Sunday

One of the advantages of serving a church with multiple pastors on the staff is that you function in a variety of Sunday roles. You may preach in one service, lead worship in another, and conduct an officer training this week, and then next week lead youth groups and have no role in any worship service. Every Sunday is unique.

This weekend my role during the 9:30 and 11:00 services was the one where you don’t function in the service at all but are in the sanctuary, doing whatever is needed. Make sure there is water in the font for the baptisms. Make sure the microphone is set up and where it needs to be. Greet everyone you see.

It’s actually a great way to experience a worship service in a church you serve, and when I call it an “advantage” of being on a multi-pastor staff (there are disadvantages too) I mean that it’s a personal advantage, because the role allows you to see and experience things going on during worship that you simply can’t know about when you’re leading worship. It broadens your sense of what “church” is for people on Sunday morning.

People are talking with one another in the fellowship hall. The ushers in the narthex preparing to collect the offering are enjoying one anothers’ company as they take up the plates (I’ve only ever seen them serious-faced, striding down the aisle with those plates). Youth and children are spread around the sanctuary, worshiping with their parents.

“Church” includes all the things happening the worship leader’s designs and outside the sanctuary doors. It’s quite lovely.