Reading in Church

Readers Seminars are held from time to time. We will meet following the 7.30am Eucharist and the 9.00am Eucharist on the last Sunday of every month. So if you are rostered to read in February, for example, I would hope you could stay after one of the services on Sunday 25th of January for a short time.

Some things to think about:

Reading in Church is an enormous privilege. It is one that, not so very long ago, was entrusted only to the ordained. It is a great improvement that lay people, alongside the clergy, can now share in this ministry

When we undertake this ministry, we are reading God's holy Word. Remember the Spirit of God is at work in our hearts and minds as we come to church open and ready to hear that Word. The written word comes alive as it is read, and it can touch our hearts and minds anew each time we hear it.

Some of us are naturally better readers than others, just like some of us are better cooks, better housekeepers, gardeners, and so on. The point is that we can improve in each area of our lives as we strive to learn and practice. Surely, more than in anything else we could desire to offer our best to God and to our brothers and sisters in church. No one is going to be put down, no one is going to be "eased out" - our desire is only that each of us have the opportunity to offer our very best.

Even though we can practice at home, we need also to practice using the microphone in church - a very different thing. All of us can learn to do this better.

Issues of pronunciation regularly come up. After all our Scriptures were originally written in Hebrew and in Greek, and many words reflect their heritage. These practices for readers will enable us to check we know, as best as we can, how to pronounce these words that are to our ears, foreign.

The Scriptures were written in very different cultures from ours. We need to be aware when these issues have an impact on what we are reading.

The point is that we who undertake this ministry are not just reading words off a page ... after all we can virtually all do that! What we are doing is allowing others to hear God's Word to them on the day we are reading it. It is our responsibility to ensure we do this to the absolute best of our ability.

If you are presently a reader and you feel any discomfort at all about this, could you let me know and we can talk it through together. If you do not presently read, but feel the call of God's Spirit to offer your service in this ministry, then also speak to be.

To sum up, it is not about competition, not about all performing, but it is about ensuring for each of us, whoever we are, to do our very best! Remember, we are approaching Christmas when we recall that God has done the very best for us: Come amongst us in Jesus.