I'd love to begin a discussion of what happens currently in Sydney (and other evangelical Anglican) church services/meetings. At present, the standard format (liturgy?) seems to be: Song X 2
Welcome (often forgetting to pray)
Confession (perhaps)
Song
Break
Notices
Bible reading (on which the sermon is based)
Sermon
Song
Prayers (extempore, usually about local interests)
Song
Close
Coffee
THis pattern is indicative of churches I have had a hand in running, so I am as much to blame as anyone. But it seems to be the general pattern.
BUT: I have seven gripes with this:
1. Bible Readings - there is often no OT lesson, and the readings are entirely dictated by the sermon, which means we limit the way in which scripture may speak to us. We have no scripture unless it is explained - do we think our congregations are idiots?
2. Lord's Supper - if it is done at all, it is done in a kind of embarassed way, as quickly and as roughly as possible, and with as little prayer book as possible.
3. Creeds - what creeds? are we a creedal church or not? What do we believe? How would we know? Do we have any continuity with history at all?
4. Prayers - Confession is often missed out. On the one hand, we have abandoned the rich prayer book prayers, but we haven't got a tradition of magnificent extempore prayer like the baptists and pressies do. And we keep praying prayers that sound like announcements: "we pray for the outreach meeting on Saturday, which costs $10 a head. We pray that you would move those hear to do as I tell them and bring their friends..." Do we pray for our governments?
5. General sloppiness/messiness - church buildings are hugely and chronically untidy places. Would a lick of paint really hurt? Do we have to hand out large amounts of paper all the time? Musos leave sheets of paper everywhere! Service leaders dress badly and are underprepared, don't smile and don't introduce themselves. And they say too much, as if they were cricket commentators: 'now Jo is gonna read the Bible for us.' Power point is mucked up, or in the wrong order, or - well, something always goes wrong with it.
6. Sound systems - I can't believe that churches are so stingy about sound systems, and don't seek help for balancing sound or where the speakers ought to be placed.
7. Lack of creativity - it seems to me 'being creative' means 'having an interview'.
Perhaps I am becoming an old fogey (OK, I am). BUT: it seems to me that these services do not feed the churches well. They tend to the dull, and they are undernourishing. We have jettisoned the old forms and perhaps rightly so: but, we have also I think lost a good deal of the substance of the old Anglican way. I guess for me the shocking realisation was, that when I visited a liberal Anglo-Catholic church, they were getting more scripture than my evangelical church and it was better read. The mistaken assumption it seems to me is that a more free-form service is more 'seeker sensitive': but I would say 1 - no it isn't and 2 who is a church meeting FOR anyway? Seriously - as a pew-sitter, sometimes you do feel treated like a complete twit. Anyone? Could pastors comment as to why they do what they do in their church meetings? Could lay people say whether it is working or not?
[At Moore, we generally have a more prayer-booky service with lots of great bible stuff in it. It works really well, in my opinion: I find that it is a feast of scripture, and works on so many levels - the word of Christ dwelling among us richly indeed. The singing is great, too. And yet, when we turn the services over to the students to organise, we get the boring old sermon sandwich I describe above!]
15 comments:
I really have no idea why so many evangelical Anglicans have ditched the prayer book and/or are somewhat disparaging towards liturgy. The latter could be said of other Christians of course. I could not return to a non-liturgical church. Powerpoint should be banned. -js
Hi Michael,
This is exactly what I am thinking through at the moment. A group of us at St Matthew's in Perth are trying to think through our church services, making sure they are a rich feast rather than a meagre ration.
One of our liablities is that we lean pretty heavily on the sermon (which, at our church is normally pretty good). So, for the purpose of the exercise, we are trying to develop an order of service/liturgy that would be a scrumptous feast even if the sermon was a bit of a dud.
Also on that, our service planning team was meditating last night on Colossians 3:15-17. Interesting that Paul takes the trouble to say that the word of Christ should dwell in us "richly" (Greek: plousios) as we sing to each other etc.
