3. Observe other service leaders

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The fact that you have participated in a lot of church services doesn't mean that you have noticed what the service leaders have been doing.  Once you start leading yourself, what other people do will become much more interesting to you, and you'll start to notice all the variations;  you'll also start to work out what you like and don't like.

So as you start having a go, keep a notebook, so that you can jot down things you notice about the services other people lead.

Some people like to have a sheet of memory-jogging questions, that they fill in after they've attended a service.  That has its uses, especially when  you're starting out, it certainly helps you to focus on a wider range of things, but over time if you are easily bored (like me) you'll probably find you only want to make a note of stand-out things.

Here's a list of things you might want to take notice of (some of these are listed on the 'Training Program for a Lay Preacher' page of this blog):

• Is there some kind of guide to help congregation members participate in the service, or is everything directed by the leader, so that people depend on their guidance, and perhaps therefore do more listening, less speaking?  Or is the congregation permitted to speak unprepared, eg. are people invited to give a testimony or word of prophecy, or pray in their own words?
• What sort of guide is there - music words on a screen? Hymn or song books, with or without a melody line?  Prayer books, prayers on a screen, a card with a selection of prayers, a 'pew sheet' with a prayer or two specific to the day?  Do people bring their own Bibles, pick one up at the door, find one on their seat, read them off a screen, read from a sheet printed for today, or just listen?
• How many people participate in the service, who are they, and what is the nature of their involvement?  Is it a one-person gig, or do lots of people contribute?  Are their contributions prepared or spontaneous?  Are their contributions controlled - eg they are allowed to sing a song chosen by the minister, or read a prayer from the prayer book, but they are not allowed to write their own prayers, or make a  off-the-cuff announcement.  (Note that there are very good reasons for those in authority to make those choices, this isn't about whether it's good or bad, just about observing what is - and this will help you get a feel for what freedom you are likely to be given as service leader too).
• Preparation – is it clear that careful planning has taken place, or is there a lot of room for unplanned things to happen?  Is it carefully produced, or casual?  Is it orderly or chaotic?  Is the feel business or family?  If it isn't carefully controlled, do you get the sense that that's deliberate - say a theological choice to leave room for the work of the Spirit in the moment - or is it accidental - perhaps because the service leader was poorly prepared?
• You may not be able to answer this next question by observation, but it's certainly useful to know, so well worth asking someone:  How are the specific songs for that day chosen - are they from a fixed repertoire?  If there is a set repertoire of songs/hymns,  how is that repertoire chosen, and by whom?  (It might be that the church has invested in a particular resource, a hymn book for example, and all songs have to come from that book.  The book might have been chosen by a previous minister.  Or it might be that there is a policy about the style of music that is used, and a team of musicians might choose the songs having researched what's current;  or maybe songs are chosen to represent a range of styles, or a range of theological truths).  Who decides at what point in the service which song will be sung?  Also, are there any musical items, or are there instrumental interludes, when the congregation listens rather than participating?  Is the music controlled, or does the music leader decide when to repeat and when to finish in the moment?  Is there music playing in the background during prayers or teaching segments?
• Who leads prayer? Is it only the minister? A member of the congregation?  The service leader?  A number of people?  Anyone who wants to, including visitors to the church?  What is their style - are they casual, do they use a lot of the same phrase repeated frequently? Do they read out prayers they have written in full?  Or are they deciding what words to use as they go along?  Do they use pre-written prayers from other sources? What is their language like - formal, flowery, everyday, vernacular, very familiar?  What topics do they include (and omit)?  Do they include things that have been said during the service - eg. a point the preacher made, or requests from the congregation? Does the congregation join in the prayers, and if so how? Is there a set prayer, where someone leads, and the congregation answers?  Can congregation members request prayer, and if so how are they encouraged to do so?  Do their requests cover a range of topics, or do they seem only to ask for one sort of issue?  Are the congregation invited to lead in prayer, by coming forward to a microphone, a mic. passed around the seats, or by calling out from where they sit?
• Take note of the flow of energy in the service;  does it start energetically, gradually become more quiet or sombre, then lift again towards the end?  What is the level of energy that people walk away feeling?  What does the service leader indicate to the congregation is expected at each point - do they emphasise  quiet, praise, meditation, response, learning, etc., perhaps by using those words, or by their own manner?  Do they invite people to be still, to observe silence?  At what point in the service do they do that?  Do they encourage people to get up and dance?  Do they use a raucous voice, invite people to call out, move around a lot themselves? Or have a still reflective manner?  Does this change over the course of the service? Does the energy match what is happening in the service?
• Use of technology – is there a data projector, and how fully are its functions utilised? Is it a glorified overhead projector, with mismatched fonts and awkward formatting, or is it used for film clips, information about unhappy children and on the spot feedback?  Do people follow the readings on their smart phones, or the screen? Are there pictures or only words?  Is there a microphone, and do people know how to use it?  Some things the service leader can't control, like whether the sound system is out of date and held together with bubble gum;  but within those limits, do they pop and crackle because they are standing too close, or are they too far away so that the volume has to be turned right up and starts ringing? Do they appear not to know how to adjust the stand so that the mic. is at a comfortable distance - eg.  lean uncomfortably towards the microphone, yank it toward or away from them, stoop down, or stretch up?  Do they move about too much so that their voice fades and swells?

