To the right you can see what it looks like when an admitted liturgy-geek does liturgy planning. CDSP does a lot of liturgy, 15 services a week. The main service is the Thursday evening Eucharist, which is designated as community night. I was put on the team for the Eucharist this past Thursday, which meant I got to participate in the planning for said liturgy. What you see is a suite of hymnals, a midi keyboard (to plunk out hymns and see how they sound), various prayer books, and other resources I used to draft up what I thought the liturgy should contain. I then met with the rest of the team and we put all our ideas together. It took a great deal of effort, probably two hours each for a group of about 8 people. In other words, two full days of work for one person. I thoroughly enjoyed it and loved the intentionality and specificity it brought to the service when we finally worshipped together.The really interesting thing about this service is that we deliberately toned down our usual liturgical variation. At CDSP we typically do lots of different kinds of liturgies-Rite I, Rite II, Enriching our Worship, as well as newly constructed liturgies borrowing from all around the Anglican Communion and beyond. When we met to plan we looked at where we were as a community (half-way through the semester, just before a week break for Reading Week), and unanimously decided that what the community needed was something familiar, something easy, something comforting. We basically took Holy Eucharist Rite II, the most familiar form for most Episcopalians, made careful hymn selections, tinkered a bit with where to chant and where to speak different sections of the service, fiddled with the choice of prefaces, and called it good. It seems to have worked. People expressed appreciation for not having to "think too much for a change" and for the ability to follow along easily, enabling more reflection and prayer.
Coming home for reading week to my home parish, I had new appreciation for the level of consistency in our prayer and worship. Like many parishes, and unlike a seminary, we don't do much liturgical tinkering or change. Having capped off six weeks of lots of services that demanded your full attention with a service designed to be comfortable, I had a new appreciation for the freedom that a comfortable and familiar liturgy gives for personal spirituality. I do think that it is important for a seminary to expose us to different liturgies. Each community has its own comfortable style and I have no idea where I'll end up. I also think that communities can benefit a bit from a little liturgical innovation, or at least careful planning and intentionality. If liturgy is too comfortable it can become so easy and familiar that it doesn't speak to where you are now or to where you need to go. But a little comfort can give space for the Spirit to work.
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I will admit to occasionally zoning out during the service while still saying all the right words in all the right places. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this.
So I have to admit to liking the occasional variety (like Eucharistic Prayer C for the feast of St. Francis of Assisi) to bring me back to the service. I also really like experiencing the different kinds of services at things like General Convention and various young adult gatherings which give an opportunity to see what else is out there. (both good and not so good)
Other than helping Robin plan the service for the Saturday night Eucharist for Prov when we hosted in SLC, I can't say that I have much experience in planning liturgy, and even then all I really did was sit down with her and we discussed what should be in the service, and how we wanted it to go, and then she looked it all up and assembled it (though fabulously, people still talk about how great that service was). But even from that little experience, I can see why you enjoy it.
I wish you had been with us when we "split" the congregation among those who wanted Rite II and those who wanted a kind of hootenanny style "folk" service. The thought was that all the younger 'uns would go to the folk service, which was set in the parish hall, with the altar that rolling side table that's still there. There were guitars, and unfortunately, many bad voices, but hey, it was what it was.
That said, I think it's hard for Episcopalians to veer far from their comfort zones. Ultimately, the two-service model did really divide the church, with several longtime members leaving, guitars in tow.
Steve Alder has said to me, and I agree with him, hey, you stand us up and give us communion and we'll do it anywhere. That's us, but not them.
Which brings me to a side-issue of sorts. During the H1N1 hysteria, we are being told not to partake of the cup during communion. OK, I see the point, but I'm really not sure how I feel about this. In fact, I'm so unsure that I think I may defer communion itself. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, Matt.
I am laughing and feeling sad as I read Kathy's comments about the "hootenannny" days. If the moving of the altar is referred to as the "Furniture Incident" at St. Paul's, what would we call the folk service movement? The "Six-String Incident"??
It is easy for me to act like I think all this is silly, but the fact is, Patrick and I chose St. Paul's because of the people and the service style -- maybe not even in that order. So these things are important, or at least comfortable. Or comforting.
In terms of "style" of worship, I do think it is an important thing to pay attention to in a community. The splitting of the congregation over guitars is a good example. It probably wasn't the best way to handle what appears to have been a push from a vocal minority to change the entire congregation radically. What's hard is that liturgy uses a small set, probably less than 25, of key symbols and practices to convey A LOT of meanings. Meanings that vary for each person even. So, while for our Rector, the high and distant altar conveyed hierarchy and clericalism (which, I'm coming to find out, it was intended to do when our type of church was designed), for others, the trip to the altar was a pilgrimage and it had deep memories going way back of taking communion with family, in that spot. It had other meanings for other folks. It's tough.
In terms of the H1N1 and wine issue, it is completely true and within the rubrics that taking bread (or wine) only "counts" as full communion. I wouldn't recommend deferring communion. I might have approached the worry differently, but I don't want to second guess the rector, who probably has concerns we may not even know about. This too shall pass.
April, the planning you did with Robin is basically a stripped down version of what we did, and we have done that kind of planning at CDSP as well. As you saw, it IS great fun AND a little intentionality goes a long way. I'm trying to figure out how to do such planning in whatever community I serve. The advantage of our liturgy is that you can kind of coast and pull it off. Doing a little more adds a lot, but it takes time and, as my wife likes to point out, that's time you aren't feeding the poor or creating social justice.....
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