Can't help but think that in that context 'richly' has an aesthetic dimension: i.e., that sharing Christ's word with each other by means of music makes for a more affective and aesthetically-stimulating experience of Christ's word that could otherwise be had simply through preaching and Bible reading.
Any thoughts anyone?
Great topic Michael - but perhaps not as simple as it first appears.
I have a real appreciation for the richness of the scriptural content of the prayer book, but the language frequently leaves me cold (and I suspect I'm not alone!).
The reality is that many, many full-on prayer book services are full of meaningless, soul-less repetition that in the end, is no more a feast than the overly laid-back informal contemporary gathering.
Somehow, we need to come up with an approach that is contemporary in style and yet rich in Scripture. A meeting that engages with our bunch of post-modern Gen-y/x/whatever full of the Bible, well taught and applied.
As I'm about to change churches (in a pastoral role), in order to lead a predominantly young adult congregation, this is something quite on my mind at the moment... ;-)
Well, yes, I wouldn't advocate slavish adherence to the prayer book: I think liturgy should be a dynamic tradition... But what does 'contemporary in style' mean? I think if you have contemporary music and modern language then you can probably get away with quite alot of the old stuff. But: I think contemporary young adults actual long for a connectedness with the past. To know that you are in continuous relationship with the past is fantastic and so different from our amnesiac culture.
I agree with that 'long for a connectedness' thing for young people. Our Unichurch congregation leaders recently agreed that we ought to say the Apostle's Creed every week so as to affirm our catholicity and our connection with history. I am all for it.
Yep, also agree about the connectedness. I was thinking foremost about langauge when I said 'contemporary', which means, to my mind < heresy alert > rewriting chunks of the prayer book, as even the recent revisions in Sydney are pretty ordinary in their choice of language.
I've been working for 13 thirteen years in areas of Sydney's west where PB langauage is not 'appreciated'. Somehow we need to come up with a suitable expression of what we value in 'prayer book church' that connects with a wide range of people who don't have (or want) a Uni degree < hyperbole mode off >.
That is probably at the core of what I've been struggling with.
At some significant level, prayer book Anglicanism really is middle-class, tertiary-educated Anglicanism.
Another thing (which I realise was discussed when you posted a similar thread on the Sydneyanglicans.net fora):
Despite it being listed as an option within our prayer-books, I've yet to hear the Decalogue recited in full prior to the Confession. While I agree that the Matthew Summary suffices most of the time, I nonetheless reckon it might come in handy for us to occasionally be reminded in more detail how we've gone wrong. Major feast-days could perhaps be used as an occasion for that.
It's not fair! I wanted to post on this.
We definitely need more Bible in our gatherings - at least an OT and a NT lesson, and possibly a Psalm, too, although we could chant it or read it antiphonally. The Bible as God's word is our supreme authority. The preacher's authority is only derivative, i.e. what he says only has authority insofar as he is expounding the text faithfully. Having non-expounded readings might make that a little clearer.
I'm all for sharing the Lord's Supper every week - like Cranmer and Calvin wanted. It appears the early church broke bread even more frequently than that. We are starving ourselves of the spiritual food of Christ's body and blood, upon which we feed by faith in the Supper, by having it so infrequently (e.g. once or twice a quarter). "Ye know how grievous and unkind a thing it is, when a man hath prepared a rich feast, decked his table with all kind of provision, so that there lacketh nothing but the guests to sit down; and yet they who are called (without any cause) most unthankfully refuse to come."
There should probably be a weekly recitation of the creed, too. It is good and right for us to declare our trust in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It shows that's we're not just some sect, but that we're catholic (or 'universal' as we say at the 11.30!).
Notice-prayers are annoying, too! At least the pray-er could explain beforehand if it's unclear what he or she is praying for. As long as they don't announce, "This week, we'll be praying in three parts." I don't have a problem with written prayers (cf. the Psalter!) and it is wholesome to have extempore prayer, providing it is done in an edifying way.
