Lay People Matter; Lay People Lead

Why was a lay person up front with the Pastor last week?

Last Saturday and Sunday, we introduced a new ministry to the worship life of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.  We want to thank Jim Zuehls and Ellie Anderson for their participation as our first Assisting Ministers. Now, just because this is a ministry new to HTLC does not mean it is new to the Church or Lutherans.  Way back in the 1960’s liturgy underwent renewal and revitalization by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike (including Lutherans). One result was a commitment to recover the role of the laity (the non-clergy members of the faith) in the leadership of worship.

The role of every Christian in the “priesthood of all believers” was a central tenet of the Reformation. The role of the laity was biblical (see Acts 6) and it was a huge element of the early church’s practice and history.  In the book The Sunday Assembly, which is a companion to the new hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) the long history of the laity is noted:

“…Justin, (c. 150) when discussing the Sunday assembly of the church in mid-second-century Rome, speaks of a presiding minister who preaches, gives thanks at table…. That same report tells about a “reader” and several “deacons… The assembly seems to have been assisted in its meeting by a variety of people reading, praying, serving, collecting, sending, and presiding.”  (p. 77)

Sadly, the clergy remained sole and exclusive leaders by the 1950’s and beyond.  The 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship made a very clear role for the laity, recovering ancient practice and our core theology and beliefs. So, lay people assigned specific tasks of leadership in the liturgy became norm and standard over 30 years ago.  That role has been nothing but strengthened in the new Evangelical Lutheran Worship and in the document that guides worship life in the ELCA – The Use of the Means of Grace – adopted by the whole denomination in assembly in 1987.  The Sunday Assembly goes on:

“It took until the late twentieth century for North American Lutherans to begin to recover in strength the old idea so clearly imaged in Justin’s report and suggested by the New Testament: a presiding minister in the midst of an active assembly. With many other lay ministers assisting the assembly in its worship… Now, with this venerable idea, a congregation may rightly look for, train, and support these ministries:

• Leaders of prayer, including those who serve as a principal assisting minister in the service, leading the intercessions (although the preparation and praying of these prayers could be an additional ministry role of an intercessor), praying prayers at the offering and after the communion, and speaking the dismissal;
• Readers;
• Ministers of communion in the assembly, bearers of communion to the absent and sick, and visitors and caretakers of those in need;
• A cantor or cantors and a choir;
• Ushers, greeters;
• Acolytes;
• Altar guilds or sacristans; and
• Among all the rest, a presiding minister. (p.80)

So, instituting this change at HTLC is to get us up to date; to recover the shared role of leadership in our worship, to proclaim the belief that in Christ, through baptism, we are all ordained in the “priesthood of all believers.”   To learn more about the role of the laity in worship, check out this link:

http://www.elca.org/Growing-In-Faith/Worship/Learning-Center/FAQs/Lay-People-Participate.aspx

So, how was this decision made?

First off, I’ll be honest: When I came here and realized this important ministry was not happening I talked to folks to see why.  The only answer I received was that “people wanted to see both their pastors busy in worship, so there is not enough to do for an assisting minister.”  I have to say that while it seemed an honest response, it didn’t hold much water.  Pastors are called to preach and to preside over the worship service.  On most occasions, your two pastors share these two jobs in any given worship service. One preaches, the other leads the worship.  With a wry smile, I will add that if you are concerned that either of us don’t work hard enough, you can come follow us around for a week!  For me, this was not a legitimate reason to rob the laity of a task given by God through the Church.  I hoped and prayed for a means of re-establishing this lost ministry.

Then in 2012, the Worship SMA team began to evaluate our worship life by reading The Use of the Means of Grace mentioned above. (The Worship SMA is made up of people who represent various aspects of our worship life and are charged with setting direction and strategy for worship). They found a number of areas that could be addressed to make our worship more inspiring and participatory by implementing things that are considered standard practice by the ELCA and most Lutherans around the world.  Assisting Ministers were one such change.  With that direction, we began to implementing this ministry for the whole congregation.  We reviewed spiritual gifts and skills needed for the ministry and made an initial invitation to about 20 members.  We have trained about 6 and have another 6-12 ready for training in the days ahead.

I hope for these reasons and more, you will celebrate this change and support the people who serve as Assisting Ministers among us.

Thanks for asking! – Pastor Tim

 

Wednesdays in Lent

Why did the Lenten service have such a huge change this year? I am having a hard time getting my arms around it.

This is a great question because it is an opportunity to get at how we plan our ministry in the congregation.  Way back in early January, the staff gathered to plan for the first half of 2013 (we were actually running a little late as we worked to integrate new staff members). When it came to Lent, our opening discussion was not about the shape of the schedule or what we had done in the past.  We began where all good planning should begin – “What do we want to accomplish? What is our guiding message for Lent 2013?”  After Bible study, looking at the trends in religious life that need to be considered, weighing what our goals and visions for the year were, and lifting up the input we get from families, members and such, we decided that the theme for the season would be “This is the Christian Life.” On Sundays, we would focus on how we live our faith each day.  Wednesday evenings needed to be something that fit the overall theme and provided focus on one dimension of our lived faith.  We hit upon lifting up the connection between the table in the sanctuary and the table in our homes.  “Table to Table” would be what Wednesdays were all about as we connected worship life with home life. Now it was time to create an experience that served the vision.

We realized that this theme needed a plan that would model the connections between worship and home and it immediately made sense to try to do everything around tables – meal, worship, learning.  We also realized that one of the struggles we have had in the past was that our Wednesday evenings were very fragmented during Lent with people going in lots of different directions.  We wanted to be much more intentional about the multi-generational reality of our congregation.  We also wanted to create a way for us to build community instead offering lots of individualized opportunities. With worship, learning, inviting, care and discipleship staff all working together we arrived a t a plan the integrated our efforts and our Wednesday evening plan.  The result is what you experienced.

In many ways, what we did was not totally different.  We took the meal we had shared in the past, a service of evening prayer (which had been our normative order for service in the past) and a learning activity and worked to integrate them into one event.  The pieces were familiar.  The purpose and integrated approach were new.  We were faithful in attending God’s Word, singing praise and praying; we were attuned to learning that helped us grow and we ate well.  We were also creative in the way we allowed the Spirit to work through the vision we had for the season.

One of the challenges all organizations face, especially the church,  is to always be clear about why we are doing anything.  Too often we begin our planning with “What did we do before?”   The first question must always be “What are we trying to accomplish?” That leads us to plan in a way that does not just complete a task (We managed to complete Lenten worship) but to accomplish a goal (We want people to be equipped and informed about how to connect the worship at church with daily life).  It is our hope that more and more of the planning we do in our congregation will be modeled on this approach.

Hope this helps!

Pax Christi – Pastor Tim