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The Formation of Leaders of Worship:  Focus on Congregations

Article by Thomas E. Dipko

The Association for Reformed & Liturgical Worship (AR&LW), at the mid-point of its current three year plan, “To Strengthen the Church in Forming Leaders of Worship,” met July 29-30, 2009, at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. 

Gregg Mast, President of New Brunswick Theological Seminary and presiding member of the AR&LW Steering Committee, welcomed the fifty-one members and friends, including representatives of fourteen seminaries of the Reformed heritage and three ecumenical guests.  Mast thanked the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship for a grant and a contract, and individual donors for gifts, that financially support the plan.

After reviewing the first year’s work of regional cluster groups on the role of seminaries in this formation, the Annual Meeting turned its attention to congregations, and how they share this responsibility with seminaries and denominational judicatories.

Keynote Address on “The Right Question at the Right Time”

Jane Rogers Vann, Professor Emerita of Christian Education at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, introduced the emphasis on congregations in the formation of worship leaders with the question, “Why don’t congregations talk about worship?”  Her top ten list of reasons stirred debate throughout the meeting.

• People are too busy.
• Worship belongs to the pastor (and maybe the musician).
• When worship leaders are distant or unapproachable you can’t ask.
• Worship is too controversial.
• We aren’t narrow-minded, so we have to accept everything.
• “Fad-o-phobia” – fear of blindly following the latest trends.
• The church has too many other concerns.  Worship is not at the top of the list.
• There are not a lot of venues for talking about worship.
• We don’t want to offend God.
• Christians must hide their doubts and theological struggles.

Humankind “loves stories,” she began, “and as a church we are a story-telling people who, in telling our stories to others, also tell them back to ourselves.”  Our stories are “meaning-making” for us.  She cautioned against asking the wrong questions about worship – especially the simplistic “Did you like it?” –   and abstract analytical questions, rather than ones that invite worshipers to describe, explain and imagine what worship may become.  She strongly urged that the word “worship” be used in its noun and verb forms, and not be reduced to modifier status in phrases like “a worship experience” or “worship space.”

Those who “imagine and plan” worship, she noted, should do their work with a view to inviting and anticipating story-telling about liturgical celebrations.  The stories will be told anyway, she admitted, even when conversation is not encouraged.  “That is what church parking lots are for!” 

Longings and Roadblocks:  Forming Liturgical Leaders in Congregations

In small group discussion, the participants identified a rich list, sampled here, of longings for what may enable congregations to support the formation of leaders of worship.   

• Weekly holy communion with movement from font, to table, and into the world.
• Worship that immerses the community in the palpable presence of God.
• Clarity about the key role of clergy to shape and lead full worship.
• Training for clergy that better prepares them to train lay leaders of worship.
• Recognition of the “call” of the laity to carry out responsibilities for worship.
• Full participation of all worshipers, including children, in the order of worship.
• Organists who accompany hymn singing rather than “perform” the music.
• Worship with generous time for reflection, prayer and no sixty-minute fixation.

The list of road blocks to these longings was considerably longer but included the following statements.  

• The egos of clergy who are reluctant to share leadership with laity.
• Clergy who find it easier “to do it myself” than prepare others to lead.
• Clergy and laity who minimize liturgy as the mere “tug boat” for the sermon.
• Laity who are voyeuristic consumers of liturgy and prefer non-involvement.
• Worship planned, prepared and led predominately by “staff.”
• Worship led “cold” by laity not gifted or prepared for the role assigned.
• Worship led by those who seem not to be worshiping while leading.
• Clergy prepared well for preaching but unaware of how they preside.
• Buildings that do not invite participatory worship.
• Judicatories that do not provide or require training for pastors as worship leaders.
• Listing roadblocks, but not providing road signs that point to renewed worship!

In summary, a subsequent discussion of “best practices” and “new practices” in the formation of worship leaders, affirmed that full eucharistic worship is an encounter with the Divine that avoids excess verbiage, is tactile, sensate, and blessed with music that integrates the movement of the ordo, the classical parts of the service.   Leaders of worship are most credible in their role when it is clear that they, too, are worshiping in their full humanity, with humility, and live lives that embody the liturgy after the liturgy. 

The discussion groups were clear that the inclusion of laity as leaders of worship is a matter of sharing power and exercising “the priesthood of all believers.”  The failure to prepare lay leaders of worship, who agree to serve in this role, was seen by the groups not as a neutral act, but “as spiritually de-formative.”   This preparation involves more than “planning” worship.  It includes a readiness to celebrate the presence of God.   

Ecumenical Guests

Three ecumenical guests noted the great diversity of worship within the Reformed family of churches and the challenge this diversity poses for the identity and cohesion of the member denominations, and their ecumenical relationships with other communions.

Professor Todd E. Johnson, a minister of the Evangelical Covenant (Swedish) Church, asked if Reformed congregations that do not see themselves as liturgical are included in AR&LW’s commitment to the renewal of worship.  He asked, “When you use the term ‘best practices,’ whose practices do you have in mind?”  He invited “sustained conversations about worship across a broad cross-section of the Reformed traditions.”
While affirming the role of ordained ministers and others in the leadership of worship, he suggested that it is unhelpful for them to ask, “What do I want the people up front to do next?”  The more urgent question should be “What do I want the person in the pew to do next to worship God?”
 
Monsignor Alan F. Detscher, a Roman Catholic priest, and Professor Thomas H. Schattauer, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor, noted that within the diversity, they heard a common concern of the gathering about the clerical dominance of worship.   This was identified the prior evening in a substantive sermon by Fritz West, a United Church of Christ pastor and one of the founders of AR&LW.  As a church historian, he observed that “liturgical change in the Reformed community is typically clerical.  The result is chaos.”  In his hope for a yet more excellent way, he counseled, “Clergy acting alone cannot initiate lasting liturgical change.”

Detscher remarked, “The 16th century reformers protested against the Mass as the sole work of the priest and yet, from what I have heard over the past several days, there are Reformed pastors who still see the liturgy as theirs and exclude others from exercising liturgical roles and functions.”   He lamented this clericalism wherever it appears because it forbids “lay persons to exercise their baptismal priesthood in worship.” 

Schattauer recognized the participants’ “struggle to cast off clergy-centered and institutional models of worship and to fully embrace an understanding and practice of worship focused on the Christian assembly in relation to God’s purpose for the world.”  At the same time, he warned of the danger “of not addressing the distinctive role of the ordained leader.  Without clarity about this particular role, we will not develop sound and effective models of shared leadership.”

Next Steps

During 2009-2010, AR&LW will continue its emphasis on the role of congregations in the formation of leaders of worship through regional cluster groups.  Under the leadership of the newly elected presiding member, Kimberly Bracken Long, Assistant Professor of Worship at Columbia Theological Seminary, the Steering Committee will finalize new generative questions raised at the 2009 Annual Meeting, to guide the cluster conversations.   

Other articles for this project:

	Formation of Worship Leaders
	Ecumenical Voices
	Regional Cluster Groups