Regarding points 5 and 6, I think this is sadly something that our charismatic brethren are much better at than those from our tradition. Given that we're gathering as a church family in the name of God, we should really be making the effort to do our best - for God's glory and for the edification of our brothers and sisters.
"Who is a church meeting FOR anyway?" The church - the visible covenant community, believers and their families. Yes, it's great when unbelievers come into our gatherings. We hope that when they hear the word preached and sung and Christians relating to one another and their Father, we long that they would bow down before God, too. Our evangelism is too centripetal (it's ages since I did Physics - what I mean is, trying to pull people in) - we feel we have to try and draw people into the church. No - we go out into all the world and preach the gospel. The church meeting is for God's people and its content and structure should be appropriate for that.
I've agreed with you far too much, so I'll stop there.
Daniel.
Daniel, I have two problems with your comments:
1.- Is the church "the visible covenant community..."? Or a visible expression of those assembled around Christ in the heavenlies? I also have to problem with the idea of "covenant community", but that's due to my recent of reading of Lionel Windsor's "Acovenental Perpestive on Paul".
2.- I disagree with you idea of evangelism. The Gospel is the call to come to Christ, to gather unto His presence spiritually speaking. Our assemblies surely are exactly the place for evangelism, and not mere mutual "spiritual fattening". Anyways, if the preacher is faithfull to the Word of God, even if his sermon is didactive, it should be Gospel-centered, and therefore, the Gospel should be preached every sunday!
Some thoughts:
1. What should be the ratio of time spent reading the scriptures vs time spent explaining them?
2. And with individualised portions - pre-packaged. Part of the drama of the liturgy is seeing the bread broken and the wine poured out. So often these actions have been done beforehand to save time.
3. But the creeds don't affirm PSA or inerrancy...
4. Confession is missed out - or done poorly. There ought to be a declaration of forgiveness, not another prayer for forgiveness.
5. Amen. And it is not just that service leads say too much, but they say the wrong things. Too many descriptive projecting clauses (We will now do this) when a simple imperative or cohortative would suffice - or a line of scripture that has the same function. Not everything needs to be explained every week.
6. Nuff said.
7. It's hard to be creative every week, and takes effort and forethought. Often being creative means just dropping various other bits (see 1-4) out of frustration that they are not working well.
Oh Byron you are as middle aged as me!
It's interesting that whilst sometimes Anglicans are ditching prayer book, non liturgical churches are borrowing aspects of liturgy -in my free church we use the creeds, confession and a covenant service based on the methodist covenant service -no where near as often as yu'd probably want.
I agree about more scripture readings. I also think we should be encouraging people to read the Bible away from the meeting in a way that prepares and builds from the meeting -rereading the sermon passage -reading round to get context, reading related passages etc.
And is there a place for testimony too?
Oh Byron you are as middle aged as me!
Hopefully! ;-)
(though what were you referring to?)
I'm also curious about the issue of intelligibility (this applies to sermons too) - does every line need to be understood by everyone in the audience? Is it ok for references to go over some heads if the main message is clear? Is it ok for people to only gradually come to understand the service or must everything be simplified so that every newcomer gets everything every week?
CLEAR is the great virtue we pray for. Not sure why.
Middle-aged is a state of mind. You have been middle-aged for about five years now, as far as I can tell!
Byron,
When I was little I went with my mum when my dad was preaching. Mum gave me a note pad and I wrote down the things I didn't understand -then I asked him questions later. I think it helped him too.
I think we should aim to be as clear as possible -I don't think there are any prizes for making the message complex. But yes some people will need to work at their understanding more than others -and that might not be an intellectual issue. Also our congregations shouldn't always expect us t talk directly to each of them. Sometimes our message will be for some specific people and we shouldn't dilute it by generalising. That means -as Chris Green would put it that the others are listening in/overhearing -and we need to develop that ability in them as well
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