Guiding Worship
For those who plan and lead worship events.
Scripture Deserves a Good Reading
By June Alliman Yoder
For many Mennonites, the centerpiece of Sunday worship is the singing—a foretaste of heaven. For others, the sermon is the centerpiece of Sunday worship, since it occupies the largest portion of time. However, I suggest that we resist thinking of the singing or the sermon as the heart. The centerpiece for Christian worship is the Scripture.
The Scripture text is both the launch pad and the home base for our worship planning. Familiarity with the text will help worship planners know which music to select; it will give language and images for the prayers, the litanies, and the visuals; and of course the sermon is an exposition of the text. If the text is not chosen by the time they meet, their efforts flounder.
In the worship service itself, we pray, sing, confess, and share. But in the reading of the Scripture, the direction of the flow changes. Instead of us speaking to God, God speaks to us. The oral pronouncement of the Word of God is therefore the central and most elevated moment of worship. In this time of reading, our hearts and our congregations are transformed.
I am deeply saddened when I hear this superb Word of God mumbled in dull or incomprehensible ways. In our churches we sometimes have practices that compromise the effectiveness of the reader and thus show disrespect for the Word. Often the practices stem from the use of impromptu readers, young readers, and untrained readers.
Impromptu readers are those who are asked to read just hours or minutes before the service—or else are asked well in advance but forget about the task until the night before—or worse, when they see their names in the bulletin. Worship planners who rely on impromptu readers assume that everyone who can read words can stand up and read effectively in public. It amazes me that while we don’t expect musicians to perform without rehearsal we fully expect readers to be able to read without any practice. What is the choir, quartet and praise band equivalent in Scripture reading?
Readers who are too young to fully understand the Scripture text often have a way of trivializing the Word and causing distractions to our hearing the Word. What often happens is that our desire to include everyone in the leading of worship overrides the need for the congregation to worship and to hear God’s Word clearly. Though it may be charming and even touching to hear young children read, the problem is that the reader becomes more important than what is read. The reader is in the foreground at the expense of the text. We need readers old enough to fully understand the passage and its importance.
Untrained readers may be able to read the correct words with the correct pronunciation. This is the minimal expectation. If we want the passage read with understanding, however, then our readers need to be trained to take the communication to another level. Few of us can read well in public without training and lots of practice.
Recently one of my students was asked to read the Sunday text. She reported that in her congregation the “get up, read, sit down” method of presenting the text was typical. She chose to memorize the passage, which meant to take it into her heart—to know it deep in her spirit. The passage came to life in her, and the congregation heard it in deeply moving ways. Scripture is powerful stuff when it is spoken with eye contact rather than simply read off the page. People are inspired by it when the reader knows the text well enough to be moved by the text and to speak it with the passion of its message.
The role of the presenter of Scripture is to bring a clear, interesting, and energized voice to the Word of God. I believe that if we are going to make the reading of Scripture the centerpiece of our worship it will need to be internalized by the readers. Ezekiel talked about eating the scroll (Ezek. 3). We must take seriously the call to receive the Word of God into our hearts if we will read with understanding and passion, so the congregation can hear with understanding and joy.
June Alliman Yoder is Associate Professor of Communication and Preaching at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana.