Liturgy committees may never have been "cool," but here in the late 1990s when
we first talked about producing a new edition of this book, we wondered if maybe
their heyday hadn't passed.
There are fashions and trends in parish life, just as there are in other parts of
our experience, and as the two of us reached middle age it sometimes seemed as
though the American church's enthusiasm for liturgy committees had been one of
those passing fads. In one of the dioceses near us, the director of the liturgy office
says that no more than a quarter of the parishes even have liturgy committees, and
that he doubts that very few of them do anything like what liturgy committees
have the potential to accomplish.
Why? Perhaps people have moved on to other worthwhile enthusiasms, such as
the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults; or, perhaps the energy and enthusiasm of
the post-Vatican II liturgical changes just reached the end of their natural course.
Or maybe, just maybe, there were just too many liturgy committees who weren't
sure why they existed in the first place.
If such is the case, that's too bad, because it's more important than ever for a
parish to take care of its liturgy committee. In the years ahead those parishes
without liturgy committees will be missing an enormous source of future strength.
While liturgy committees may have started because of the need to understand
and implement all those vast liturgical changes of the 1960s and 1970s, right now
the need is different: our church needs a new generation with a sense of adult
responsibility for every aspect of the church's work. In the past, a liturgy committee
might have been seen as a helpful but optional adjunct to the clergy or parish staff;
now, however, it is a necessary source of future leaders and ministers. Without a
strong base of lay leaders in place who understand liturgy and are comfortable
with leading, planning, and evaluating it, our parishes will become sadder places,
as the number of priests continues to fall and new forms of leadership fail to take
their place. The future is very much in the hands of laypeople who believe that
their work will help keep our liturgical traditions alive and powerful. Liturgy
INTRODUCTION
1
2 T H E L I T U R G Y C O M M I T T E E H A N D B O O K
committees are one place where people like that can get their training, their
experience, and their support. And of course, strong liturgy committees also have
benefits in the here and now: they help each parish find its unique way of making
the prayer of the church its own.
Who's this book for? We hope it's for parish committees at every point in their
