@Baptist Trainfan - 'them as wing it' often manage to miss out one of the desirable (a.k.a. jolly near essential) part of Christian worship - usually either the General Confession or the Song of Praise at the beginning of worship. (For reference, although Anglican I seem to know a lot of folks with a Reformed Church in America/Christian Reformed Church background.) It seems to me that by the time you have gone to the trouble of finding/writing the necessary bits then you might as well of not exactly use a liturgy then use a pretty strong framework - i.e. be semi-liturgical. Trying to come up with something different each week sounds like a lot of work, and most of the folks I know from non-liturgical traditions tend to end up being semi-liturgical even if the semi-liturgy is just simply 'the way they do it at Unity Baptist Church' rather than a framework set forth by the denomination.
There is a strong framework and there is debate around the framework. In general, it works something like the following:
Call to Worship
Hymn
Prayer of Adoration and Confession
Assurance of pardon
Bible reading
Introduction to theme/Children's address
Hymn
Bible reading(s) including psalm if any
Sermon
Hymn
Offertory
Prayer of the people/Thanksgiving and intercession
Lord's prayer
Hymn
Grace/Blessing
All congregations will have their own variant of this and every pastor to the congregation will have changed it to suit their taste. Visiting preachers are likely to stick more rigidly to the form than the congregation's own pastors or home preachers.
So you start off with that form, you then sit down with your Bible readings and try and work out what direction you are heading. Then most preachers choose the hymns because they need to be with the organist/praise band/typer up of service sheets as early in the week as possible. This is the time to you need to decide if anything different that involves other people is going to happen, e.g. responses, as the person dealing with service sheets needs to know. Then you probably go back to the Bible readings and try to put together the sermon. Slowly from that, you work up the prayers always leaving space for the last-minute intercession. Then onto the introduction to the theme before a final l ook over the sermon.
Prayers are normally done by getting a template prayer and adjusting to circumstance. There are plenty out there, it is just about finding a prayer that will do and and reshaping it. There are a fairly limited number of assurance of pardon and most preachers I know tend to stick to one or two they like. Introduction to the theme is probably the most difficult.
Absolutely right, Jengie - which it is why it's a lot of work preparing for worship if you've got two services each Sunday! I have made an extra rod for my back by having decided to illustrate the services with Powerpoint projections and sometimes a video - these take ages to do!
Your question is a fair one. Perhaps my issue shouldn't be one of, 'what should those people do?' but 'what shall this man do?'
That said, I do wonder what kind of diet we are giving people these days. I'm not saying that traditional rubrics and liturgies are the only way to ensure a balanced 'meat and two veg' diet. Goodness knows, it can feel like Christmas Pudding every Sunday in some of the more ceremonial settings ...
I don't see this as a Non-conformist / Established Church divide necessarily either. A lot of thought, planning and preparation goes into many, if not most, mainstream 'Free Church' services. I'm not 'against' that.
It's when things go as Angloid suggests when boxes go unticked or, rather, when things fall between stools (in the seating sense) and end up on the floor.
Thank you Gamma G, I get it.
It's not easy to find the right church for us, and even then it's better at some times than at others. If I hadn't been clearly led to mine, I wouldn't have stuck it out, but it's where God wants me to be for the moment, and I am blessed by its practice now I'm used to it.
I hope and pray that you will be led to where you will be fed.
Absolutely right, Jengie - which it is why it's a lot of work preparing for worship if you've got two services each Sunday! I have made an extra rod for my back by having decided to illustrate the services with Powerpoint projections and sometimes a video - these take ages to do!
Visiting preachers are likely to stick more rigidly to the form than the congregation's own pastors or home preachers.
Yes - although the "Order of Service" sheet they're sent invariably tells them that they needn't do so!
That's in reverse of the invariable Anglican response which is "We just do the usual thing" so you do what is 'the usual thing' in your place and find that you have dispensed with half a dozen indispensable local customs, and made the Baby Jesus cry. After dropping that clanger a few times I learnt to ask what they meant by 'usual' though I did mischievously wonder what would happen, or how useful an answer I would get if I replied "so surplice tippet and north end?" when asked to cover an Anglo-Catholic parish.
@PDR If it was anything like my place of worship, a kindly old lady would take you by the hand, look you in the eyes, and say “No, Father.” Until you Understood. I believe every Anglo-Catholic parish is equipped with at least one of these self-correcting devices.
