Service Openers
We used to use simple countdowns in our Student Ministry to kick things off, but now we lean more toward the “Service Opener” idea instead. Essentially I seek out funny, powerful, worshipful, or totally crazy videos to show at the front of our service. Most of these videos I have totally grabbed off of YouTube, so I’ll post some links below of some ideas.
We still use a basic countdown, but now I just have the same countdown that actually runs 3 minutes prior to service starting. Then our band opens with a song, usually a cover song or new upbeat song. This gets everyone’s attention since prior to the countdown, people are milling around all over–even outside the main room. Then I show this “Service Opener” to act as a good transition into worship or something else. I find it is pretty easy to find good clips online, and I can easily edit them if I need to. Our students enjoy experiencing some of the “viral” YouTube videos once in a while, while also really take to the Worship Opener style videos–it usually depends on what kind of transition we need. Anyway, I try to keep the video to under 1 minute, so if they are longer, I usually edit them. Here are a few we have recently used, none of which I have created! Also, many of the worship ones have a church name built into the ending, which I again, edit out–cutting to a black screen saying “Service Starts Now.”
