Healthy worship
• A pound of sermon
• A handful of hymns
• A spoonful of Bible readings
• Five ounces of liturgy
• One offertory
• A pinch of prayers
Blend all ingredients carefully.
Salt to taste.” It’s a common instruction found on recipe cards.
In many churches, it’s also a common approach to variety in worship. The message of the pastor’s sermon is the main course, but the rest of the weekly service is designed to be little more than a sprinkling of sanctified seasoning. There are wake-up songs for the beginning of the service. Quiet, calming music settles over the congregation when it’s time to pray.
Proclaim sin and grace
Confessional Lutherans don’t tend to look at worship from this point of view. Every Christian is a priest in God’s eyes. This has implications for our role in weekly worship. In Lutheran worship every member is a preacher, the nave is a pulpit, and the entire service is the congregation’s sermon. Together we preach it in our songs and prayers. We preach it indirectly through our called pastors and musicians. But all of it is the congregation’s sermon on sin and grace, from prelude to postlude.
Is worship variety a matter of preaching, or is it a matter of salting to taste? That’s a distinction worth thinking about.
Once, in a church I was visiting, I heard a musical offertory that was based on the “flying feather” theme from the end of the movie Forrest Gump. In terms of a personal thank offering, nobody could question the musician’s decision. But if the music of worship is a part of the congregation’s sermon, the message the people were proclaiming at that moment was: “Life is like a box of chocolates.”
Study the text for the day
The philosophy behind our worship affects not just our musical choices, but also our texts, our prayers, and even the path of worship we choose to follow. If we’re looking for healthy worship variety, we are wise to prepare for worship the way a preacher prepares his sermon.
A good preacher begins by studying his sermon’s Bible text.
If the preacher’s main goal was to be eloquent or charming, he wouldn’t need to study. He would also soon learn that his sermons all sound kind of the same.
But a good preacher knows that the love of God in Christ is like a multi-faceted jewel. Which facet will he preach this week? The answer lies in his text. Before he writes a word of his sermon, he lets that living Word of Christ dwell richly in him. He does this out of Christian love for his people.
Blend it all together
One of the easiest ways for a church musician to add variety to worship is to pick a likable Christian song and plug it into the church calendar on a convenient day. That’s not wrong, but there’s a more loving way to offer variety for the congregation’s sermon.
Like a sermon text, each Sunday of the Christian church year is designed to be unique. It draws its theme from the gospel for the day. Once you know the text, you can help the congre-gation preach their sermon.
How about a musical prelude that offers the people an appetiz-ing whiff of the hymn they’ll soon be singing? Maybe some of your gifted singers can lead the rest of the congregation in a special setting of the selected psalm. Can you find an anthem that reinforces the message of the day’s gospel?
There are dozens of other ideas like these and countless musical and textual settings from which to choose.
Pastors can encourage this kind of thoughtful variety by sharing their weekly sermon texts and hymn suggestions with musicians and other worship planners well in advance.
Listen to the “expert”
In this consumer-driven society, we are used to thinking of ourselves as customers. It can be challenging for Christians to remember that when it comes to worship, we all share a unique priestly role. This means that worship is not like anything else in this world.
Experts in performance may be able to help us learn how to keep a crowd’s attention. Experts in education can show us how different people learn in different ways. We can learn something from experts like these.
But there are no secular experts on the kind of communication that happens in worship, because nothing in the secular world compares. Where else does the universal priesthood regularly gather to be fed by Word and sacrament and to preach a sermon to each other in story and song?
The only real “expert” is the past worship experience of the gathered Christian church. A congregation that is interested in more than the “salt shaker” approach to worship variety is wise to listen to what that expert has to say.
It’s called the liturgy.
The more you study it, the more you can appreciate the gospel content of the weekly sermons Christ’s Church has been preaching in public worship for almost 2,000 years.
You may also be surprised to discover just how much room for healthy variety is already built into this historic pattern.
That’s the thinking behind a new WELS worship resource. Christian Worship: Supplement is scheduled to be published next summer. It will offer a rich variety of new hymns, services, psalm settings, and devotions. At the same time, the book aims to remind our people that they are preachers, and to give their gospel proclamation an authentic voice.
Know your congregation’s voice
It’s hard to recognize someone if they are trying to adopt someone else’s voice. We grow suspicious and question the person’s sincerity. We may even doubt the message we hear. Their true voice removes questions and helps us listen.
Can we import a “salt to taste” form of worship and infuse it with Lutheran content? We have Christian freedom to do so. But will people in the pew have a hard time accepting it as the main course? Will it distort the congregation’s voice and message making it difficult to recognize?
Regardless of how you answer those questions, don’t let the worship variety in your congregation be simply a matter of majority opinion. Help to make it a matter of ongoing study. When it comes to worship, the experience of the church is the best consultant you will ever find.
As in any area of Christian freedom, worship variety has little to do with personal taste or preference. It has much more to do with love and putting God’s gifts to good use. Along with giving the members of your congregation the privilege of proclaiming the gospel in worship, God has blessed them with abundant and varied gifts to accomplish the task.
Which of those gifts are appropriate for use in public worship? And how can we best use our own gifts for the benefit of our fellow members? When you think about worship variety, don’t think seasoning. Think sermon.
Then, in church, when you sing, speak, pray, and listen, you can better appreciate the green pastures of your risen and ascended Good Shepherd, who traded his life to give you his all-forgiving love. This is the food you need. This is also the sermon God has called you to preach!
Jon Zabell is pastor at St. Paul, Green Bay, Wisconsin.