Sure. A wonderful URC minister I knew once told me how she'd found that Anglican clergy 'don't know they're born' when she became involved with a 'pulpit-swap' scheme where local clergy exchanged places on a particular Sunday. She turned up to the Anglican church and lo and behold, everything was written down for her, apart from the sermon ...
If you're going to do it by the book, do it by the book.
If you're going to do it the Nonconformist way, do it the Nonconformist way and do it as well as you can.
I don't know what it is with some of these people. Are they bored with having the same set prayers and responses so they feel the need to mess around with it all?
Don't get me wrong, as much as I no longer relish the kind of apparently free-wheeling 'open to the Spirit' charismatic worship I used to be involved with (and make no mistake, there was always an underlying 'unwritten' liturgy to it all, often unrecognised by participants) I don't have a problem with people doing things differently - in the right context.
Yes, go ahead and have a praise-service with lots of chorus singing and so on. But if it's meant to be a parish communion or Morning Prayer or whatever else is on the schedule, go with that. Don't try to make every single service a carbon copy of the last night at New Wine or whatever charismatic jamboree you attend in the summer ...
Different things can be good to add some variety and happenstance to the life of the parish, certainly. But many of us want the Same Damn Thing until we die. If you’d like to try something else, might I suggest one of 4000 other churches in the city? 3 other Episcopal churches all within a 5 mile radius to choose from!
Naturally, I now plan the liturgy, so don’t have to worry about that
Anglicanism is probably not a very good place to be if you are likely to get bored by liturgy. That said, others love liturgy, but like to tinker - heaven only knows why, but they do. My own preference is for liturgy straight out of the BCP with a moderate amount of ceremonial, which is how we handle things at St Odd's and I think folks like having a parish around here there is no tendency to try and make every Sunday special. However, the regulars know about the Palm Sunday Procession, the Good Friday Liturgy, and those occasions when the liturgy takes off. What surprises me is the number of parishes around here that ignore excuses for legitimate liturgical blow outs like the Vigil. It is a bit surprising that the church with the reputation for being old fashioned and Low is the one that does such things around here.
I agree. Anglicanism is a bad place for anyone to be if they don’t like liturgy. We have a tendency to celebrate pretty much every prayer book holy day, with a few added traditional ones for fun. I personally love the way it marks out the liturgical year, and the way the Gospel is enacted through the year by following all of the holy days.
If only more people agreed with me
There are some Nonconformists, probably Methodists and URC rather than Baptists, who delight to use liturgical prayers (though not the same ones each week) and who pay at least a passing nod at the greater festivals and high days of the Church year.
There is one congregation in these parts that started out German Reformed, then went through the Evangelical and Reformed Church (which was a merger of the Evangelical Synod with the German Reformed) into the U.C.C, and then out again. At the moment they are independent, with an episcopally-ordained minister, and use the 39 Articles and the Heidelberg Catechism as their doctrinal standards after Scripture. They started out liturgical, went semi-liturgical whilst there was some charismatic influence going on, and have found their way back to liturgy as part of their move out of the U.C.C. during which they returned to a more Reformed Evangelical identity.
... At the moment they are independent, with an episcopally-ordained minister, and use the 39 Articles and the Heidelberg Catechism as their doctrinal standards after Scripture. ...
@PDR does that make sense? If a priest is episcopally ordained but not functioning with the licence of that bishop or one in communion with them, doesn't that make everything he or she does at least irregular, if not actually void?
Or am I letting the assumptions of being a lifelong member of the CofE prejudice me in some way?
There is one congregation in these parts that started out German Reformed, then went through the Evangelical and Reformed Church (which was a merger of the Evangelical Synod with the German Reformed) into the U.C.C, and then out again. At the moment they are independent, with an episcopally-ordained minister, and use the 39 Articles and the Heidelberg Catechism as their doctrinal standards after Scripture. They started out liturgical, went semi-liturgical whilst there was some charismatic influence going on, and have found their way back to liturgy as part of their move out of the U.C.C. during which they returned to a more Reformed Evangelical identity.
Interesting. Do they call themselves "Reformed" these days, or something else? Or just something like "Old Stone Church"?
