The Server

Unto others

  1. You are a server. As you assist the priest, who leads the worship of the Church, so you make sacred practice and ritual more reverent, efficient, and beautiful. Your work for God is very important, and this manual is designed to help you.

  2.  At the altar, your service is directed firstly to God, secondly as help to the clergy, and thirdly as assistance to the people who have been gathered by God for sacred practice. Your actions are visible. You appear in public, but you are never a performer. By your faithful duty, you remain always a servant of Christ in the community of his Church.

3.   Special assistants in public worship can be traced back to Israel, to God’s Chosen People, because we find “servers” in the pages of the Old Testament

4.   The tribe of Levi were chosen to serve in those holy places. Their sacred role developed when God’s People wandered in the desert but took a more precise form in the permanent Temple. Within that tribe, the descendants of Aaron, the cohens, provided priests and a high priest, with specific duties of offering sacrifices and prayers of praise and blessing. Levites who were not priests acted like “servers” at the altars of sacrifice. They assisted in the complex ceremonial and music of the Temple, the devotion of God, and they provided a security service to protect sacred wisdom keepers in the holy place.

7. The Church gave official status to those assisting the bishops, priests, and deacons in worship. They were called “acolytes”, from the Greek word for “followers” or “attendants”. Acolytes were ordained to this office, a “minor order” as distinct from the major orders of bishop, priest, and deacon. Gradually the order of acolyte lost its distinct role and became only one of the steps toward the priesthood. In recent years, the ministry of acolyte has been restored. It is seen no longer as a step toward priestly ordination but as a lay service (ministry) within the Church community.

8. Servers developed from this order of acolyte. When there were not enough deacons to assist the bishop or priest in the ceremonies of the Mass, their role was largely deputed to acolytes. As the expanded, there were many places where the only ordained man was the local priest, so the assistant role of acolyte was deputed to men and boys. As the ceremonies of the Church developed, so various forms of ritual required many assistants, especially for the solemn celebrations in the distinct Rites: in Western Europe (Roman), in Eastern Europe (Byzantine), and in the Middle East (Eastern Churches).

 9. However, in Western Europe, emphasis on daily Mass celebrated by each priest—for example, in monasteries—led to the simpler form of “Low Mass”. One server assisted. Later, an unfortunate trend developed of using only small boys to serve in parishes, incorrectly but inevitably called “altar boys”. In major centers of worship, cathedrals and basilicas, the original tradition continued and only men or youths served. In 1994, the ministry of serving was opened to permit the inclusion of women. The Church is giving you a serious responsibility—to take on the sacred role of ones called and chosen to serve. This is an honor. In a real sense, you reflect the sacred role of one of the major orders of ministry, the deacon. That word “server” has the same meaning as “deacon”, one who is ordained to serve God and his People. The Church expects us to carry out well.

13. The Church also expects something deeper than knowing how to serve. An altar server is a Christian lay person who plays a key role in the celebration of the liturgy by carrying out a true liturgical ministry. That word “ministry” means “service”. By assisting the priest, the Church sees your service as a ministry to God, a ministry to God’s People

Excerpt from: "Ceremonies Explained for Servers: A Manual for Altar Servers, Acolytes, Sacristans, and Masters of Ceremonies" by Peter J. Elliot.