Pastor Life: Behind the Curtain - pt. 2
I’ve promised you a series of articles giving you a glimpse of a pastor’s life. Last month we discussed preaching. Closely related to that is worship planning, and we’ll cover leading worship as well.
We plan and lead worship at several levels: by season, by week, and within a week. I prayerfully consider the liturgical calendar (i.e., Lent, Epiphany, Easter & Eastertide, Ordinary Time, Advent, and Christmas) as well as what God and the Spirit are telling me the congregation needs at any given time. I plan worship in “seasons,” like Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Eastertide, and the summer. I usually plan in series, with the occasional “one-off” Sunday thrown in. Sometimes I follow (even with series) the 3-year cycle known as the lectionary, and sometimes we go with a series that is topical. For example, both our Lent and Eastertide series this year have themes, but are based on the lectionary texts. That’s true for our next, short series as well, but then we’ll start a topical series for most of the summer on The Apostles’ Creed.
Right now, I’ve got us planned out through the end of the year. There’s opportunity for change if needed – and I’ve already had to change a couple of things due to Pastor Colin’s new appointment. Worship planning takes large chunks of uninterrupted time, prayer, and focus. I write up the series synopses with an overview of the series, weekly summaries, and hymn suggestions for each week. Dr. Crow chooses the hymns, usually from those suggestions, although he’s free to suggest others.
Our music department needs to know what’s coming up so they can plan anthems well in advance. We all try to coordinate the many worship elements to the theme of the series and the scripture.
Obviously, there are several elements to weekly worship beyond the sermon. As a “traditional” – or liturgical – style church, we follow a fairly structured format for our worship that’s set out in the Book of Worship and the UM Hymnal. We’ve made a few minor changes to better suit our context, but overall, we follow it pretty closely.
That means we have a Call to Worship; Prayer for Illumination and Scripture reading; Call to Confession, Prayer of Confession, and Words of Assurance; and Pastoral/Morning prayer that all have to be written each week. I try to work about 4 weeks ahead, because one never knows what may come up (e.g., funerals or illnesses) that could prevent me from getting to something during the actual week before a service.
Leading worship is somewhat like conducting a symphony, or directing a play. We always have an eye on the schedule, the congregation, the choir, and the other people who are part of the service. And of course, we closely watch the clock. We try to keep the worship flow moving – both because that’s more worshipful, and because it’s more efficient. However, it isn’t very conducive to allowing us to participate fully IN worship. So, when you see us get caught up in some element of the service – the anthem or other musical offering, a testimony, or something else – know that we’ve let ourselves “worship” along with you, even if for only a few moments.