You've just come back from a church election meeting; and yes, you're the new First Reader! Maybe it was the farthest thing from your thought. Maybe you're apprehensive about it—or even a bit scared. Maybe you were looking forward to it and hoping someday such a lovely opportunity might come your way. Maybe you were quietly cherishing the office of Reader for whomever it might come to, confidently relying on divine wisdom's guidance for your branch church and community. Whatever, now you're it! Where do you go from here?
How about to the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy? The By-Laws on reading are a compass clearly pointing the direction you can go. Spirituality, morality, scholarship, study, devotion, consecration, unselfishness, love, spiritual listening—qualities indicated in Article III of the Church Manual are a good start, a good foundation, a good launching pad for successful reading in church.
It's helpful to remember that people hear words but they feel thoughts. So the service should never be routine. It's never just a mechanical process of reading the words from the books. It's always a spiritual experience, the result of effective prayer. The words of the Bible Lesson are the same in each branch church on a particular Sunday. But the services and their effect can be very different. What makes that difference? Isn't it the spiritual preparation of the Readers and members of the congregation that lifts the service beyond words to the spiritual dimension of comfort and healing? Daily prayer for oneself, prayer to remain, as Mrs. Eddy says in the Manual, "uncontaminated with evil," prayer for a pure heart, prayer to stay in the straight and narrow way brings receptivity to God's Word and freedom to express it.
