Bringing Mainline Liturgy Alive: The One-Sunday Option

Welcome to Week 4 of the liturgy series, an journey of reinvigorating your mainline liturgy for your congregation. 

We’ve talked about how to cultivate pastors’ personal connection to the liturgy, how to preach a sermon series on worship, and how to dive into liturgical education in adult and children’s religious education classes. 

This week, we’ll be focusing on our final strategy for connecting with the mainline liturgy, what I’m calling the One-Sunday option:  dedicating one, complete Sunday service to a sensory and interactive exploration of worship.

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During the course of my research in fall 2018, I happened to schedule a visit to House for All Sinners and Saints (HFASS) on Reformation Sunday. It turned out to be my lucky day.

As a Lutheran church, Reformation Sunday is big at HFASS. They’d hired brass and distributed celebratory pom-poms for the congregation to wave. Of course, they sang A Mighty Fortress is Our God. There was even a bake sale and silent auction afterwards. 

But it was the liturgy that stood out the most.

The pastor, Rev. Reagan Humber, had set aside that day to explain the beauty of the Lutheran liturgy. He wanted his congregation to understand why Lutherans, and HFASS Lutherans in particular, worshipped the way they do.

Rather than preaching a sermon, Reagan paused before each part of the service to explain its significance. After each mini-sermon, the congregation launched into that part of the service, with their enthusiasm and devotion renewed by a refreshed connection to each piece of the liturgy.

This strategy for enlivening the liturgy—the One-Sunday option—is a great alternative or supplement to the options we’ve discussed over the last few weeks.

Maybe your church can’t devote four weeks to a liturgical sermon series. Perhaps you don’t have adult or children’s education classes. Or maybe, your congregation would learn better through a kinesthetic and interactive process, rather than through the audial medium of a sermon or class. 

If that’s your church, this article is for you. We’ll be discussing two different strategies for implementing the One-Sunday option:  one low-tech and one digital.

Mainline Liturgy: The Low-Tech Strategy

Reformation Sunday at HFASS is an excellent example of the low-tech strategy—that is, pausing throughout the service to explain each piece of the liturgy.

If you opt to preach a mini-sermon on each part of the service, here are a few things to consider discussing:

1. The history behind that part of the service in Christianity and/or in your denomination.
2. The reason your church includes it or why it’s done this way.
3. How that part of the service was designed to connect congregants with God.
4. Why and how you usually connect with God during this part of the service.
5. For more misunderstood sections of the liturgy, explain what it’s not. For instance, if you’re non-denominational, you might say that you believe that Communion is not the literal body and blood of Christ, but rather a memorial where we connect with Jesus by remembering what he did and the commandments he gave during his last day alive. Or, if you’re Anglo-Catholic, you could say the opposite.

Another example of this low-tech strategy is here. Written by the Anglican Church of North America, the italicized explanations in this text pause to explain the theology behind each piece of the service. (The explanations on this document are meant to be read, not preached/spoken, but they would be easy to adapt.)

Mainline Liturgy: The Digital Option

Okay, now for the high-tech option. If you’re Episcopalian, you’ll probably be aware of the resource that inspired this idea:  How2charist.

Started by seminary students hoping to reinvigorate the mainline liturgy with digital media, this free resource walks congregants through a service using video resources meant to be used alongside a real live Eucharist.

If you’re not Episcopalian, this resource would take a lot of work to redo for your denomination. But take a look at the resource anyway (it’s free!). The Intro video is below.

Especially if your congregation responds well to media, see if there’s an easy way to adapt it to your service. If you wanted to re-create this for your congregation, you could film your worship and overlay the footage with audio and visual effects.

A Few Brief Notes

Before we wrap up, I want to include a few final notes on the One-Sunday method, no matter how you want to do it.

First of all, try involving multiple people. Invite your deacon or an altar server to explain their parts of the service. This will create a more dynamic and exciting experience.

Second, think about how to make the service sensory and interactive. Break out the incense for a demonstration, if that’s your thing. Make people pay attention by walking around to different parts of the church as you talk about different parts of the service. 

Try to include visuals of some kind, even if it’s just a display of different altar cloths used at different times in the liturgical year. If you’re feeling really experimental, you can pass around a mic and let the congregation talk about how a particular part of the service touches them. 

Finally, talk about how they can get involved. Likely, this service may inspire some people to connect with God by leading the liturgy. 

You can talk about the particular gifts that make a good usher, altar server, etc. People may be surprised to hear how these roles facilitate a connection to God for other congregants. And, finally, make it clear how people can jump in and get involved if they want to.

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Thanks for sticking around to the end of the Liturgy series. How do you want to reinvigorate your mainline liturgy? How have you done it successfully in the past? Have any more ideas? Comment below!

I’ll be taking a break next week to get ready for my Lenten series on confession. Stick around—it’ll be more fun than it sounds!