Three different churches and three different service styles ranging from BCP (Book of Common Prayer - 1662) through to Common Worship with a bit of something that drew largely upon the ASB (Alternative Service Book). Who ever said all our services were the same?
I love the BCP services, they are something that once the rhythm is set, become solid gold! The language is Shakespearean (actually, with the King James Bible we taught Shakespeare stuff and gave the English language words and phrases) and the style is penitent rather than party. There's movement, the Commandments and so much more in it - no wonder so many are in love with it.
The Book of Common Prayer is still, as I understand it, the principal Prayer book - ASB came and went - and now the Common Worship has arrived, but only as an add on, a bit of a novelty act in some ways I. The way some use it.
The BCP morning service, which I haven't seems since a chorister is great liturgy and provides an opportunity for an anthem and Bible set to music, is an extravaganza indeed.
The Common Worship service is pretty much just there and fills the service space with enough words to do what you need. It's workmanlike and in some places cut short enough to leave space for the amazingly interminably repetitive 'worship' and devoid of silence offerings so many appear to enjoy as Church today. Much as I love many of the modern songs, I do find myself sighing as those who have to have a new song every week and rush to be the first with the latest offering. But it is less and less about focus on God and more and more venue management - sadly there will never be enough in most of these places to need bouncers :-)
The other service was a 'bare bones' service. It ticked all the boxes and even with me preaching lasted fifty minutes! But it was what the people wanted and it was workmanlike in that it deleivered a balanced service with everything that should be on the plate to get to that which was on the table - so 'job done'.
So often these days we confuse liturgy and worship, separating them and almost making them enemies. We appear to have lost the place of silence, in fact we seem so afraid of it that should more than a handful of second of the stuff appear in a service, we pepper the silence with another piece of music or something trite - and like a meal where seasoning has been overly applied, the result is wind. But it isn't the wind of the Spirit blowing!
Few pastoral encounters today - but enough to keep me humble and busy.
Looking at a quiet week ahead as have a very different week planned.
God; his love, grace and bread will sustain me - and the company is worth having.
So bring it on.q
This place of reflection is here for me to dialogue internally and gain insight and perspective. It first appeared in this current form for some of those looking at creating their own journal as part of the their journey to discerning vocation. The Morning prayer is there also for that same purpose: to create the discipline of prayer.
Showing posts with label Sunday services. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sunday services. Show all posts
Monday, 20 February 2017
Thursday, 15 October 2015
The 'Evening Service': a thing of the past? (setting the scene)
A friend (and colleague) asked me whether the evening service slot was a declining and dying church service.
Another friend (who is also a colleague) told me that the evening service was a dinosaur and in his church had been laid to rest.
Yet another friend (and again, a colleague) - bet you're surprised I have three friends aren't you? - told me how they wished they had the courage to draw stumps and, 'Put the dreadful evening service to death!' The numbers coming were low and it was 'doing church because they'd 'always done it at that time!'
It seems that many of those around me are struggling with the numbers of people coming to an evening service on a Sunday. One colleague (an acquaintance) said recently that, 'If they didn't have to go to evening service they wouldn't!' What chance does any service (or perhaps church congregation have) if this is the attitude shown by the cleric I wonder?
The question many of us engage with is this: 'Are we are letting Church run in a rut that has it's origins in the monastic order of life and its reality in something done by rote and not relationship'... and if so, how do we change it?
When the followers of 'the Way' got going we kept certain times set aside during the day to worship God. These became a formalised part of the monastic life's worship, giving us: Matins, Lauds, prime, tierce, sext, none, vespers and compline (we have a local order which keeps it). This became condensed into the Matins (the daily office - the early stuff), the Lauds (our main Sunday service) - Vespers (our evensong) and Compline (the ready for bed service) - a service which sometimes appears in the evening service slot.
