Worship that swept us off our feet: Saint Paul's Seattle

Worship that swept us off our feet: Saint Paul's Seattle
Worship that swept us off our feet
So what’s transferable?
Small issues with large consequence
Instinctual and intuitive leadership
The role of the bishop and the diocese

Saint Paul's, Seattle: The Search Process

Worship that swept us off our feet: Saint Paul's Seattle

There are two starting places: one is a series of recent conversations, the other is a book. The two are entwined.  

I've been meeting with Mother Melissa Skelton[i] on a regular basis over the last few months. We have a long, rich and complex history together. The conversations have been fun, energized, and full of God’s good grace.

One part of the conversation has been about the remarkable events that have occurred at St. Paul's Parish, Seattle, where Melissa is the Rector, during the past eight years.

There has been a movement:

• From fear to hope
• From a loss of confidence to faith
• From the existence of an apostolic core to a growing apostolic core and a set of spiritual competencies, values and habits that creates a healthy, faithful, and growing parish culture
• From an average Sunday attendance of 89 to 253[ii]
• From a usually amazing liturgy to a consistently amazing liturgy
• From two to four Eucharists on Sunday (Melissa is at all of them)
• From doubts about identity and purpose to clarity and ownership
• From a strong life of common prayer to a stronger and more shared life
• From a “talking heads” approach to adult formation programs to a strongly experiential and participatory approach
• From an uncertain approach regarding a common service ministry to one that is stable and consistent with the parish spirituality
• From property in poor shape with a liturgical space that was somehow out of whack to a significant renovation to the property including a liturgical space that is graceful and beautiful[iii]
• From lack of attention to visitors to an effective and gracious approach to welcoming and incorporation
• From corporate behavior patterns that were a mix of healthy stability and less than healthy stagnation to a Benedictine pattern of stability, conversation of life and obedience.

There’s more, much more. Parishes are systems, they are microcosms of the Body of Christ and as such, change in one part will generate change in other parts.  And, yes, I know, as much as we all want to think we don’t care about numbers, the change in average Sunday attendance is a grabber. They are apparently on their way to 300.

How can most of our parishes become healthy, faithful, growing communities?

Our talks weren’t really about “look what we’ve done at St. Paul’s” but what can most parishes do to revitalize their life? We were seeking to name the attitudes, knowledge and skills that others could make use of in efforts of parish development. We were using what has happened at St. Paul’s as a way of grounding the discussion. We were naming the habits of renewal.

What I'm sharing now is a glimpse, a few thoughts based on those conversations and my own experience. This is not a systematic attempt to present how we might go about revitalizing most of our congregations; it’s more of a foretaste. Maybe in the coming years Melissa or I or Michelle Heyne or maybe you, will write that book and design that training program.

Worship that swept us off our feet and modeled what we might hope for in many more churches across the Communion.

The phrase is from Bishops Mary Gray-Reeves and Michael Perham as they share their learnings from a “pilgrimage of grace” based on visiting fourteen Anglican emergent churches in the US and Britain.[iv]

As I read their book I found myself responding along two lines. One was that they have done the church a service by noting ways in which we might learn from the emergent churches. The second was that what really excited them and gave them hope were two communities in Seattle—Compline at St. Mark’s Cathedral and the primary Sunday Mass at St. Paul’s.

Compline at St. Mark’s has drawn the attention of the wider church for many years. Hundreds of young people attending a traditional Episcopal act of worship is surprising and disorienting for many in the church. We like it. But then we may feel uncertain.

My read is that the uncertainty has to do with not seeing a way to learn from it. And that’s with good reason. The young people drawn to Compline on Sunday evenings do so largely as observers of a performance and few make a transition from Compline to life in a congregation.

Here’s what I learn from it—there are a percentage of young people attracted to and fed by what Robert Webber called ancient-future forms of worship and that the Episcopal Church knows these forms well. It’s part of what lies within Brian McLaren’s “Episcopal Moment.”

However it is Saint Paul’s Church that brought on the response, “Worship that swept us off our feet and modeled what we might hope for in many more churches across the Communion.” They were attending on the Second Sunday of Lent in 2010. The priest presiding and preaching wasn’t the rector, Mother Skelton. There were around 150 in the congregation “with a wide age range, including a large proportion of young adults.” Later in the book they say, “But it was at St. Paul’s Seattle that we experienced most fully the power of shared gesture for building up a sense of the body of Christ and of a community intent on God.” They then described the liturgy and then asked themselves a question, “What was special about this worship?”

They noted that it was fundamentally “familiar” and “conventional” and went on to share three elements that “contributed to its being a stunning and moving experience.” First, “a deep spirituality of engagement by the entire congregation.” Second, it was carefully choreographed and rehearsed, yet it did not feel precious or stilted; the whole liturgy was a beautiful dance.” Third, “the non-verbal participation by the entire congregation” referring to acts of mutual reverence that had the effect of “creating a sense of a community engaged in something entirely corporate and significant for them.”[v]

For the two bishops it was the Saint Paul’s experience that offered something that was transferable across the Communion. I’d agree with that assessment.

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Worship that swept us off our feet
Worship that swept us off our feet
So what’s transferable?
Small issues with large consequence
Instinctual and intuitive leadership
The role of the bishop and the diocese 

Saint Paul's, Seattle: The Search Process

A List of All Postings

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[i] Also known as Mother Melissa, Melissa, and my dear friend and someone I once shared a marriage with.

[ii] Average Sunday Attendance

2005		89
2006		125
2007		150
2008		155
2009		179
2010		198
2011		218
2012		253

[iii] “Building was ‘run down at the heels’ and worship space had powerful bones but had an odd and incongruent aesthetic”… moved to make it “more accessible and hospitable; strengthen parish identity via an emphasis on Baptism and Eucharist (font and altar) and to integrate the aesthetic and connect it to our Northwest location.” -Mother Skelton

[iv]  Written up in The Hospitality of God: Emerging Worship for a Missional Church, Mary Gray-Reeves & Michael Perham, Seabury Books, 2011. Page 79.

[v] The Hospitality of God pages 100 - 101