37 — Building the Service Together

 A weekly blog of Creative Ideas for Leading Worship

Building the Service Together

A modular approach to worship that invites your congregation to co-create the liturgy in real time

Click for audio narration

 

Why read this post:

This interactive worship format empowers your congregation to help build the liturgy – choosing elements and creating prayers in the moment – for a service that is truly shared.

 

🧩 The Idea

What if the congregation helped shape the service as it unfolded?
What if, instead of following a fixed script, you created worship together – with participants choosing, composing, and offering different parts of the liturgy?

Building the Service Together is a modular approach to worship that hands creative responsibility back to the people. It invites spontaneity, prayerfulness, and a sense of shared ownership – without becoming chaotic or unstructured.

This is worship as collaboration, not performance.

 

🔧 How It Works

1. Prepare multiple options in advance

Before the service, select and print a range of choices for key parts of the liturgy. For example:

• 5 Calls to Worship
• 5 Opening Prayers
• 5 Prayer of Approach & Words of Assurance pairs
• 5 Offertory Prayers
• 5 Sending Forth / Benedictions

Arrange these attractively on a table or pinboard – clearly labelled and easy to read. You might colour-code them, laminate the cards, or display them on a screen if that suits your setting.

2. Invite volunteers to lead

As the service begins, explain the format and ask for volunteers:

“This morning, we’re building our worship together. Who would like to select our Call to Worship from the five on offer?”

You’ll be surprised by how readily people step forward – especially once they realise they don’t need to write anything themselves.

 

🖋️ Creating New Content Together

Not every part needs to be pre-written. Some elements can be co-created live.

💬 Prayers of Intercession

Invite the congregation to help write a six-stanza prayer, using a simple format

• Each stanza has four lines
• The same congregational response follows each one.

Organise people into small groups or individuals and assign them a stanza to write – perhaps one for each of these themes:

• The world
• Our country
• The Church
• Our community
• Those in need
• Those who have gone before us

Encourage one group to write the repeated congregational response. Allow a few minutes for quiet writing, with gentle music or silence.

When ready, invite each person or group to come forward and read their stanza aloud. The congregation responds after each one.

The result is a living, breathing expression of your community’s shared prayers.

 

🧠 Tips for Success

• Keep the language accessible – avoid dense theology or jargon.
• Show the structure visually – project a basic order of service or print it out. Our post 23. The Elements of a Service offers a helpful model.
• Be flexible – allow space for reflection, silence, or improvisation.
• Use gentle background music during writing or choosing moments.
• Have a backup plan – keep one pre-written version of each element on hand in case no one volunteers.

 

🎁 Why this approach works

This style of service:

• Invites participation without pressure
• Makes space for the Spirit to move in the moment
• Models that every member is a minister
• Honours a diversity of voices and styles, and
• Builds ownership and deeper engagement.

 

🧵 Summary

When we build the service together, worship becomes more than something we attend – it becomes something we create, with God and with one another.

Ngā mihi
Philip