Posted on 04/12/2006 8:49:48 PM PDT by sionnsar
The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) will present the 75th General Convention with a series of prayers and liturgies for life transitions, alternative rites for celebrating new ministries, and alternative burial rites.
The commission will ask the convention for permission and money to continue to develop resources for multi-sensory worship compatible with Anglican liturgy.
ECUSA's going to have "rites" for practically everything.
The collection of rites of passage was developed in response to Resolution 2003-A092 which, among other things, called for such rites. The SCLM’s Blue Book report offers an explanation of the theology and rationale for marking such passages liturgically and offers a template for planning rites.
The collection, including suggested hymns and other music, marks transitions in childhood, young adulthood, midlife, later life and for marking the anniversaries of deaths. For instance, there is a rite for claiming a new name that might be used at an adoption or after a divorce, and there is a rite for older people who have to leave their home.
Nothing to keep Albert Pujols healthy or get the Cardinals a decent set-up man, though. Read between the lines here and you'll have a good idea how GenCon's going to go.
Resolution 2003-C025 asked the SCLM to consider ways to more fully reflect the roles of all the baptized in the discernment, selection and presentation of ordained people. The convention will be asked to approve a third volume in the "Enriching Our Worship" series that will include a new rite called The Renewal of Ministry with the Welcome of a New Rector.
The rite is offered as an alternative to the Book of Common Prayer’s Celebration of New Ministry liturgy and could be used whenever a new leader comes into the life of a church-related community. "We believe that this rite more clearly emphasizes the life all the baptized and the roles of its ordained leaders understood very clearly within the framework of the Prayer Book’s baptismal ecclesiology," the committee which developed the rite wrote in the SCLM’s Blue Book report.
I'm not sure how much of this will actually happen because they are, of course, going to talk all this into the ground.
That committee also proposes to create a new volume in the SCLM "Liturgical Studies Series" to respond more fully to 2003-C025. An invited group of "distinguished thinkers" will provide the historical, theological, and sacramental-liturgical background of the issues. Other writers will evaluate the present state of the church’s rites and the volume "will then further explore fresh avenues of inquiry leading, hopefully, to the development of further liturgical materials to enrich what is presently available," the report says.
Unfortunately, this Standing Commission couldn't complete everything it wanted to get done.
In a related set of liturgical work, the SCLM’s committee on reproductive loss has told the convention that it needs more time to meet what it calls a "long-overdue need for liturgies and prayers that minister to people suffering from reproductive grief and loss." The materials were requested in Resolution 2003-D047.
The committee’s report suggests that it may develop prayers for making difficult decisions, surrounding the loss of a child through miscarriage and other deaths before or just after birth, surrounding the termination of a pregnancy, surrounding infertility or sterilization and surrounding adoption.
Translation: some people wanted to include rites mourning and repenting abortions and Whatever It Is That They Worship knows ECUSA can't allow that. Katie Rags and the Crewser would blow gaskets. The Commission wants to punch up the music too.
Developing new music and other worship resources took up some of the SCLM’s time the last three years. A committee has begun the "Praise and World Music Hymnal Supplement" project to collect praise and worship music from a number of sources and evaluated it for its "accessibility, theology, diversity and whether or not it was ’sing-able,’" according to the Blue Book report. The first volume is due to be published soon.
Great. Episcopal praise music. I'm not sure just what those songs would be praising apart from how gosh-darn inclusive ECUSA is. And since everybody knows that's the only reason why the rednecks go to those horrid evangelical megachurces, the Commission wants ECUSA to go all technological and multi-sensory and stuff.
The SCLM also has a committee exploring multi-sensory worship. "While all worship is, ideally, multi-sensory, the use of this term implies that new technologies are being used in worship, including, but certainly not limited to: electronic/computer generated music, visual imagery projected on screens/monitors, and artistic expression in a variety of media," the committee wrote.
Yeah, that should stop the bleeding.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
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