Liturgies
We invited some friends over for Sunday brunch and worship at our farm. We sat down to enjoy two varieties of baked oatmeal (one with fresh blackberries that were delightfully tart, beautifully contrasting with the brown sugar on top, and one with blueberries topped with honey-crisped pecans), sliced canteloupe and peeled clementines, homemade zucchini bread, one griddle-fried egg each (gotta ration, ya know), and Valdivia Café de Tres Ríos coffee, of course.
It was a feast!
I launched into the prayer. It went something like this. “Father, thank You for making this day and for each of the wonderful people sitting around this table. LORD, this day, we share this feast as an act of warfare, declaring Your goodness and reminding ourselves that the best is indeed yet to come. With this simple feast, we proclaim that one day we will share in the feast of all feasts…”
I went on for a bit, closing in amen.
Two of our friends looked at me and asked me to expound on what I meant in my prayer about feasting as warfare. I smiled and pulled a well-loved book off the shelf. Do you know what it was?
Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey. I’ve used it to lead worship, but more often, to lead our family and friends in special (and exceptionally ordinary) moments.
The “Liturgy for Feasting with Friends” begins with this:
“To gather joyfully
is indeed a serious affair,
for feasting and all enjoyments
gratefully taken are,
at their heart, acts of war.
In celebrating this feast
we declare that
evil and death,
suffering and loss,
sorrow and tears,
will not have the final word.
But the joys of fellowship, and the welcome
and comfort of friends new and old,
and the celebration of these blessings of
food and drink and conversation and laughter
and the true evidences of things eternal,
and are the first fruits of that great glad joy
that is to come and that will be unending.”
As I reflected on our morning, this simple prayer set the whole stage for a lovely and holy time together.
The same is true for our comments and prayers when we lead worship.
I could’ve prayed, “God, thanks for this day and these friends. Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. Amen.”
Like beginning a worship service with, “God, thanks for making this beautiful day. Please be honored in everything we do today. Amen.”
I hope we are worship leaders who faithfully and significantly impact our communities. I know I’m not alone in that hope. But how do we do that more fully?
One way to be deeper is to take in broader material. There are many directions I can point you, but I choose a single one today: Liturgies.
A liturgy is simply a work of the people. Zac Hicks, in a 2023 10KFAM podcast stated, “Liturgies are the archives of the work of the Spirit in the worship of the people of God.”
In other words, God has been at work in the lives of His people for centuries. Some of that work has been captured in liturgies that we can learn from.
I’d recommend the book Every Moment Holy, especially the liturgy “Before Taking the Stage.” Read that with your worship team some Sunday morning.
The Book of Common Prayer is full of classic prayers.
Read a hymn a day as part of your devotions.
Or here’s the best idea. Get to know one of your Presbyterian or Anglican music ministers down the street. Have them share their order of worship or bulletins with you now and then. It will open your eyes! Here’s Wheatland Presbyterian’s Order of Worship. Only the first sixteen pages of the twenty-page bulletin are used during the service. :)
But the goal is simple: become more deeply grounded in how the Spirit of God has moved in the generations that launched yours. Let that ground, deepen, and broaden the way you lead worship.
-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)
Liturgies (Nº 359)
