Anyone can lead worship.

There was a break of about ten years between the day that I graduated from seminary and the day that I was ordained into ministry. There are reasons for that break, and those reasons include real and serious problems with how we treat ordination, but those aren’t important here. What is important here is that there was a break: I had all of the education—and a fair amount of the experience—that clergy were supposed to have; I had just never done the thing that people are supposed to do after they have earned their M.Div.

During that break, I became a professional fundraiser. And in one of my fundraising jobs, I travelled across the country visiting churches, preaching a bit here and there, and—occasionally—presiding over communion. I was always clear with the pastors in these churches that I was not ordained, but, because I had the education and the experience, no one ever had a problem with that. I occupied a strange space in the imagination: I was not a member of the clergy, but I was close enough for one Sunday morning.

The process of ordination in the United Church of Christ requires candidates to meet with and be approved by several different groups. During a meeting with one of those groups—the Committee on Ministry, for anyone who is interested, made up of both clergy and laity—I told them that I had presided over communion once or twice. The committee met my confession with surprise and, maybe, a little bit of horror: “If you can already preside over communion,” one ordained member of the committee asked, “what’s the point of even getting ordained?”

And it’s not just communion. A lot of congregations seem to believe worship belongs to the pastor: we might be able to gather in the parking lot, and we might be able to bring in new guitar-driven songs, and we might be able to change some pronouns, but worship—real, traditional, God-approved worship—requires an ordained pastor to preach a sermon and prayer the prayers and read the announcements.

So let’s talk about worship.

A few years ago, I came back from a three month sabbatical to an idea from a member of the congregation: we should have a semi-monthly service at the local continuum of care facility. I thought that this was a good idea. We had—and still have—several members there and it would be a nice way for the congregation to connect with those members regularly. And, of course, it would be all the better if some other folks came along for the ride.

But, of course, the idea wasn’t really that we should have a semi-monthly service; it was that I—the pastor—should lead a semi-monthly service. This congregation member told me that it would be easy enough: I could just go over a couple of Sundays a month after our regular Sunday morning service and lead a shorter version of the service, with a shorter version of the sermon, tailored for a senior crowd; the organist could go, too, and we could sing the old hymns together; and, of course, there would be plenty of volunteers who would help. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

I refused.

I have to be painfully honest about my congregation here. We maintain interest in new ministries for about six sessions before they shrink down to either a core group who will show up whenever possible or to no one at all. And when the pastor takes the lead on something, they tend to shrink down to no one at all.

I think this is because, once the pastor is in charge of something, that something is taken care of and will always be there. And for any given congregation member, this means that it’s easy to skip this one because they can just go to the next one; and then it’s easy to skip that one because they can just go to the next one; and then it’s easy to skip that one because they can just go to the next one; and so on. Eventually, more people are skipping the thing instead of showing up for the thing. Eventually, people develop a habit of skipping the thing.

And that has meant that I have say alone in Fellowship Hall on our monthly movie night, watching The Wizard of Oz or Bye Bye Birdie. And that I have sat alone in one of the more comfortable salon rooms at our monthly book group, not discussing American Dirt or May Cause Love. And that I have sat alone in Fellowship Hall again during our experimental Saturday evening worship service, waiting for anyone who insisted that they wanted an alternative service to show up.

So I knew that those volunteers would maintain interest for a few months—maybe—and then it would just be the organist and I who would leave after Sunday morning worship to lead a service for the seniors. And I also knew that I would also miss out on all of those things that happen after worship during coffee hour at least twice a month, and that I would have to time vacations so that I didn’t miss this other service, and so on.

So I refused. But I told this member that I thought it was a great idea and that a group of lay people should take it on. And, after some grousing and grumbling and saying that pastors lead worship, they did.

That service now has a core group of people who make sure that it happens on second and fourth Sundays of every month. They lead discussions and pray together and sing the old hymns and preside over communion. And that service has been going strong for two-and-a-half years or so, with only occasional cancellations for severe weather or annual meeting or some other weird thing. In fact, one month when a couple of the ringleaders suggested cancelling because they were going to gone on both of the usual Sundays, the other people in the group refused to cancel and took on leadership.

Because, it turns out, you don’t need a pastor to have worship. You just need two or three to gather.

One of the hard things about being a pastor in rural Iowa is that the pulpit supply list is short. I tend to rotate through—and get frustrated that I rotate through—the same handful of retired clergy as I take my vacations each year. So when I took my usual pre-Lenten vacation this year, I decided to do something different.

Not very long ago, that group who leads the senior worship service held a hymn sing. They gathered favorite hymns, learned the origins and histories of a few, and taught their congregation about the hymns before singing them. The leaders enjoyed the service and the people who came enjoyed the service. And I thought the same people could lead something similar in our sanctuary while I was on vacation.

There was some extra work to do, of course. I put together a call to worship and a benediction, stole some prayers of the people, selected a scripture reading, prepared a bulletin and some slides, and so on. But most of the service—and all of the leadership of the service—was in the hands of these lay leaders.

And it went… well.

There were some technical issues, so there were no slides, no streams, and no recordings, but everyone who I’ve spoken to has said that it was good. People love a hymn sing, and people love their friends even when they are leading worship, and people enjoyed the service.

For too long—and even in ostensibly congregationalist churches—clergy have kept worship to ourselves: we preach, we pray, we preside.

On the one hand, that makes some sense. In denominations like the United Church of Christ, becoming a pastor generally means four years of undergraduate education, another three years of seminary education, time spent as an intern in a church setting, time spent as a student chaplain in a hospital setting, evaluation by denominational bodies, and more. New pastors come to their first congregations with a certain amount of expertise. And our tradition takes pride in the fact that our clergy are well-educated.

On the other hand, though, that comes at a cost. I know that members of my congregation—and members of congregations throughout the United Church of Christ and other mainline denominations—feel ill-equipped to share the testimony of their faith, to pray in front of people, to teach the next generation, to share their faith with others, and more. By gatekeeping critical parts of the practice of our faith, we have reduced the members of our congregations—at least in some ways—to spectators.

It might just be that one of the routes to rejecting consumer Christianity and revitalizing the Christian faith, the mainline church, and many of our individual congregations lies through inviting and teaching the laity to lead worship. Every part of worship. Yes, including delivering sermons, leading the prayers, and presiding over sacraments.

I am a firm believer that what we call worship is where we learn how we should live the rest of the time. Those services on Sunday mornings are where we learn to live worshipful lives during the rest of the week. And part of learning to do the thing is doing the thing. So let’s not only allow but encourage and celebrate lay people doing the thing in the sanctuary. Then, maybe, we will all be better at doing the thing—at following Christ and nurturing his reign of love—out in the world.