Guidelines For Planning A Footwashing Service

Congregational leaders planning their first liturgical footwashing may take comfort in recognizing that the rite's traditions allow for tremendous flexibility and creativity. As with other symbolic religious acts, there is no one right way to celebrate footwashing. Because of footwashing's cultural strangeness, pastors and other church leaders may encounter some resistance to including footwashing with the Maundy Thursday or Lord's Supper services. Some may suggest that washing the feet of others is foreign to their daily experience so it cannot carry meaning in Christian worship. However, the bodily practice itself-stooping, touching the feet of another, and kneeling before another-continues to indicate a kind of humbling of oneself. With persons washing each other's feet, the practice primarily suggests mutual service with another. And while practitioners' feet are usually clean when they come to the basin, water continues to signify-as it does in baptism-spiritual cleansing, forgi…