By Rev. Cliff Aerie

As a pastor and musician, I've been creating and leading worship services for almost fifty years. Recently, I attended a "jazz service" at another church. The musicians were some of the finest in the St. Louis region, but the service left me flat. First, the music was not woven into the liturgy. Second, even though they performed with professional skill with creative improvised solos, they never seemed connected to the worship environment. Their music was perfect for a local jazz club but not in the context of worship. Perhaps the following story about my first experience in creating a jazz worship service will prove insightful.

A number of years ago, at the age of twenty-four, I found myself back in college, an "old man" on the campus of Central College in Pella, Iowa. I had been a Christian for only four years, and I was still trying to grasp this thing called "Christianity." I became a member of the campus church and spoke with the college chaplain, affectionately called "Rev," about leading a jazz worship service during Sunday morning chapel. He was all for it and suggested I gather a planning team to incorporate the arts into the liturgy. For three weeks, we met, planned, and crafted a liturgical experience that included a jazz quintet, dancers, actors, a poet, plus a brief film clip (this was years before the advent of DVDs).

I was the liturgical choreographer in our adventure, taking everyone's creative ideas and suggestions and crafting them into a cohesive liturgy. The day before the chapel service, we rehearsed for several hours, putting together the pieces—a call to worship blending the film clip with a jazz quintet, poetry recited over jazz improvisation, a dramatic "jazz skit" for the sermon, dancers leading the worshippers in body prayer, and jazz accompaniment for hymns and service music. All the artists shared their talents, and together, we worked to ensure that the timing was perfect, with each liturgical act flowing seamlessly. Everything came together. We were ready.

Sunday morning came, and we began the jazz prelude. I have long since forgotten what we played, but I remember that it didn't click. We lacked energy, and the moments of improvisation seemed to sputter. Well, it was early in the service. We'd build momentum, and everything would fall into place. So I hoped. But it didn't. The film projector jammed, and the band had to vamp while the film was reset in the sprockets and restarted. The poetry readings were somehow read out of order and in the wrong sequence during the service. The actors muffed their lines. One of the dancers stumbled, breaking the flow of movement. An usher even dropped an offering plate as it was being passed. The hymns were marginally okay, but the tempos were either too fast or too slow. By the end of the worship service, I was ready to toss my horn in its case and flee out the back door.

I recall receiving some well-meaning words of appreciation after the service, but I was truly deflated— down in the dumps. The worship service that I had envisioned, that I had planned, that I had led, that I felt was to be my moment in the spotlight—had imploded. I spent the rest of the day revisiting each act of the service, reliving all the glitches, and lamenting the liturgical mess that foiled all my good intentions.

The next morning, I had coffee with "Rev." As we sat in the student union, he asked how I thought the worship service had gone. I enumerated the list of errors and goofs. Patiently, he listened in silence to my litany of woes. The bottom line? Everything that could go wrong did. My conclusion? My service was a total failure.

"Rev" leaned back in his chair, lit his pipe, and sighed, saying, "I have two thoughts to share with you." First, it wasn't your service." [Ouch!] "You may have been the main architect, but worship is the act of the worshippers. Leading worship is one of the most challenging aspects of being a worship leader. If you get so wrapped up in your ego and the details of making worship happen, you'll never worship yourself, and neither will the people in the pews. A worship leader's job is to be a catalyst so that others can worship."

Then he leaned forward and whispered, "That's my first observation." The second thing I want to say is that the service was not a failure. I share with you, in confidence, that I'm counseling a student. She's in the midst of a very traumatic time in her life. Yesterday afternoon, she came to see me and said that when she had awoken that morning, she was so depressed that she intended to commit suicide, something that she'd been wrestling with for a long time. Yesterday, she was so deeply mired in despair that she decided to take one last walk around campus before taking the ultimate step. She walked past the chapel and heard the jazz musicians playing the prelude. She's not a Christian and never attends church, but she looked in to see what was happening. She told me she sat in a back pew and was overwhelmed with a sense of hope as she listened to the music and poetry, experienced the body prayer, and felt caught up in a moment larger than herself. She said that at the end of the service, she was in tears when you played "Song for My Father."

I sat stupefied. "Cliff," he said. "Because of your supposed failure, someone else is alive, and for the first time in a very long time, she has discovered a source of strength to help make sense of her life. Yesterday's worship gave her a reason to live. You never know how your actions can affect someone else, maybe even save a person's life. That's why planning and leading worship is a humble undertaking. It's not about you, but what you can offer to others."

Throughout the years, I've often thought about "Rev's" words. On one level, his message was simple—leave your liturgical ego at the door and give yourself honestly and openly as a servant. After all, that's why it's called a service of worship.

The other was a wake-up call: what we offer in worship can have a dramatic impact on the lives of others. A friend and colleague once told me, "Leading worship is not for the faint of heart." Her meaning was simple. If worship leaders truly understand the significance of their role, they will recognize they have taken on the tremendous responsibility of helping to guide others into the presence of the Holy.

That worship experience at Central College changed my life. I could never again take my responsibility as a worship leader for granted. My call to ministry was not to be a star but a servant. Yes, throughout the years, my worship persona has often had a highly visible role. Still, my goal has always been to choreograph a "liturgical dance," inviting worshippers to put on their spiritual ballet shoes so that together, we can dance before our Creator God.

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