Worship from scratch

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Comments

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    @Baptist Trainfan I don't even slightly disagree with either you or your Theological College Principal. If you're the 'master of ceremonies', the person who curates what everyone else does, or 'the person who holds it all together' then to my mind, that's exactly what a worship leader should be doing and is.

    I also agree that there are all too many Great Churches and Cathedrals with Directors of Music who think the building and the clergy are really there just to provide them with a forum in which they can perform sacred music, that high end music is the essence of what true Christianity is about and the rest of what we do is collateral, as evidenced by this letter from the day before yesterday, signed by a number of well known people, to the Guardian.

    Tangent alert
    It's also another example of the infectious spread of the notion that if the expert medical advice gets in the way of what 'we want to do', then the experts must accept that it's their duty to change their mind. A disturbingly large number of people don't seem to be able to see why that is irrational and indefensible.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Thinking about what Jesus is recorded as saying (IIRC)...

    Love God, and your neighbour...
    When you pray, say 'Our Father'...
    Baptise...
    Do this in remembrance of Me...
    Feed my sheep...


    Sums up worship IMHO. Quite how we do these things is up to us!

    IIRC, he did not say that nothing else could/should be said or done. Indeed, as Nick Tamen points out, we were also commanded to break bread and drink from the cup when we met.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Thinking about what Jesus is recorded as saying (IIRC)...

    Love God, and your neighbour...
    When you pray, say 'Our Father'...
    Baptise...
    Do this in remembrance of Me...
    Feed my sheep...


    Sums up worship IMHO. Quite how we do these things is up to us!

    IIRC, he did not say that nothing else could/should be said or done. Indeed, as Nick Tamen points out, we were also commanded to break bread and drink from the cup when we met.
    Well, I assumed that by “Do this in remembrance of Me,” @Bishops Finger was referring to breaking the bread and drinking from the cup.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    My fault - by "he" I meant "He", not @Bishops Finger.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    I did once think about what were the absolute minima for collective worship - apart from people, of course! And I ended up with Bible reading and prayer (which of course can encompass praise, thanksgiving, confession and intercession; liturgical, extempore, charismatic or even silent!) You don't have to have music, sacraments, incense, icons, candles, pews and the accoutrements which we often consider "essential" - although they may well be useful, helpful and generally "nice to have"!

    Thats a pretty good description of what goes on in monastic communities during morning and evening prayer - some psalms, a reading and some intercessions.
    Its served them very well for over 1500 years.
    People always seem to want to hanker back to a mythical time of beginnings when stuff was simpler and purer. All too often it becomes an exercise in untrammelled leadership with no moderating sense of tradition - especially when the leaders are the ones with the correct insight into how to interpret the whisps and hints that are all we have by way of actual knowledge.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    Nick Tamen wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    Thinking about what Jesus is recorded as saying (IIRC)...

    Love God, and your neighbour...
    When you pray, say 'Our Father'...
    Baptise...
    Do this in remembrance of Me...
    Feed my sheep...


    Sums up worship IMHO. Quite how we do these things is up to us!

    IIRC, he did not say that nothing else could/should be said or done. Indeed, as Nick Tamen points out, we were also commanded to break bread and drink from the cup when we met.
    Well, I assumed that by “Do this in remembrance of Me,” @Bishops Finger was referring to breaking the bread and drinking from the cup.

    Yes, that is so.


    Alan29 wrote: »
    I did once think about what were the absolute minima for collective worship - apart from people, of course! And I ended up with Bible reading and prayer (which of course can encompass praise, thanksgiving, confession and intercession; liturgical, extempore, charismatic or even silent!) You don't have to have music, sacraments, incense, icons, candles, pews and the accoutrements which we often consider "essential" - although they may well be useful, helpful and generally "nice to have"!

    Thats a pretty good description of what goes on in monastic communities during morning and evening prayer - some psalms, a reading and some intercessions.
    Its served them very well for over 1500 years.
    People always seem to want to hanker back to a mythical time of beginnings when stuff was simpler and purer. All too often it becomes an exercise in untrammelled leadership with no moderating sense of tradition - especially when the leaders are the ones with the correct insight into how to interpret the whisps and hints that are all we have by way of actual knowledge.

