Posted on 10/12/2007 9:39:02 PM PDT by kaehurowing
20 Basics of Welcoming Liturgy
Two posts ago I promised to enumerate what I have learned in my career about opening up Episcopal Liturgy to newcomers and seekers. Stable and declining Episcopal churches assume they exist to serve birth Episcopalians, people who inherit the faith through family. Growing Episcopal churches choose to exist for the world beyond their walls serving the local community in mission. More specifically, growing congregations choose to exist for the next person through the door. I cannot emphasize the importance of this spiritual step enough when a community graduates from a 'serve my needs and tastes' spirit, to a 'how do we offer this rich relationship with God to all who hunger for it' spirit. Put another way, when a church graduates from 'serve me' to 'serve others,' from 'what I want' to 'what works to spread the kingdom,' from 'newcomers are a threat to MY church' to 'newcomers bless us with strengths, gifts, insights that add to the Body of Christ,' a church has started to gain spiritual maturity.
Episcopal liturgy is an incredible gift and dire burden for the work of spreading the kingdom of God. My wife has a PhD., an MDiv. and a bachelors from a seven sisters school and, although she was raised as a person of faith in reformed churches, she still balks at the managerial challenge of Episcopal worship. (While I love her services!) How do we open up our gift to folks who want to benefit from it?
1. Stop worshiping the Book of Common Prayer and start wondering what the other 99% of people in your community do to connect with God. It can be very powerful to be counter-cultural but it can also be elitist, rigid and arrogant. We can bend a lot more than we do without sacrificing our integrity. Frankly, clergy like being liturgical experts too much.
2. Make hospitality the central spiritual priority and the sniff test of everything you do. Look at everything from the perspective of a newcomer. Invited friends to attend as 'secret shoppers' and then ask about their experience in detail. So many churches are too afraid of real feedback.
3. What in your pew or in your bulletin says welcome? What puts people at ease? Assure folks that they can participate as little or as much as they like. Make sure they know the collection plate is OPTIONAL. If you must do a fund raiser or stewardship announcement, ONLY ONE PER SERVICE ever. All newcomers are afraid that your church is a money and time leach.
4. Open communion! When our central spiritual act of communion with God and each other becomes a symbol of exclusion and conditionality we substitute the spirit of bureaucracy and institutional control for the spirit of Christ who welcomes all to the table. I strongly recommend Kathy Tanner's article in the Anglican Theological Review on this topic. In my experience people often do not respond to the invitation but it means the world to them as they transition from a church experience that felt judging or worse. Communion is not primarily an act of discipleship, it is primarily an offer of unbreakable relationship from God to which people are free to respond.
5. Put it all or as much as possible in the bulletin. If you use service music PRINT WORDS AND MUSIC. Best of all - avoid Hymnal 1982 service music like the plague it is. If you must direct people to a hymnal - TELL THEM WHAT COLOR IT IS not the name. Hymnal 1982 means nothing - BLUE hymnal does. If you want to see the best bulletin out there - go to Saint Paul & the Redeemer at 4945 South Dorchester in Chicago (www.sp-r.org). Big, generous, welcoming, clear, clean, readable, directive - awesome.
6. Since I brought up music.... Style doesn't matter as much as quality. Church music exists to transport us and support us in our journey into relationship with the living God. Music serves worship, not vice versa. We are not an Anglican culture society! Avoid Anglican Chant unless the choir is singing it without congregational participation. There are tons of wonderful antiphonal settings! Stop using hymns for Gospel processions - use repeating Alleluia's or simple songs. You are making the service way too long. Try to use up beat music at communion as if we are CELEBRATING our redemption. Pick singable hymns. As I heard someone say (Charles Fulton?), 99.9% of people are not listening to organ music in their cars every day. What they are listening to is often intensely spiritual for them. We should pay attention.
