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Clergy and Musicians Creating Vibrant Worship Together:
A Reflection on the Art and Spirituality of Liturgical Planning
THE REV. JANET B. CAMPBELL
My planning and preparing of liturgy begins with who I am, which is the raw material I bring to ministry as a liturgist, and so this reflection begins there, too.
I didn't grow up in any religious tradition, and indeed had no sense at all of the spiritual nature of life. By the time I was in my early thirties I had a successful career in children's book publishing, was married, and the mother of a child. But underneath those outward signs of a happy and fulfilling life, there was no "there" there—just a great and aching emptiness. Then I had a conversion experience in which I came to realize that God was, and was there, in that emptiness. I was drawn toward the church, where I thought I might discover what that would mean. I was baptized when I was thirty-three, and so I have a little more than twenty years of experience of worship and liturgy.
The Episcopal Church was the door in for me, a very high Anglo-Catholic parish in Brooklyn, New York. It was an historic old parish that had fallen on hard times, with a gorgeous but dilapidated church building, and about twenty members—of whom perhaps six attempted each Sunday to carry off an extremely intricate liturgy that really cried out for a cast of thousands. I loved it in all its faithfulness and faded splendor.
If I were to experience that liturgy now I would probably think it was not very good liturgy: somewhat fussy, overly ceremonial, bordering on the antique, opaque to those "not in the know," and much too big for the number of people trying to do it. Yet, the mystery of God was present there, speaking to my empty and yearning heart, saying, "Take heart! There is more to life than you can see!"
As a person with the responsibility for preparing liturgy for others, I am reassured to know through my own experience that God can draw people in through liturgy that I may think is not very good, or liturgy that I may plan that turns out to be not very good! When I become arrogant about my own liturgical "good taste," I have only to remember the liturgy that spoke deeply to me and drew me into the life I am now living. Although it was in a style different from that I would now choose, something authentic and real moved within it. While my own sense is that the best and strongest liturgy for the church today is simple, straightforward, clear and focused, I know it is essential always to leave room for that mystery to enter. The liturgy needs to be hospitable to God's mystery.
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