Tips on lectoring

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Practice! Understand that you are the main source of scripture for quite a few of those that hear you. Get familiar with your scriptures early in the week. There are lector workbooks, heavily footnoted, that are available. It is absolutely critical that you understand the scripture passage you are reading. If you don’t understand what the author is trying to convey, chances are those that hear you won’t either.
 
I usually get to know if I’m lectoring for mass about 3/4 days prior . As soon as I know I’m reading I go to my church and get the readings . I practise it in the sacristy and if I don’t know any particular word , I tend to ask a priest or any other person who is walking some around church ( I always see one priest at all times in the compound so I just go up to him and ask him if he could help me with pronunciation and he gladly helps )
 
That’s really kind of your priest to say . Our priest told us that if we aren’t feeling too well , then we could Inform the church and they could find a replacement , or if it was too late then the other reader could read both readings
 
Oh !!! We have one cantor ( who sings and does the psalms ) and two readers for the respective readings . The cantor usually does the prayer of the faithful too . We also have teens playing the organ and guitar along with some singing
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Most churches here in USA would not let someone be a lector or a cantor in jeans and Converse, unless it was a church in a poor neighborhood where it was understood that people didn’t have money for clothes, or a Newman Center where they pretty much let students come to Mass in anything.
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Or a rural parish like mine where farmers come straight from the barn to 8 am mass.
 
And then there was the day that I read Isaiah 11:1, not as “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” but as “ A shoot shall come out from the rump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”

Nobody seemed to notice but at the Consecration a picture of what I had read came to mind and it was all I could do to keep from howling with laughter. Not my proudest moment.
 
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Before Mass, pray to the Lord to help you to glorify Him through your ministry, and to help you to make it about Him rather than about you. And then right before you go up, say a Hail Mary.
 
  1. Seek after humility.
  2. Implore the Holy Spirit to fill you and guide you.
  3. Read and speak as though addressing family - which, in fact, you are.
 
Your Bishop’s Conference may have their own reference. The readings (Book, chapter and verse) are the same the world around.
 
This! 👍

When I just started out as a lector, it was a whole lot easier to not look at the congregation… if I looked up, I would tend to get nervous and freak out (and, it would break my concentration)!

And don’t forget – if you don’t know how to pronounce the names of people and places, just about everyone else doesn’t know them, either. Just pronounce them confidently and folks will be like “Oh… that’s how you say that? Cool…!”
 
Gorgias said:
And don’t forget – if you don’t know how to pronounce the names of people and places, just about everyone else doesn’t know them, either. Just pronounce them confidently and folks will be like “Oh… that’s how you say that? Cool…!”
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Sometimes you can get away with that…sometimes not.

A friend of mine used to broadcast high school football games on the radio. Once he was calling a game and during a commercial break, a man in the top row of the bleachers (just below where my friend was sitting in the press box) stood up, turned around, and told my friend very politely but very firmly that he was mispronouncing the name of the star running back…his son.

Happily in church, you generally don’t have someone correct you. At least until after Mass is over. 🤣
 
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Glennon_P said:
A friend of mine used to broadcast high school football games on the radio. Once he was calling a game and during a commercial break, a man in the top row of the bleachers (just below where my friend was sitting in the press box) stood up, turned around, and told my friend very politely but very firmly that he was mispronouncing the name of the star running back…his son.
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LOL! (I kinda doubt there are any family members sitting in the pews for the folks named in the Old Testament, though. 😉 )
 
About readings and laughter, there was a day when I read Ezekiel 34, about the good shepherd who takes care of his sheep and bandages the injured one, with my freshly broken arm in a brand new cast. The whole congregation was laughing and it took me a while to figure out why.
 
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I think I can top that… at a youth mass many years ago, when the lectionary still had “Yahweh” in the readings— a teen got up to read and pronounced, “And Yahoo said…”.
 
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1ke said:
I think I can top that… at a youth mass many years ago, when the lectionary still had “Yahweh” in the readings— a teen got up to read and pronounced, “And Yahoo said…”.
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Years ago, a lector helping to read the Passion said that Jesus “laminated” over the coming destruction of Jerusalem…
 
Tip to lectors…
Paraclete (the avocate) is not pronounced Parakeet. Our priest mentioned that one.
 
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