    For many churches, such simple 'monastic' services could well be the way things are done in the future, if they're not worshipping like this already.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    A few years ago, somebody who had been involved in developing the liturgical material for the various books in the Common Worship suite told me that the parish clergy kept saying 'not too many alternatives - keep it simple'. It was the representatives of the religious communities who wanted more options, more seasonal variations etc, because doing it every day was boring if it was always the same.

  • The Franciscan Office Book (from which AIUI the present Common Worship Offices were derived) is certainly not a particularly simple book to use at first sight!

    We used to have daily Morning Prayer following this book, and such daily use brought about familiarity - but the alternatives/variations, especially for use on Saints' Days etc., were welcome (and educational).

    There is, I think, much to be said for a simple Service of the Word, which could include Collect/Psalm/Epistle/Gospel for the day, along with appropriate intercessions, and a reflection, meditation, or homily.

  • Ah well, I daresay there are indeed still churches like that...
    :innocent:

    What @Zappa said, and all we would need in the way of furniture/fittings would be some water (for Baptism), some bread and wine, a Bible, a cup, and a plate. O, and maybe some candles...

    Watch it you will be using the Reformed understanding of Sacred Space (Barth mentions it somewhere according to my Dad but honestly I do not have the time to read all of Barth just to find a single quote) which is along the lines of where the people(congregation) are gathered with table(communion), bowl(baptism) and book(Bible) then....
  • GalilitGalilit Shipmate
    Enoch wrote: »
    because doing it every day was boring if it was always the same.

    That sameness and boringness (is that a word?) is what keeps you calm and open to "what The Spirit might be saying to you". You lose yourself in the words, you find comfort in the words and your dry, cognitive functions don't get to disturb your spiritual involvement in the Prayer.
    Or even derailing you completely when you get Something New but personally annoying; eg because of alliteration (or not), a particular word you can't stand, exclusive language ... whatever it may be for you

    In the words of Sister Monica Joan in Call the Midwife: "The liturgy is of comfort to the disarrayed mine. We need not choose our thoughts; the words are aligned, like a rope for us to cling to"

  • angloidangloid Shipmate
    Enoch wrote: »
    A few years ago, somebody who had been involved in developing the liturgical material for the various books in the Common Worship suite told me that the parish clergy kept saying 'not too many alternatives - keep it simple'. It was the representatives of the religious communities who wanted more options, more seasonal variations etc, because doing it every day was boring if it was always the same.

    That echoes these words of Aidan Kavanagh OSB:

    'During the medieval period in the west... the liturgy became an affair increasingly in the hands of clerical liturgical experts whose need for variety corresponded to the high quantity of liturgy they performed while the laity watched.'

    However parish worship these days has become more variable whereas monastic worship is predictable and routine (not necessarily boring). Post-Covid though, with books and service papers being discouraged, maybe we can revert to most congregational texts being easily memorised and any variability provided by individual voices (readers, cantors etc as well as the priest/leader). Every cloud...
  • Jengie Jon wrote: »
    Ah well, I daresay there are indeed still churches like that...
    :innocent:

    What @Zappa said, and all we would need in the way of furniture/fittings would be some water (for Baptism), some bread and wine, a Bible, a cup, and a plate. O, and maybe some candles...

    Watch it you will be using the Reformed understanding of Sacred Space (Barth mentions it somewhere according to my Dad but honestly I do not have the time to read all of Barth just to find a single quote) which is along the lines of where the people(congregation) are gathered with table(communion), bowl(baptism) and book(Bible) then....

    And this is bad because...?
    :wink:

    Seriously, though, I think I'm tending that way.
    angloid wrote: »
    Enoch wrote: »
    A few years ago, somebody who had been involved in developing the liturgical material for the various books in the Common Worship suite told me that the parish clergy kept saying 'not too many alternatives - keep it simple'. It was the representatives of the religious communities who wanted more options, more seasonal variations etc, because doing it every day was boring if it was always the same.

    That echoes these words of Aidan Kavanagh OSB:

    'During the medieval period in the west... the liturgy became an affair increasingly in the hands of clerical liturgical experts whose need for variety corresponded to the high quantity of liturgy they performed while the laity watched.'

