One of the things that I have enjoyed about being at First Baptist Church of North Platte is the increased level of participation of lay people in worship leadership. Lay people choose and lead praise songs. They lead the hymn singing and make the announcements. Members of the church do the offering, take greater responsibility for the Lord's Supper, and do missions presentations during worship.
Our order of worship is generally less formal than the church I arrived here from. However, one of the few portions of our service that is "scripted" is the offering and the offering prayer. During each service, there is an introduction to the offering that serves as a "mini-devotion" exhorting folks to give. One of my predecessors has years of these things typed up. Sometimes I borrow his work. Other times I borrow from my liturgical resources, drawing out the invitation to the offering and the offering prayer. I find in both cases, I edit the texts I am given. This is because, I believe in worship resources, we need more Hemmingway and less Dickens.
A lot of worship resources use large words and long sentences. They write in an intelligent fashion, but not in a way that connects as clearly with the everyday person in the pew. So, when I transcribe many of these resources in the last few months, I am changing high rent words into language that is more common. I am chopping up longer sentences into shorter more succinct ones. I am exchanging flowery language for more earthy words. We need less Dickens, and more Hemmingway.
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