7. Worship must be held to one hour in length MAX. If you add something, cut something.
8. You cannot give a too warm welcome. I heard Gene Robinson do it last night when he led worship and boy was he great. He made it crystal clear worship was for everyone in the room regardless of faith tradition. He was warm, personable, funny, loose and sincere ... really put me at ease and brought the whole group together. Meet him and you will understand why he is a Bishop.
9. Cut extraneous crap! Here are some suggestions - THE GLORIA (ack, ick,) this is praise? no, this is impenetrable dogma set to shitty music - The COLLECT FOR PURITY - Doxology and Prayers at the presentation - the concluding collect at the end of the prayers of the people. Cut down the number of PSALM verses used. Psalms are incredibly deep, a little bit goes along way. Use 6 verse max at a time. Let me sit and contemplate.
10. Speaking of cutting - either shorten or get rid of readings. We expect way to much of our people in terms of scriptural consumption. My last highly educated congregation told me that they were still thinking about the Hebrew Bible reading through all the other readings and that there is just no way to comprehend that much material. I strongly suggest alternating Hebrew Bible and Epistle from Sunday to Sunday so there is one reading with the Gospel. Overly long readings can be easily cut down by smart editors to highlight the best bits. Listening to Paul's long salutations is about as useless as it gets.
11. Stop using the Prayers of the People from the Book of Common Prayer. YAWN! First, they put me to sleep. Second, the fact that we pray for clergy and hierarchy and government first is a horrible remnant of establishment and clericalism. Third, they break up any thematic development in the service - they don't relate to sermon or scripture. I strongly suggest using the publication Prayers for the Christian People (lectionary based prayers), or having talented church member write them. Also, while I am at it, can we please stop praying for the 'virgin' Mary? The Greek means 'young woman,' and she wasn't a virgin. Virgins don't have babies. How about we pray for 'adolescent Mary mother of Jesus.' Why is that not enough? Finally, when you invite prayers give lots of time - don't be afraid of silence.
12. A great thing about using full bulletins is we can mix and match from other resources. Other confessions and absolutions are particularly effective at waking people up! And BTW, where do we invite people to confess what they did well this past week?
13. Invite congregational participation in as much of the liturgy as possible. The Collect of the Day should be said by ALL. It is a much more energetic way to start he service and it defies clericalism. Have the congregation say the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic prayer. Its awesome. If you invited participation in Prayers of the People give enough time to do it! I always like to prep a group of extroverted pray-ers so that the POP are primed to be participatory. Participation reflects the ministry of the whole and the priority of lay ministry.
14. I personally like to rewrite the current Eucharist prayers which are really way to wordy, dogmatic etc. Most telling, they universally focus on atonement theory and as such they excise most retelling of Jesus' jubilee ministry. Why did Jesus die, because of who he was and what he did! Our current prayers make it seem like an abstract 'plan of salvation' which I think is sick.
15. Announcements: Three at most -always focused on mission, fun, motivational and short, pre-screened or entrusted to skilled people who introduce themselves. Never nag, cajole or threaten. Never recruit for sensitive position. Encourage lay leaders to act relationally by approaching people one on one. Keep it under 5 minutes plus a general welcome to the community, the table, to coffee (or whatever) and to the welcome card.
15. Acclamation - Processional Hymn - Collect of the Day is a nice tight way to get rolling! I recently saw the final hymn called the "Procession into the World for Service" and that was really cool.
16. Communion hymns generally fail. In the midst of this mystical moment the last thing I want to do is open a hymnal or have a loud anthem blaring at me. Taize or other repetitive simple stuff, or gentle instrumental music, or chant works great. There is a Jewish tradition of melodic singing without words that I love too - called Ningun (sp?). I had a bunch of kids strumming "My Sweat Lord" (George Harrison/Charelles) one Sunday during communion and tons of folks joined in because they already new it by heart. krishna, krishna!
