Monday, May 9, 2011
Book #9- The Heart of a Great Pastor: How to Grow Strong and Thrive Wherever God Has Planted You
Monday, May 2, 2011
Book #8- A Guide to Preaching and Leading Worship
- Do not change a congregation's accustomed worship pattern until you have some clear understanding of the function of the accustomed patterns and unless you feel that the change is essential to preserving the vitality and fidelity of the congregation as people of God.
- Never make liturgical changes solely at the pastor's discretion.
- Be honest with yourself.
- Use every means to explain the proposed change to the people.
- Welcome comments on the changes.
- Introduce some innovation at a "special" service at a time other than Sunday morning.
- Utilize the new worship resources of your own denomination in reforming your congregation's worship.
- If your proposed liturgical changes are steadfastly resisted--even after your best attempts to involve the laity in the planning, execution, and evaluation of this changes, even after your most skillful efforts to teach about those changes--be willing to consider trying something else or backing off.
Heed the last in particular. Too often, it's easy to come into a church and have this mindset that you are going to fix what is broken about the church's worship service. My advice is to go slow and make sure you take the leadership with you. (I'm rolling out my ideas of how I think our worship needs to change in my pastor's report on July 10, so I guess you should check back to see if I still have a job on July 17th.) Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't have opinions on worship. Willimon makes many definite statements, like including children in your worship as soon as possible. He also says that the primary structure of Christian worship should be Word and Table, and I agree with that, but we haven't celebrated communion as much as I would want this year at my church. The total will end up being about 8 times, which isn't very different from last year, when I wasn't the pastor of this church, but in Advent, we celebrated communion every week, which did freak some people out, and I had to explain why we were doing it each week, and about half the time, we received the elements by intinction, which really freaked out my germaphobes. "What if someone sticks their fingers in the cup?!?!?!" So I got to explain how communion is a communal, familial, ecclesial act, not an individualized, privatized act of personal piety, and that's why I like using the common cup. So my goal is to raise the number of times we celebrate communion a great deal this year, and again, you should probably check back with me to see how it goes. Willimon writes that the best way to reeducatie about the sacraments is through well-planned, enthusiastically led, frequent celebrations, and that is exactly what we are going to try this year at our church.
Part of why I think this will work is my agreement with Willimon that it is the pastor who sets the tone for the liturgical assembly, so if the pastor leads the celebration of communion in a vibrant fashion, not just going through the motions, the rest of the assembly will follow. Willimon calls the pastor the "Gracious Host" (18) of the worship service, and he provides several helpful suggestions of how to go about worship leadership as the senior pastor.
One suggestion that struck me that I never would have thought of is to have a full-length mirror in your office. Willimon makes this point mostly so that you can make sure your vestments are in order, but I think it would be important no matter how formally or casually you are usually dressed for your Sunday service. If you are wearing a shirt and tie, make sure the knot is straight; if your shirt is tucked in, make sure it is tucked in properly; if you've used the restroom since getting dressed, make sure the zipper of the fly of your pants is closed. This isn't vanity. It is as important to look as prepared in your appearance as you are for the words you will see as worship leader and preacher.
Willimon advocates practicing your movements as a worship leader, so that you can use confident, flowing gestures that look natural, rather than short, chopped movements that will be hard to understand. Part of his point is that most effective liturgical leadership is by sight rather than by sound--ie. raising your arms in a fluid motion rather than saying, "Please stand as we sing." Also, Willimon considers your eyes the principle means of exercising liturgical leadership. For example, if you have a choir and they are singing an anthem, look at them rather than flipping around in your Bible or going through your sermon notes. Remember that throughout the service, even when you are not the one leading the assembly at a given particular moment, you are still setting the tone for everyone else in the congregation.
As he draws the book to a close, Willimon cites nine characteristics of churches with vibrant worship from Thomas Long's Beyond the Worship Wars: Building Vital and Faithful Worship (The Alban Institute, 2001). "These churches:
- Make room, somewhere in worship for the experience of mystery.
- Are very intentional about showing hospitality to the stranger.
- Have recovered and made visible the sense of drama inherent in Christian worship.
- Emphasize congregational music that is both excellent and eclectic in style and genre.
- Creatively adapt the space and environment of worship.
- Have a strong connection between worship and local mission, a connection that is expressed in every aspect of the worship service.
- Have a relatively stable order of service and a significant repertoire of worship elements and responses that the congregation knows by heart.
- Move to a joyous festival experience toward the end of the worship service.
- Have strong, charismatic pastors and worship leaders. (100)
My favorite quote is on page 97: "The future of Christian worship is not so much 'traditional' or 'contemporary' but rather eclectic." May God help us to be faithful worship leaders, and may we lead our churches boldly into that eclectic future!