Worship that swept us off our feet: small issues with large consequence
Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 12:28PM 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
The small issues with large consequence
Mother Skelton faced a number of these in her first year. I’ll describe four.
First, there was the incense. It was used most Sundays and major feast days but not always. It was one of those compromises not acknowledged and covered over with a liturgical rationale about seasons.
As noted earlier the most important thing that Melissa did was to have kept the integrity of the liturgy alive. She had her own love for it and sensed that in that experience of grace and beauty was a future for Saint Paul’s. So, she enhanced it and built upon it.
But the first thing was to keep it alive against those who thought that it was the problem; that if somehow you watered it down, if somehow you made it less offensive to some visitors who didn't like the incense or the singing or the sense of reverence, that would turn things around. And maybe stop calling ourselves Anglo Catholics!
The people who thought those things were smart and articulate. Some were wealthy and gave generously. They were lively, interesting people but they knew nothing about what it takes to revitalize a parish church.
So she stayed with the thing she loved and she protected it and she enhanced it. Fortunately it was something the majority of the congregation also loved.
As I remember things she went through a bit of a struggle with all the possibilities and challenges around the incense question. And then she decided to use incense every Sunday and major feast day. And as though they were linked together on a chain, she decided, “this is an Anglo Catholic parish and we will live that well.”
Second, moving the announcements out of the Eucharist and into coffee hour was connected with the priority of the liturgy as offered to the glory of God and as the primary act in the formation of the People of God. This act improved the flow of the Eucharist while making announcements more relaxed and conversational. It was a clear message about keeping the main thing the main thing.
Third, was the nametag matter I wrote about that earlier. Within that issue was another deeper matter—if we are really welcoming and accepting will we do this small thing, even if we’d rather not, to make things slightly easier for visitors and new people?[i]
Forth, the Daily Office[ii] carried within it at least three deeper matters. One had to do with turf, a second with parish authenticity, and the third with being an Episcopal parish with a Prayer Book spirituality. There were faithful members who had maintained the parish’s saying of a public Office over the years. They did this week after week even if they were there just with the “Angles and Archangels and the Whole Company of Heaven.” But if it was to become accessible to more members things had to change. It needed to be from the Prayer Book, at the same time every day, and others needed to be invited into making it happen.
The strengthen of the Daily office was an expression of the parish’s gift for prayer. It was part of who they were, and still are.
The matter of Prayer Book spirituality is interrelated with how unique identities—like Anglo Catholic or Evangelical, Progressive or Emergent—connect with the Episcopal ethos. Melissa understood that while the Anglo Catholic tradition of having a daily mass was good, that the daily saying of the Office was more essential. She wanted the parish to live the Prayer Book’s spirituality of common prayer; to have the benefits of the Daily Prayers of the Church.[iii] Here’s what Evelyn Underhill wrote,
The peculiarity of the Anglican tradition is the equal emphasis which it gives to the Divine Office and the Eucharist; that is to say, to Biblical and to Sacramental worship. Where this balance is disturbed, its special character is lost. ...It is, I believe, by the balanced and instructed development of these two great instruments of Christian worship—carrying them forward without deflection from their supernatural orientation, yet keeping them flexible to the changing spiritual needs and spiritual insights of the world—that the Anglican Communion will best fulfill its liturgical office within the Body of Christ. Here support and stimulus is given to the Godward life of the individual, while the solemn objectivity of true Catholic worship is preserved.[iv]
Something I’ve noticed during all the church’s recent struggles is that the Anglo Catholic and Evangelical parishes split over whether they lived fully within an Episcopal Ethos and spirituality or lived only some part of it.[v] Those that did are still with us and are making significant contributions to our life.
In all these four things it would have been easy to go along with the voices wanted to drop them or not go there. It’s all “small stuff”—right? But life is sacramental and the small things and habits have connections with deeper things. Too many have a weak grasp of sacramentality or of how human systems actually work. Our ways of doing things are interwoven with values as well as profound and often subconscious assumptions about the nature of God and humanity and the dynamics within and among.
In your parish--What are the small matters that are before you now? What of larger consequence is tied to them? Can you see it? What within you resists offering the leadership needed? What calls you forward?
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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
[i] In the section Improving the Sunday morning experience in Part One. Also addressed in the posting about coffee hour.
[ii] Discussed in Part Two in the section on “An overall strengthening of prayer life grounded in the Prayer Book’s threefold rule of prayer.” The methods used to accomplish this are presented in Fill All Things: The Spiritual Dynamics of the Parish Church, Robert A. Gallagher, Ascension Press, 2008. See pages 169 – 177 for a variety of ideas. The specific approach used at St. Paul’s is seen in the section on “Strengthening the Daily Office” and “PR for the Office” pages 171 – 173 and “Saint Paul’s Church, Seattle pages 176 – 177. There’s also a chapter on this in In Your Holy Spirit: Traditional Spiritual Practices in Today’s Christian Life, Michelle Heyne, Ascension Press, 2011 and In Your Holy Spirit: Shaping the Parish Through Spiritual Practices, Robert A. Gallagher 2011, Ascension Press.
[iii] “Eucharist – Office – private prayer forms one whole balanced organic life” and “private prayer is absolutely dependent on the Office and the Eucharist” Martin Thornton “Our worship tradition as Episcopalians is based on a three-part structure. Michael Ramsey, the one-hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury, referred to it as the “Benedictine triangle.” Martin Thornton called it the “Catholic Threefold Rule of Prayer.” It is the Prayer Book’s way of prayer. The three elements, Eucharist, Daily Office, and Personal Devotions, comprise the fundamentals of a disciplined Christian spirituality in the Anglican tradition. The use of this pattern can help individuals and parishes move away from the attempt to base our prayer life on a self-made, unintegrated list of "rules" toward an integrated Rule grounded in The Book of Common Prayer. It is as a parish, as a local expression of the Body of Christ, that we may fully participate in and offer this threefold pattern. As individuals we will at times participate in this pattern, carrying others in prayer. At other times we will be carried.” Robert Gallagher in Fill All Things: The Spiritual Dynamics of the Parish Church. http://www.episcopalbookstore.com/product.aspx?productid=4292
The interplay among the three elements is explore in more detail on pages 56 – 57.
[iv] Worship by Evelyn Underhill, 1936, pp.335-336
[v] Also see these pages The Episcopal Way, Spiritual Maps, and The Threefold Rule of Prayer