Worship leaders, do you follow a liturgy in your church’s tradition? If you don’t, let me ask you to consider this:
Discover for yourself, if only for creative planning purposes, a personal liturgy. How can something that is pre-planned and laid out like a liturgy help you with creativity?
How many times have you found yourself dry with ideas? You’ve thought and prayed and done all you can to come up with something new and exciting only to fall short. How can that be? There’s so much about God Almighty, so many deeds and attributes, how could you run short of something to say about Him? I don’t know, but it happens.
With a liturgy, you can ensure you are “covering all the bases.” As some others in our worship blogging community have shared lately, there are some topics and issues we sometimes avoid in our corporate worship. Have you covered the wrath of God this year as you planned? Did you draw your congregations attention to topics such as justice in addition to grace and mercy? Did you cover silence? Are there any songs about fasting?
Maybe you’re not ever going to consider introducing a full-blown liturgy to your local congregation, and that’s fine. Introduce one into your own personal planning and devotional times. Last year I bought a very nice four volume set of the Catholic “Liturgy of the Hours” for cheap at the used book store, and I’ve found the weekly Scripture readings and prayers both illuminating and challenging. Very often my mind and heart were taken in a completely different direction as I meditated on the Word of God in a way I might not have before.
When looking over hymns, I often peruse a selection of hymnals from other denominations, especially some who have liturgies. I will probably never introduce the vast majority of these songs to my congregation, but I’ve found value in personal worship times by expressing my faith in a new way. This in turn has led me down paths of creativity in planning musical worship for my home congregation.
Don’t limit yourself to only what’s going on (and has gone before) in your own tradition. Look around and see what others are doing. Find what is of worth for the worship and exaltation of our Creator. Discover for yourself what has been done in the last 2000+ years of worship and renew what you find, placing it into a modern framework to lead your people into a deeper and wider relationship with their Savior.
If nothing else, you will find yourself challenged by what you find.
Don’t have the slightest clue where to start, I suggest reading Jubilate II by Donald P. Hustad. Also, visit Hymnsite.com’s Lectionary.
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