17. A good sermon is no longer than 12 minutes, has one theme and main point and is delivered with energy, humor, sincerity, real emotion and in simple common language. Folks want to learn, they want to be moved, they want to be inspired and they want something to take home that will help them function. Folks I have served have also liked to be challenged to think in new ways. Spare me a display of your VAST learning, banish your Solemn tonalities and your use of 'you,' and your veiled implications that clergy are more enlightened than the congregation. Please share personal stories, real struggles, confusion, doubt. Please share the Good News.
18. Dare to try non-unilateral sermons. How do you invite other voices and multiple voices. We once used a Quaker style silent sitting after the sermon where people who were moved could speak.
19. Going from Quakers to Presbyterians, I got a great idea from a Presbyterian bulletin a few years ago that helps with my 'ministry of all people' agenda (anti-clericalism). I have totally banished the use of "celebrant" or "presider" or "deacon" to describe worship leaders. We simply say "one" and "all." "One" is the leader of the moment and "all" respond. Elegant! Descriptive, Accurate, Leveling.
20. For the sake of symmetry I will go to #20. Use the Wonder Love and Praise (the GREEN hymnal) sung settings of the Creed (#768, #769) If you have a talented musician have him or her set the words to other fun tunes like Ode to Joy during Easter season for example. Suddenly, the creed is an energetic moment in the liturgy and the WLP versions are inclusive. If you have to say it - Jesus became 'human' which is the point of the phrase so lets be accurate! Get rid of 'virgin'! And if I had my druthers, I would change all the male pronouns to 'you.' Let's address our affirmation of faith directly to God and avoid assuming that the second person of the trinity was male before the incarnation, after the ascension and will be when she or he comes again. I am fine with he for the historical bits, Jesus was a historical figure who was male. The New Zealand affirmation of faith is also excellent, if like me, Greek philosophy isn't at the center of your faith.
I want to thank all the folks who taught me this stuff and believe me none of them are seminary professors! Special thanks to Rev. Jim Steen, Rev. Daphne Cody, Rev. Aimee Delevett, Rev. Amity Carrubba, Rev. Bonnie Perry and Kevin McKelvie.
(Episcopal Cult Alert)
Wow! I am speechless. I’ll bet this guy is a barrel of laughs. Of course, he lost me with citing “Vicki” as an positive example.
This guy’s a flake. I suppose the next thing is to do away with the hymnal altogether, and just put banal 3-chord 4-line happy-clappy tunes on an overhead projector.
Well he doesn't stand on sentimentality now doe he....
Krishna, krishna as a “communion” hymn?
Maybe communal.
Maybe “commun”ist...
But that’s NOT a Holy piece of music, not sung by a religious nor inspiring person, nor a person worth following anywhere but into a record shop.
I checked to see if this was Scrappleface. Yegad. Run screaming!! He’s lined up with Vicki, to boot. That means to me that this is the majority/ leading thinking these days.
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Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15
Incredible.
If our Rector attempted to implement this stuff, two Sundays later the pews would be empty forever.
This guy’s a priest????????? WOW! I wonder which one of the priestesses taught him to call the Gloria “impenetrable dogma set to shitty music”? Classy!
What would those be? Certainly not this loon's bailiwick. He is probably driving people screaming out the doors, and is too caught up in his own "vision" to notice.
Just another reason we went Straight Over to Rome.
The Greek means 'young woman,' and she wasn't a virgin. Virgins don't have babies. How about we pray for 'adolescent Mary mother of Jesus.'
Well, isn't that special. He denies the virgin birth and demonstrates that he doesn't really know Greek, all in on swell foop.
(The Greeks are quite clear on the dogma of the virgin birth. Perhaps this nitwit thinks they don't know Greek, either.)
I kept waiting for something to indicate that this was sarcasm but it never appeared. Wow! This fool might as well stay home on Sunday morning. After all he cut from the service there’s no reason to bother going to church. I’m left wondering what could have attracted him to Anglicanism anyway.
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