@Enoch - things are a bit looser over here in that most dioceses will make a provision whereby provided a priest does the minimum to maintain canonical residence in the diocese to which he was ordained, he can be allowed to serve in a chaplaincy or independent church. This usually involves him showing his face at the diocesan synod, deanery meetings, and submitting an annual report to the bishop or the bishop's staff. It is rare, but it can happen. The closest analogy in England was the old proprietary chapels.
@Nick Tamen - strictly they were only DRK im NA/RCUS for a year or so before the merger, so they operate under their original corporate name which St X's Evangelical and Reformed Church which was granted just post merger. They did this all through the UCC period, and did not see any reason to change when they left. Most of the ex-German Reformed/RCUS later Evangelical and Reformed Church congregations in that area kept their original names. Those that have not left the UCC usually have (U.C.C.) in small letters, or "United Churches of Christ" in even smaller letters under the church name.
Thanks, @PDR. Makes sense—that seems to be the pattern in many of the older E&R congregations in the Catawba Valley, whether or not they’re part of the UCC now.
Comments
All congregations will have their own variant of this and every pastor to the congregation will have changed it to suit their taste. Visiting preachers are likely to stick more rigidly to the form than the congregation's own pastors or home preachers.
So you start off with that form, you then sit down with your Bible readings and try and work out what direction you are heading. Then most preachers choose the hymns because they need to be with the organist/praise band/typer up of service sheets as early in the week as possible. This is the time to you need to decide if anything different that involves other people is going to happen, e.g. responses, as the person dealing with service sheets needs to know. Then you probably go back to the Bible readings and try to put together the sermon. Slowly from that, you work up the prayers always leaving space for the last-minute intercession. Then onto the introduction to the theme before a final l ook over the sermon.
Prayers are normally done by getting a template prayer and adjusting to circumstance. There are plenty out there, it is just about finding a prayer that will do and and reshaping it. There are a fairly limited number of assurance of pardon and most preachers I know tend to stick to one or two they like. Introduction to the theme is probably the most difficult.
For big celebration services, forget this.
Yes - although the "Order of Service" sheet they're sent invariably tells them that they needn't do so!
Thank you Gamma G, I get it.
It's not easy to find the right church for us, and even then it's better at some times than at others. If I hadn't been clearly led to mine, I wouldn't have stuck it out, but it's where God wants me to be for the moment, and I am blessed by its practice now I'm used to it.
I hope and pray that you will be led to where you will be fed.
That's in reverse of the invariable Anglican response which is "We just do the usual thing" so you do what is 'the usual thing' in your place and find that you have dispensed with half a dozen indispensable local customs, and made the Baby Jesus cry. After dropping that clanger a few times I learnt to ask what they meant by 'usual' though I did mischievously wonder what would happen, or how useful an answer I would get if I replied "so surplice tippet and north end?" when asked to cover an Anglo-Catholic parish.
If you're going to do it by the book, do it by the book.
If you're going to do it the Nonconformist way, do it the Nonconformist way and do it as well as you can.
I don't know what it is with some of these people. Are they bored with having the same set prayers and responses so they feel the need to mess around with it all?
Don't get me wrong, as much as I no longer relish the kind of apparently free-wheeling 'open to the Spirit' charismatic worship I used to be involved with (and make no mistake, there was always an underlying 'unwritten' liturgy to it all, often unrecognised by participants) I don't have a problem with people doing things differently - in the right context.
Yes, go ahead and have a praise-service with lots of chorus singing and so on. But if it's meant to be a parish communion or Morning Prayer or whatever else is on the schedule, go with that. Don't try to make every single service a carbon copy of the last night at New Wine or whatever charismatic jamboree you attend in the summer ...
Naturally, I now plan the liturgy, so don’t have to worry about that
If only more people agreed with me
Or am I letting the assumptions of being a lifelong member of the CofE prejudice me in some way?
@Nick Tamen - strictly they were only DRK im NA/RCUS for a year or so before the merger, so they operate under their original corporate name which St X's Evangelical and Reformed Church which was granted just post merger. They did this all through the UCC period, and did not see any reason to change when they left. Most of the ex-German Reformed/RCUS later Evangelical and Reformed Church congregations in that area kept their original names. Those that have not left the UCC usually have (U.C.C.) in small letters, or "United Churches of Christ" in even smaller letters under the church name.