Involving Laity in Planning Church Worship
Who Should Plan Worship?
The fallback thinking is that pastors or organists plan worship.
Let’s look at worship planning from the small congregation’s point of view.
If a congregation can afford only part-time pastoral help and they allocate a good bit of that expense to sermon preparation and worship planning, they are paying for church maintenance, not church growth. For small churches, this may be a waste of resources.
Here is a bit of news. Anyone can plan worship.
Lay people attend hundreds of worship services, but they don’t think about leading them.
The food is placed before us and we eat. If we like the food, we come back for more. If we don’t, we become less involved.
This common scenario detracts from worship. Over time and among a people who are less and less educated in church, people fail to realize the purpose of worship.
Worship is about praising God—not satisfying worshipers. Nevertheless, if worshipers are organically involved in the planning, God will be glorified by a joyful worshiping community.
Many denominations have an established structure that facilitates worship planning.
Liturgical churches usually follow a lectionary, which means that scriptures and themes of weekly worship are already laid out following the traditional church year that begins in Advent and ends after Pentecost. The previous link takes you to the lectionary on line. If you want to have a reference book for your lay leaders, here’s a link for a print version of the Common Lectionary.
This is how pastors plan worship. (Anyone can do this).
- They read the lessons and then review the structure of the worship service.
- They find hymns which augment the theme. Sometimes this is all that happens.
- Going beyond that, worship planners can look at the language of the liturgy: the confession, prayers and responses. There are resources which provide pre-written changes in wording and ideas for novel expression. There is no law against writing your own. (We recommend Sundays and Seasons. This link is for the current year which is nearly over. The first Sunday in Advent (December 2) will be here before you know it! Here is the link to plan for 2012-2013 using Sundays and Seasons.)
As long as worship planning is the province of paid professionals, this is what will happen week after week.
Stop and consider the talents of the worshiping community. How can they add to the worship experience. Do you have school teachers who can tell a children’s story? Do you have dancers, musicians, writers and artists? Are there banner makers and printers? Are members involved in social service ventures that need to be embraced by your community?
When lay people become involved in worship planning, there will be answers to these questions.
People will come to understand what is going on in a worship service and how it relates to the full mission of the church. As they become involved, they grow in realizing that they can lead. New leadership skills will transfer to other arenas of congregational life.
The hardest part is getting started. Ask for help. Be prepared to teach as you get started. See what happens!