Worship into the Week Journal- Junk Mail Style

Collecting the "junk" of Life- Right from my mailbox

I began teaching Junk Mail Journaling in 2007. Our church was gathering for the year under the theme- Whispers in the Whirlwind. I was asked to teach a Bible Class that would allow people to slow down to better hear (and see) God's voice. We needed to help them pay attention to His Word and seek the will of His leading. Short order, right? Oh, and and we don't really have a budget for supplies. I had heard that people were not interested in purchasing lots of things and could we keep it user-friendly for beginners. As we looked creatively for "using what we had", we began to see the mailbox delivery of potential journaling supplies.

I am still junk mail journaling eighteen years later and will share with you how that process gets used for my Worship into the Week Devotional Journaling. The above stack is what I will use for the next couple of months journaling.

Possible journaling pages

First I simply go through the magazines- everything from Costo, to a Pottery Barn, AAA and a travel magazine picked up at a rest stop. Tear out pages with large blocks of color, interesting shapes and patterns. Look at the images without their original intent.

Possible word titles, phrases or lettering to reuse

Then I go back through the magazine looking for interesting words, type, or letters to cut apart to use for spelling another word. The words don't have to have a spiritual or "church" meaning.

I look for similar colors and that becomes the "color palette" for the layout.

Layout ready for journaling

This sets the color range for colored pencils or watercolors to finish the journaling time. It is no longer "men's shirts."

Basic color selection

The strips of magazines become this layout.

Colors and color blocks

The wonders of Iceland is actually the back side of this page in a AAA magazine. The words get covered up.

Here it is-Set up for devotion time. Adding in some "found" phrases.

Finished pages with colored pencils, distress ink and some old postage stamps.

The key for this is not to get stuck by what you SEE.

Those pages become this layout with bright colors ready for some time in worship.

I use an inexpensive 3 ring binder (7 1/2 by 9 size) from Staples and cut my own cardstock for the base pages. I change up that color now and then. I use the Worship into the Week resources from Visual Faith® Ministry and you can also use the free Graphics Only Worship resources for each month. The best thing I can give you is the encouragement to try it out- if this practice has been of interest to you. No need to purchase lots of supplies. Have fun and remember it is the time set aside to be intentionally in God's Word.

Let Him surprise you with the junk mail in your life that gets turned into a worship resource!