As you are observing all these things, of course you need to ask yourself, what is the impact of the way these things are done, of the decisions that have been made?  Do they help people to concentrate on God?  Or are they a distraction? Do they draw attention to a person, or to the Lord?  Do they help the people present to serve each other, or to grandstand?

2. Gather Resources

Once you've decided that you are willing to work within the boundaries of your denomination and church, and under the authority of your senior minister, it will help to have the right resources.

Photo by Katie Peken

Find out what resources are approved, and  especially what resources you will be expected to use,  in your context. If this information isn't offered to you, do ask!  Sometimes ministers forget the process that they went through, half a century ago, to learn their skills, so they forget to tell you these basics.

In any Anglican church, the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 is by definition THE approved resource. This document is the charter we all sign up to, the one that kicked off the Church of England, and eventually ended the burning of people at the stake, back in the days of Queen Elizabeth I.  And in spite of the olde languagey, it's well worth getting to know it;  if you plan to be a service leader long-term, I highly recommend reading the Introduction.

However, I sincerely hope that your church does not use the BCP word-for-word in services more than occasionally;  it is unloving to insist that people worship God in a language that most of them don't speak at home, and in the majority of cases, don't understand. Ministers of religion hopefully sign up because they want to make the message of Jesus more accessible to their generation - not to preserve ancient traditions and dialects; that's for the historians, linguists and museum curators.

Any number of modern Anglican prayer books now exist, but probably only a few of them are authorised for use in your context.  An Australian Prayer Book (AAPB) was an approved resource in many Australian Anglican churches from the 1970s when it was published;  it is still approved, and still used, in a lot of churches in this Diocese.

But at my church, in our current context, we primarily use A Prayer Book for Australia (APBA), sometimes  known as 'the red brick'.  My senior minister expects that our main service will use the APBA, and his preference is to use it in our branch church and at other services as well.  As I said in my last post, you need to be willing to work within the expectations of your context, otherwise this ministry is not for you.  (I plan to post about the value of using a prayer book, plusses and minuses, in future).

Having established what is authorised and expected, you need to get your hands on the approved resources in order to start preparing a service.  Again, some ministers forget that unlike them you probably don't have your own copy at home, so they may fail to offer to lend one to you;  or they may realise you don't have a copy, but forget that it's been a few decades since they personally needed to look at the helpful hints (called 'the rubrics' because they were originally printed in red, and in many cases still are), so they may offer you a cut-down version that doesn't have all that essential background info.

If you are a member of my church, let me point you towards the resources available to you.  I've arranged them in order of usefulness, from least to most:

• Various one-page service sheets based on the APBA have been printed up sometime in the last 15 years;  the senior minister has made choices about what order to put things in, and which options to include, so the up side is that each of them gives you a basic outline of a service that you know will be acceptable.  At services where there are no other prayer books available (ie at our branch church), and no PowerPoint, you will have no choice but to use them, because they provide the congregation with the prayers and responses they are expected to say. The down side is that there is no information for the service leader about what goes in between the prayers that are listed there, no information about the logic of the order, no guidance about sentences of Scripture or Prayers for the Day,  and no options.  When you are an experienced leader, they may be sufficient, but they certainly aren't enough for someone just starting out.

• For our more contemporary service, there are PowerPoint service templates, which can be copied to a memory stick/flash drive, so as long as your computer at home has the PowerPoint application on it, you can take them home and refer to them as you prepare.  The upside: Again, each template gives you an outline of a service that you know is acceptable, and also they offer some of the preferred options, giving you a bit of room to be creative.  They contain more of the prayers and other things you will say as service leader, but again there is no helpful background information about why different parts of the service are in the order they are, and what you might do in between the parts that will appear on the screen. They don't contain ALL the possible options either, and they don't contain the sentences of Scripture or Prayers for the Day - you'll need a full copy of the APBA for that, or at least, of AAPB.

• For the early (more traditional) service, each person who attends is handed a booklet with detailed information for all the services of Holy Communion in APBA.  There are plenty of those that you could take home and use for preparation.  We have more than enough so there's no hurry to get them back (but do remember that stealing is not OK for a Christian - they need to be returned or replaced sometime, unless the minister makes you a gift of one!).  These booklets don't contain all the sentences of Scripture and Prayers for the Day that you need to run a service, you'll need to refer to the APBA for those;  but they do contain most of the options, so they are a vastly better resource than the service sheets.  The drawback is that they don't contain any of the non-communion services (Morning Prayer or Prayer, Praise and Proclamation).

• There are a few copies of the shorter, green version of the APBA at church;  this is handy because it contains all the service types and variations on them, and all the background information for service leaders;  but it doesn't contain the sentences of Scripture or Prayers for the Day, so you will still need to refer to the complete APBA for those. These green Prayer Books are few and far between in our church, so if you borrow a copy it will need to be returned promptly.

