Well, I'm obviously in waffle mode this week as this is the third post!
Yesterday I went along to the local Rally of Women's Meetings, which my lot were hosting. Essentially this is a service followed by tea, which they produce and deliver themselves. In the coming months they then tour each other's churches for more rallies and more teas and generally have a jolly time.
The speaker was excellent, if a little too anecdotal for my preferences, but the service structure itself drove me to the brink of despair! I begin to wonder whether people actually have a clue what they are doing when they structure a service, or if they just think 'oh yes, we'll have that bit now.'
The order was: hymn, Bible reading, praise songs, prayers of thanks and intercession, hymn, sermon, hymn, blessing. (Not a million miles from the induction service I was at the other week really). By the time we got to the sermon I was struggling to remember what the reading was!
For many years I expressed a dislike of 'liturgy' which I wrongly understood as 'pre-printed forms' as our Baptist forebears would say. I still dislike too much dependence on forms of words- though do use them now and then - but have learned a better understanding of what 'liturgy' really is. During the year of my training spent working with an Anglican priest, I was described as 'liturgically sensitive,' a label I am happy with. If liturgical sensivitivity means understanding about the 'shape' or 'flow' of a service, creating something that makes some kind of theological sense, then that's something I aim to do.
Why then so much liturgical insensitivity from people who have been leading services since before I was born? I am often amazed when people on the reader's rota ask me where the reading will come when, liturgically, it's always in the same place. Am I really so odd in noticing the patterns and appreciating the rhythm?
Some of the newer lay preacher training does cover this aspect of worship leading but I do wonder what might have happened in the past that we end up with such muddled and confusing services led by highly gifted and experienced people. What do others think?