    However parish worship these days has become more variable whereas monastic worship is predictable and routine (not necessarily boring). Post-Covid though, with books and service papers being discouraged, maybe we can revert to most congregational texts being easily memorised and any variability provided by individual voices (readers, cantors etc as well as the priest/leader). Every cloud...

    Our Place seems to be moving in that direction already. Our 'Mass' booklet could do with revision (it is vastly over-supplied with rubrics!), and something simpler could easily be provided. Newcomers/visitors might not necessarily know the usual congregational texts, of course, so a card or booklet would be handy.
  • Baptist TrainfanBaptist Trainfan Shipmate
    edited June 2020
    angloid wrote: »
    Post-Covid though, with books and service papers being discouraged, maybe we can revert to most congregational texts being easily memorised ...
    There are, of course, screens (and tablets and mobile phones) ...

    [Runs for cover ...]

  • Or we just go to the old fashioned pattern of buying and bringing our own service book and hymn book. They are discouraged because they are used by different people and difficult to clean.
  • That was a little easier in the days when pretty well every church in the C of E used the 1662 BCP with Hymns Ancient & Modern or The English Hymnal!

    One could buy 'combined' versions (BCP and hymnbook bound in one volume), often as Confirmation presents, but invariably they seemed to have very small print...

    No reason, of course, why churches should not make it possible for people to buy (or be given) their own personal copies of the regular books...and it might make the clergy keep to simpler services...
  • angloidangloid Shipmate
    angloid wrote: »
    Post-Covid though, with books and service papers being discouraged, maybe we can revert to most congregational texts being easily memorised ...
    There are, of course, screens (and tablets and mobile phones) ...

    [Runs for cover ...]
    I think after several months of being glued to screens of one kind or another, many people will be glad of a release from that!
  • Well, there is that ... but the focal lengths will be very different!
  • As with most things, I fjnd myself somewhere along a spectrum here where Quaker minimalism on the one hand feels far too - well, minimalist, whereas Nosebleed High Mass is impressive but far too fussy.

    We can't 'bottle' these things but I can think of occasions in all settings I'm familiar with or have visited - where what's been done - whatever the style - feels appropriate, faithful to its own tradition and thoroughly authentic.

    I don't think we can start from scratch, but I think that we can cultivate intentionality in a way that avoids artificiality and retains authenticity.
  • ZappaZappa Ecclesiantics Host
    angloid wrote: »
    Post-Covid though, with books and service papers being discouraged, maybe we can revert to most congregational texts being easily memorised ...
    There are, of course, screens (and tablets and mobile phones) ...

    [Runs for cover ...]

    Don't we get strobes and dry ice any more?
  • Would flickering candles and clouds of incense do, instead?
    :innocent:
  • ZappaZappa Ecclesiantics Host
    Yes, please!
  • @Gamaliel

    Have you realised there are two versions of high? One is OTT ceremonial and I can only take small doses. After about the second day of it, I want OUT. The other I tend to call monastic high is actually very plain. First encountered it among the Anglican Franciscans now the evening congregation at St Obscures has that vibe about it. The morning is as close as they can do to OTT on a regular basis but the full works only come out on major feast days. Nothing folksy about it, minimalist but reverent. You can find something fairly similar among certain Presbyterians which is about as far away as you can get worship wise from Charismatic house churches as I can imagine.
  • Yes, I've realised that alright.

    In the fussiness stakes, I've seen far more drama and high-camp palaver in Anglo-Catholic services than anything I've seen in RC or Anglican monastic circles or in Orthodoxy.

    The Orthodox are as high as kites but they seem more relaxed about it somehow.

    Believe it or not, I've been to far more Orthodox and RC services than Anglo-Catholic ones and whilst I can 'admire' the fol-de-rol and sense of ceremony in ultra-high Anglican circles it can also leave me cold.

    Monastic simplicity I like.

    I'm sure you are right about certain Presbyterian circles too but that's not a tradition I've been exposed to a great deal, other than one visit to a Kirk service in Scotland. Most URC churches I know derived from the Congregationalists. I think I've only attended a service in one which had been Presbyterian originally.
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