Bill and Tom refer to sensory worship in their book Growing Spiritual Redwoods. Sensory worship refers to more than just our senses.  An example would be the Seinfeld episode where they spent several minutes talking about the improvements in toilet paper. That is sensory.  Sensory, is "down and dirty", crude, primal, base, everyday, real life.  Robes were never sensory.  They were symbols of education and authority.   There is a big difference between a symbol of power and authority and toilet paper. For more on sensory worship see the chapter on worship in my book Growing Spiritual Redwoods Also available in Downloadable Adobe Acrobat PDF File

Online conversation

Baptism - sound (pouring of the water into the font, if that's part of your tradition); touch (pouring or sprinkling, immersion).

One thing I have tried to do is to have a group of folks work on creating visuals for the worship center, related to the scriptures for the day, or the season or theme.  Traditionally, this was the function of "altar flowers".   This expands that to include as much of the worship room as seems appropriate to the design.  For  example, on the first Sunday of Lent last year, worshipers were greeted with an arrangement of rocks (even some big ones), sand, thorns and weeds - lots of beige and grays - spilling down the chancel steps.  During the children's time, the leader gave the children a small stone and suggested they keep it in their pocket all through Lent, kind of a meditation stone:  rough edges to help us think of things we need to "give up" or offer to God for  healing; smooth to remind of prayers answered or love received; stone itself to remind of Jesus and what he did for us.  The children helped distribute a stone to each person present.  (Many folks did keep their stones all through Lent, some longer,  and said it was a valuable prayer tool for them) We did something similar all through Lent, leading up to a wonderful explosion of color on Easter Sunday.

One pastor I know built an entire wilderness in her church, taking up the whole chancel.  On Easter they built a garden, complete with trees (borrowed from a willing greenhouse) and plants, and a fountain.

Both of our congregations spoke of understanding Lent and Easter and the power of the resurrection in a whole new way, because they experienced it on so many levels.  There's so much one can do!

Sensory things in traditional worship:

Ash Wednesday - ashes on the forehead; or oil instead of ashes; last year we wrote down our confessions and burned them in worship and were anointed with oil instead of ashes

Incense is a very powerful sensory thing - At the abbey of Gethsemane they used incense one day at mass, all day long when I passed through the worship space and while we were in worship I faced with the closeness of God listening to my prayers through the smell of the incense that lingered.

Holding hands while praying - touch

Sometimes I have the people look at each other and say things... like during "Encourage One Another" They looked to the person on their left and said: "Partner, you can lean on me, 'cause I'm leaning on Jesus." Then they looked at the person on their right and said: "Partner, I hope you're leaning on Jesus, 'cause I need to lean on you."  Then we sang "Lean On Me"!  (It was Fun!)

Some hand out nails for lent, and on Good Friday nail them into a real wooden cross!

I've handed out rocks on Palm Sunday - "if they were silent the very rocks would cry out" Luke 19:40 Don't let your rock cry out because of your silence! Then Jesus wept - Jesus is the Rock that wept! I also handed out rocks on Easter - the stone has been rolled away.

Hand out jingle bells at Christmas time - carry them and remember the joy of Christ rings in  your life!

Hanging of the green - very visual

Candlelight services at Christmas Eve - where everyone has a candle and all the electric lights are turned off.  Beautiful visual image - "you are the light of the world - let your light shine"  Kathy Tricolli's "Go Light Your World" (or is it "Carry Your Candle"?)

Traditional Tenebrae service with the extinguishing of the candles with the reading of Christ's passion in John.  This past year we started at 7:00 pm in daylight savings time and I was worried about the darkness and light with a big window facing west.  But it worked out better than I could have planned because of the timing in the narrative that they took the bodies down from the crosses at dusk, which is when we extinguished the last candle!

I was at a "Sex, Drugs and Fast Cars" workshop with my youth  where Rich Melheim told the 7 days of creation and threw Hershey kisses out every time he said "And God saw that it was good." Very effective. He had a girl put on an oversized T-shirt and then told a parable of a person giving away their sexual purity, cutting & tearing holes in the shirt and then asking if that was the gift the youth wanted to give their future husband or wife.

Last Pentecost I was wondering what we could do that was different than the traditional stuff.  We were in the middle of Annual Conference. My wife and I began to play with the image of the "love of God being poured into our hearts..."  by the time we were done we had an altar full of items that are poured.  Sight and sound and a little smell - items were poured as I stood behind the altar and talked about each item.  Another great setting was also stimulated at worship at annual conference a couple years before.  We created a natural setting with rocks,  plants and even a pine fence.  This was a fairly rural congregation.  The stone altar was very striking.  Many members brought things and helped construct the day before.  It was for an emphasis on celebrating the great creation of God or something like that.

When preaching the Jeremiah text about the potter once, we gave all worshipers a baggie with play-doh in it.  They were encouraged to play with it during the sermon.   (Didn't hand it out until sermon time.)  As it happened our DS and the Admin Assist. to the Bishop were both in worship that day.  Our DS came out with a chalice he had fashioned.  Other people did other things.