Thursday, August 17, 2006

"I Was So Much Younger Then, I'm Older Than That Now"

Well, it's almost time for lay ministry classes to commence again, and I find I've been assigned the job of leading a closing devotion.

I remember, back in my university days, going to LSM retreats just champing at the bit to write up a liturgy. Not that we knew what we were doing back then. I shudder to think of some of the self-important and silly stuff we may have come up with sitting there in our sleep-deprived states in drafty, smoke-filled lodges in the middle of Middle America. (Mime service, anyone? We did that.)

The more I understand about the mechanics of worship, the more humble I am approaching the task of creating worship. I find myself inclined to fall back on the tried and true.

I haven't decided if I'm going to wing it with this particular devotion, or go with what I know. I could take the easy way out and announce that we'll engage in 30 minutes of silent meditation.

Or not.

3 comments:

Karen Sapio said...

Um, yeah. I remember those mime services. Also some very regretable "Prayer Poetry". But we were really going to teach the world a lesson, weren't we?

Tom in Ontario said...

Back in March our bishop appointed me to be chaplain for our semi-annual conference dean's meeting with about 2 days' notice.

I opened up my LBW and used The Litany (p. 168), Responsive Prayer 1 (p. 161), and Responsive Prayer 2 (p. 164). I inserted a scripture reading, Psalm, and hymn.

I figure, why make something up when some fine theologians have done so much work for us.

LutheranChik said...

That's my feeling too. If I want to be creative I'll be creative with, say, a prayer in the middle of an extant liturgy, not the liturgy itself.