service « Ed's Slipper

Church services usually include times of prayer, where someone will come to the front and make a few petitions. In liturgical settings, there will be a call and response such as “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer”; in more charismatic settings, there will simply be shouts of “Amen!” coming from the congregation.

These prayers of thanksgiving and of petition for the world can be more formulaic than liturgy. Some churches recommend that they follow a pattern: pray for the world, for the church, for potential mission partners, for the Queen, for local leaders, etc. While such guidance is useful, it can lead to intercessions becoming a checklist.

intercessions

Background photo: Ben Harris, reused under CC license

When it turns into something that has to be “done”, it also turns, for the congregation, as something that has to be gone through. The perverse effect can be that, on top of making intercessory prayer something deeply unattractive, “doing” the intercessions will mean, for some in the congregation and maybe even for the person doing them, that chore is done for the week ahead.

I believe intercessory prayer is something deeply personal, because it must come from the heart.

So, should we stop having a time for intercessions at church? By no means! But rather than “doing” intercessions, whoever’s in charge should lead the congregation into intercessory prayer. This means:

being aware of this. When you’re leading the intercessions, you’re not in charge of interceding on behalf of the whole church. If there are bits you forget, then it’s not the end of the world.
slowing down. Prayer is not an exercise in wordiness (nor is it one in brevity). But by slowing down, you are giving the congregation the opportunity to take in the prayer and make it their own.
not being afraid of silence. In pauses, people can think of specific situations or people that they wish to pray for personally.
being explicit about the congregation’s role. This can be done through more or less explicit instructions (“As we call to mind …”), through the use of call and response, etc.
prayerful preparation. We do not know how to pray as we ought – that’s a given. And rambling prayers are good prayers, but they’re unlikely to lead others into prayer.
realising that there is a movement in intercessory prayer. Particularly, if intercessory prayer is an alignment of our will with God’s will, then contemplating God at the start explicitly can help.

If you’re not called to lead intercession (and if you are, too!), I’d also like to encourage you to re-read these points: when the leader should give opportunities, you should take them. Maybe, even if someone is doing the intercessions rather than leading you into them, you can then still participate.

Stop doing the intercessions. Start leading people into intercession.

Leadership is a word that gets bandied around a fair bit. We’re all leaders, or so we’re told; and yet, “leadership” is a skill that acts as a criterion for selection for ordination in the Church of England.

So what is this elusive leadership? Is it simply living holy lives? Or is it actively challenging others to seek better things? Is it actually self-reproductive management (leaders growing leaders etc.)? Here comes the problem: the word has been used to mean so many different things that “leader” now means either a very specific “in charge” position, or a watered down quality of being that we all have.

And so there are some activities which appear to fall under “leadership”, such as “Worship leader”, pastor, small group leader, and so on and so forth. That shoves the rest of the activities in church into a lump of facilitating activities. Welcoming. Providing tea and, yes, even coffee in some churches. Being a server. Working at the sound desk or with the slideshow. Reading out Scripture. Things that are done because they need to be done.

Photo: Wikimedia user Bridgman, under CC license

That doesn’t stop these activities from being appealing. Far from it – I think in some cases, the lack of responsibility associated with the absence of perceived leadership is very appealing indeed. And for a wealth of other reasons, people (and I include myself in this) end up helping out in a church, but passively and without meaning. Because the work needs doing, and that’s it.

I was being a server because, or so I thought, for the sake of tradition, someone needed to hold up the candle; and someone needed to help prepare the Table. It’s only after I had been doing it a while and through talking with the coordinator that I realised that the purpose of “high” church liturgy, and through it, acolytes, was to lead people into worship. In carrying the candle, I was leading people, encouraging them to look towards God. The role and the actions of being a server never felt the same after that.

The same goes for reading Scripture. If you’re called upon to read Scripture at your church, and you’re just thinking it’s a necessary first step so the sermon can build on it; and that the true leadership rests within the preacher’s hands, you are wrong. Yours is the responsibility to make the text come alive. Yours is the responsibility to draw people to it, through your speaking.

The list goes on, and on, and on. Every single role in a church, from flower arranger to preacher, from musical director to welcomer, is there to point towards God and to help others in that direction. So let’s stop all that nonsense about calling specific positions of “leadership” when all they are is positions of management. If we don’t, we risk turning those jobs into mundane tasks, rather than parts of the supernatural event of heaven meeting earth.

And if you help out, in whatever small or big way, at your church, then be sure of this: you have a great responsibility; and you’re not just facilitating the smooth operation of the service: you are pointing people towards Christ and directing their gaze in the right direction.

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