59 – Rewriting the News Headlines
A weekly blog of Creative Ideas for Leading Worship
Rewriting the News Headlines
A Vision for a Better World
Some Sundays we need to name the world as it really is. Other Sundays we need to name the world as it could be. This worship idea invites your congregation to bravely do both.
By taking the headlines that weigh on us and rewriting them through the lens of God’s Kingdom, we open a space for imagination, lament, protest, and hope. It’s a spiritual practice that sits somewhere between prayer and public theology – and it can surprise even the most seasoned worshipper.
Begin by collecting a handful of current news headlines. Go local and global. Choose items that speak to climate pressures, justice issues, economic turbulence, community wellbeing, or political shifts. Resist the temptation to sanitise. You’re not displaying the articles, only the headlines, so the congregation is free to interpret and imagine without being pulled into detail or partisan angles.
Mount the headlines on a large board or wall where everyone can see them as they enter.
During worship, frame the exercise as an act of Kingdom re-imagining. Remind the congregation that Jesus constantly invited people to see the world differently. The Kingdom he described wasn’t abstract. It was bread in hungry hands, welcome for outsiders, justice for the poor, and joy in unexpected places. Today’s news is raw material for that same kind of transformative vision.
Invite people to take a sticky note and rewrite one headline as they believe it would read if God’s Kingdom were fully realised in that situation.
Keep the language active and hopeful.
Encourage people to shift the tone from fear to abundance, from crisis to community, from despair to resilience.
You might see transformations like:
- Market Crashes becoming Community Shares
- Rivers Contaminated becoming Waterways Restored
- Housing Crisis Deepens becoming Every Whānau Housed
- Violence Erupts becoming Peaceful Dialogue Prevails.
This isn’t make-believe. It’s a rehearsal of faith. It trains our spiritual imagination to search for God’s preferred future even while acknowledging the complexity of the present.
Younger participants will take to it immediately, offering blunt, beautifully honest rewrites.
Adults sometimes need a moment to warm up – which is fine. The point is not perfection, but participation.
Once rewritten headlines are placed beneath the originals, allow space for people to read them and take in the contrasts. The gap between the world as it is and the world as God intends can be confronting. Let that discomfort speak. But also let the community feel the collective yearning for justice that these re-authored headlines express.
To deepen the moment, you might read a few aloud and offer a short prayer after each one. Or close with a simple refrain, such as: “God of hope, shape our tomorrow.”
Another option is to gather the rewritten headlines into a digital or printed collage for the church noticeboard or website. It quietly signals that your congregation is committed to seeing the world through a Kingdom lens.
All you need is a display board, sticky notes, and pens.
But what you create is something far more potent – a congregation practising resurrection journalism, one headline at a time.
Ngā mihi
Philip