:
Do you ever feel discontent or depleted? With the pace of life, we can easily find ourselves out of sync with our heavenly father. We may have all the “right” practices in place, yet lack soul satisfaction. How do we find rest, develop intimacy with God, and live satisfied? In this collection, we will discover practical patterns Jesus models for us to live happy, healthy, and holy.
From there, our design teams begin working on visuals that complement the message relayed in the guiding language. We carry the same design themes throughout all elements of the collection, from LEDs and social media graphics to seat drops and web design. Each creative element helps communicate the overall message of the collection.
As we journeyed through this collection as a community we began to peel back the layers and take a deep-dive into our souls. We ended 6-weeks feeling stronger and more secure. We hope the same is true for you as you explore the resources for this sermon collection.
You can click here to take a deeper look at the resource site our team put together for Happy, Healthy, Holy.
