Collaborative Liturgy:: Life-Giving Liturgical Art

There is a long and open-ended conversation still going on about how to keep the worship service integrated and participative. Too often, we limit our concept of "participation" to showing up and singing the songs, maybe with a little feeling thrown in. Essentially, we make participation an inner, unnameable thing though all of us as worship leaders have some kind of intuition or minds-eye-picture of what could be, what might happen, when it comes to worship participation in the midst of the community gathering.

Obviously, giving different people a role to play gives them an opportunity to participate and this shouldn't be downplayed. At Ecclesia, at the space to the worship space, the congregants will encounter a table that holds our program for the day - but also a large, colorful painted canvas that invites them to be "community liturgists" for the day. There are copies of the program left in front of the canvas with different elements of the liturgy highlighted and maybe a few brief explanations or instructions. As people come in, they are welcome to choose a piece of the liturgy that feels the most honest to their contemporary experience and preside over that piece of text or image at the appropriate time. My first thought was that nobody would be this bold, this willing to be up front unless they were already part of the worship team; but at the first "test run," all of the liturgical pieces were gone. At the appropriate time - each time - a different voice, a different face stepped up to the liturgist's mic and led the community in our shared prayers, psalms, or poetry. The biggest lesson in this for me as a leader was how much people were ready and even wanting to be involved in the rite of worship, the practice of it. And in our era of slicked-up, pseudo-professional worship teams, there's no place for people to create and animate those rituals that actually belong to the people.

So this idea works for the community at Ecclesia, but maybe the possibilities for error and misstep make you nervous when you imagine this in the context of your congregation. Here's another idea for creating participation and common voice - which is really the goal of worship participation, isn't it?

The psalms are, at the heart of their intention and ritual-practice, the prayers and songs of the people; yet they have such an insignificant part in so many worship gatherings today! Teaching people to pray the psalms should be one of the first priorities of potent worship leaders; giving people back the psalms should be part of our community gatherings. This is where we begin our chrysalis project of creating a collaborative liturgy, a prayer tapestry.

No doubt, many of us have had the opportunity in a spiritual retreat or journaling session to "rewrite" a psalm or ancient prayer in a personalized way. This has been a profound practice of Christians for many, many centuries. But what happens when it becomes part of the corporate affirmation of GOD?

This worship ritual would take a little work, a little preparation, and a small team of on-site word-crafters. But I dare you to try this:

Choose a psalm that speaks specifically to the nature and character of GOD and to how we interact with those parts of GOD that are celebrated in this song-prayer. Psalm 27 and Psalm 46 are great psalms for this liturgical art form. Craft a reflective rewrite of this psalm by leaving certain parts blank for the people to fill in according to the prompts you leave them. For example, in Psalm 27, you would write "the Lord is my _____________________." Prompt: who is somebody or what is something that provides you with safety and surety? "whom shall I fear?" "The Lord is the _____________________________." Prompt: what is a symbol or picture that provides you with comfort and nurturing? "When _________________________________." Prompt: what is a situation that makes you feel helpless, attacked, or misunderstood? "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek, _______________________________________________________" Prompt: describe how it would be to know that you are always in the presence of the Divine / imagine how you would feel to know in deep and transforming ways that GOD is always to be found by you, and you by GOD / give a word picture of true heart-soul safety.

You can pass a bucket to collect these before the sermon or have people fill them out and leave them at stations around the room during the Gathering portion of your worship. It might take an announcement or a screen with instructions (as well as the obvious instructions left at each station), but there are alot of ways to give people access to this while still crafting a time of sacred ritual for the whole group. Once they have been collected, you could have a few teams of talented puzzle-people take the piles of "re-writes." Depending on the size of your congregation, this may be two people or it may be ten groups of two people. They will need to do their crafting during the sermon time. As they begin, they work off of the same template that the congregation had, but they begin to sculpt a poem, a song, a prose piece that flows and speaks. Honesty is important here!! There should be no editing for content! It's vital that the experiences and voices of the community are heard. Remember, too, that it's never an individual experience or one word - it's the mix and melt of these stories and encounters coming together.

Then this piece, which may be long as well as incredibly beautiful and disturbing, can be brought in as part of the communion liturgy. It can be read almost as a profession of faith, an affirmation of GOD, a narrative of the table. The longer it is, the more readers are beneficial and visually remind us of that collaborative nature of this piece. This can be broken up into pieces and used throughout the communion time, it can be even be the context of our communion time - a lone voice reading this liturgy as we share in the bread and the cup. Luminous.

This is participative worship. This is story and affirmation and remembering. This is moving forward while reaching backward. This is honest engagement with the GOD we know and the GOD we can't possibly know. This is messy and rapturous. This is almost a dare. A dare to be humble as worship leaders and give the mic and the paintbrush to the common attender. The art that emerges will be Divine.

So now I dare you. Go for it. Take the risk to hear about the GOD that moves outside of our worship culture expectations - the GOD that's meeting people in their cliche sentiments, their mystic awareness, and their darkest soul-hallways.

This is the liturgy of the people, the Church, the Body of Christ given a voice to speak. No doubt the angels are jealous.


For an example of a collaborative liturgy piece completed, check out Ecclesia's blog under the post Psalm 23. This was the communion liturgy for the fourth Sunday of Easter.


Jodi-Renee Adams is a teacher, author, and visionary for community worship. She serves as a liturgy pastor and teaching pastor at Ecclesia Denver, a new urban faith community.

Passionate about empowering artists and leaders to take their congregations beyond the Christian-culture box, Jodi is a contributor to CTI's FaithVisuals.com and GiftedforLeadership.com and speaks regularly on the convergence of post-church crisis, cultural issues and worship.

Jodi is currently completing her M.Div. at Denver Seminary and finishing her first book, which is due out next year. She and her jazzy husband, Justin, live in Denver with their three children: Sara, Anna-Michelle, and Leo, along with Karma the Wonder Dog.