As a pastor, I like to play around with the order of worship. I don’t ascribe to change for the sake of change, but there are good reasons to adapt the order from time to time. Looking back over the years, I realize I’ve almost always adopted a seasonal approach to this, giving consideration to particular changes for a particular season, such as Advent or Lent.
The simple fact is that communal worship is not a one-size-fits-all affair. The Body of Christ is — and should be — a diverse embodiment of the wide-reaching, all-welcoming heart of God. I have marveled in the churches with which I have pastored at the presence of newborns and ninety-year-olds, day-laborers and CEOs, those with doctorate degrees and those who never learned to read — all of whom contribute their presence and spirit in the pursuit of corporate praise.
Some love music and wish there was more; others prefer there was none at all. Some love hearing the scriptures read aloud and can’t get enough; others find more than five verses aloud are wearisome. Some can’t get enough of hymns; others yearn for a guitar and drums; still others are bitter we aren’t using the organ. Then there are those whose sense of worship desires the formality of robes and stoles and incense… I could go on and on.
Changing up the order of worship gives us the chance as a Community to connect better with everyone in ways that are closer to their native languages of worship. It helps break us all out of those ritualized ruts that we can fall into where we go through the motions without thinking about things. It can protect us from the inevitable petrification of thinking that this one way (our way!) is the only right way to do it. But just as important as all of that, it also lets the order be fine-tuned for the actual worship services being planned.
Whether you realize it or not, there is a purposeful shape to worship. Someone, somewhere, at some time intended something by including and positioning the elements of worship as they did. For some churches, those “someones” and intentions are lost to the sands of time; for others, they are far more recent and knowable. But in an effort to get us thinking about what we do in the work of worship each Sunday morning, I have sketched out something of the shape of the order we follow, which I find follows in general form the much more ancient practice of lectio divina (sacred reading):
We begin by quieting ourselves. Spiritual voices of all traditions have noted that it is difficult to hear when there is much noise within us. Once stilled, we invite God to be present with us and to work in love in us. Then we begin the work of worship proper.
Here, we begin by reading and listening. The scriptures are a significant touchstone for us in worship, perhaps second in authority in our lives only to Jesus himself. And in a pattern observed by our Christian forebears, this reading and listening tends to propel us into reflecting. Reflecting and considering then tends to drive us to respond in some way to the new awareness and encounter we have experienced. And then this still moves us yet into something deeper and more profound: a kind of resting in/with this One we have encountered and who loves us so.
And though we may so wish it, this resting is not eternal, for creation is not yet as God wills it to be. Like the early disciples, we must come down from our own Mounts of Transfiguration, changed that we may live our change into the world — and thereby see the whole of it transfigured… redeemed.
Pastor Michael