• There are a couple of spare copies of APBA at the church, that people can borrow, but only a couple, so you will need to return them promptly.  It is far and away the most useful resource for preparing to lead services in this church.

Borrowing those basics should be all you'll need for the first few times you want to try service leading, but once you are confident you'll be leading regularly, I would recommend that you invest in your own copies.  For my church, a copy of APBA will be the best investment, but it needs to be the complete (red) version, not the (green) congregation copy, because the congregation copy lacks the sentences of Scripture and Prayers for the Day.

Then of course, you need to familiarise yourself with your resources, so you can find what you need to prepare your service.  I find the APBA very frustrating, because what I most often need to locate is the sentence of Scripture and Prayer for the Day for a given Sunday. The only 'Contents' guide to those essentials doesn't give the page numbers!!!!  Who thought that was a good idea?  Having my own copy means I can stick tabs on the pages to help me find my way around, and scribble notes in the margins, and so on.

1. The Very First Step - Examine Yourself

I graduated from Bible College in the year 2000, and started working as Associate Minister in a church in Sydney, with a great senior minister (Rector, in Anglican lingo), who was an excellent teacher and trainer.  He loved telling people about Jesus, and he loved giving people opportunities for growing their ministry skills.  So I was as happy as a wallaby in my mum's rose garden.

But here's the interesting thing - in the more than 16 years since then, I have never been permitted to organise the order of service - by that I mean, it has never been delegated to me to decide what sort of prayer we'll have at which point in the service, which song we will sing when, etc.

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Before I went to Bible College and learnt how to do these things 'properly' the Anglican way, I regularly led an evening service at the local cathedral, and I could organise the services however I liked.  So it might seem rather strange that that door closed after three years intensive study of theology, and a lot more experience.  Surely I can be trusted with these decisions more now than  as a young'un all those years ago?

Well, from a purely theological point of view, yes I can. I didn't need to go to Bible College to lead a perfectly adequate church service.  But I did sign up to be an Anglican, and that has implications.

I'm telling you this, because I know volunteers sometimes get a bit miffed, or hurt, when they aren't given freedom to work out the order of service - they feel patronised and controlled, and in some cases so offended that they decide not to continue leading.

But here is what I have learned, in 16 years and three different churches in three different Dioceses:

When a minister undertakes to be the senior minister of an Anglican church, he or she takes on responsibility for what happens in Sunday services.  This is not something that they generally feel inclined to delegate to others, and that's probably because Anglicans have a slightly higher regard for 'the sacraments' (namely baptism and communion) than some other denominations, and the sacraments happen most often in the context of Sunday services.

But you may notice that you are given a lot more freedom - perhaps absolute freedom - when you lead, say, a youth service in the evening, like the one I led before I went to Bible College.  This is because Anglican churches have to have one service (and it's preferably the 'main' service for that church) which follows an authorised order, and if they don't have such a service, they can get into all sorts of hot water with the Bishop. Any other services held in that church can be as un-Anglican as you like - well, maybe that's an exaggeration;  but they have a lot more flexibility.

So the senior minister of your Anglican church is constrained by the commitment she or he has made, and by the requirements of their Diocese.  Not giving you freedom is probably more about that than about their trust or lack of it in you.

Orders of service are authorised by the Bishop, so when you move from one Diocese to another, you may find that what was perfectly acceptable in your previous church is outlawed in the new place.  Frankly, I find this all rather silly, especially when we all basically agree on what the message of the Bible is.  But as I say, I did sign up to be an Anglican.

As far as I personally am concerned, what matters is what Jesus thinks of my ministry.  Sometimes following his example means lovingly but firmly objecting to the status quo, and sometimes it means graciously going along with things that I think are silly.  I don't think I'm brilliant at either, but you aim high and pray for the Spirit to make you wiser and more disciplined and better than you would be by (fleshly) nature.  For 16 years I have led services where someone else decided what we were going to do when.  One day, I will not have to answer to anyone but Jesus - whose service is perfect freedom!  But that won't happen in this world, so for now you and I need to 'suck it up', as they say.

So the first thing I would recommend for someone setting out to learn how to lead church services is:  find out what the rules are in your denomination and your particular church and the particular service you will be leading, and decide if you can live with them.  Ask the senior minister, if you can, to explain what your responsibility will be as leader of a church service (ie what are you expected to do);  and also what the limits are - what are you NOT allowed to do?

If you can't live with the answer, it might be a good idea to look for another area of ministry, where you are able to have respectful appropriate relationships with those in authority.  If you are certain that leading church services is what God is calling you to do, and you can't live with the restrictions in your context, you might need to go looking for another church.  What you absolutely must not do is accept the ministry, and then use the safety of the public forum to disobey your senior minister, by doing things that you know he or she would not have permitted had you asked in advance. It is an honour to be asked to undertake a ministry, especially one where you become a public face of your church, someone others will look to for an example.  When you undertake to lead services, you are accepting a heavy responsibility;  use it to honour God, not yourself.