So what's so special about Sunday? It was a day when most people were not working and so we broke bread together and made it a special day: Our mini Easter Sunday in which the resurrection was celebrated, the word was preached and the bread and wine offered. Just like every other day (many start each day with the daily (morning) office and end it with evening prayer or Compline - adding Communion too when they can) with the added benefit that it was a day set aside from the daily toil.
When I was a student we tended to go to an evening service on a Sunday. When I worked shifts I tended to go to the evening service because I worked on a Sunday. The Sunday evening service was for some the forerunner of Fresh Expressions (a service put on by Christians for those who otherwise wouldn't be church). During the war years, it enabled those working on a Sunday on the war effort to come into fellowship and 'be church'.
I have always enjoyed the evening service slot because it has provided a time for me to charge my batteries and get ready for the week ahead. My experience of Sunday evening services varied from place to place:
+ In one place it was a light service with 'fellowship' afterwards (we had quizzes, talks and the like).
+ In the Baptist church in our town (Marlow) it was fellowship time. Sometimes all the church and
sometimes the 'Young People's Fellowship' where we played guitars, had meaningful discussions,
and chilled out. A place of safety and somewhere for the kids to go!
(a lesson to be learned here already then?)
+ In St Helen's, Bishopsgate (as a student) it was note taking and then off to 'Mr Natural's Burger Bar
(Ludgate Circus), where we would stay until chucking out time discussing the text and comparing
notes from the service.
+ In the Pentecostal church I was part of, Sunday evenings upstairs were almost as popular as the,
even later, service in the basement! Sunday evening service was a lighter, more relaxed and
focussed part of the day where thematic stuff took place and healing services and other stuff
happened.
+ In Holy Trinity Hounslow, it would be a celebration. The morning service was formal and a bit up
the candle, but in the evenings it was sound teaching, good music and the fire falling!
+ In Christ Church, Ware, we would find ourselves in a light conversation and gentle music providing
the setting for some real dialogue, the gaining of knowledge and becoming challenged.
+ Coming to serve my 'Title Post' I found myself in a very different place to anything I had ever
experienced before. Here we had a pattern of Sung Eucharists and Evensong (with the occasional
'Prayer and Praise'). Those who came were the people who had always come - and there were few
new people added to their number - which perhaps accounts for the decline in numbers at the
'evening slot'. They are all slowly being taken off the shelves that no one has restocked!
+ Moving to where I am now, having never had an evening service, I decided to offer one!
During the Sunday slot we have done a variety of things which have included:
Taizé services, Healing, 60 minute theology, Compline, Café Church, Prayer services (prayer
stations, Labyrinths and the like), contemporary services, Celtic praise, courses and more besides -
all to varying degrees of success inn terms of numbers, but always successful in terms of growth
and praise (and surely that is the defining factor).
I will leave you to select upon what I have written - there is much more to consider here, but this hopefully lays some foundation and gives direction for us to move from. Hopefully I have started you thinking about your own experiences, because this is where you need to start from.
Consider the merits and pitfalls of your own experience and use this to start drawing out some good and bad practice, remember who came, remember why you went (or perhaps didn't come - for this is equally important). After all, how can you move anywhere without knowing where you are and where you need to be travelling to?
Pax
Another friend (who is also a colleague) told me that the evening service was a dinosaur and in his church had been laid to rest.
Yet another friend (and again, a colleague) - bet you're surprised I have three friends aren't you? - told me how they wished they had the courage to draw stumps and, 'Put the dreadful evening service to death!' The numbers coming were low and it was 'doing church because they'd 'always done it at that time!'
It seems that many of those around me are struggling with the numbers of people coming to an evening service on a Sunday. One colleague (an acquaintance) said recently that, 'If they didn't have to go to evening service they wouldn't!' What chance does any service (or perhaps church congregation have) if this is the attitude shown by the cleric I wonder?
The question many of us engage with is this: 'Are we are letting Church run in a rut that has it's origins in the monastic order of life and its reality in something done by rote and not relationship'... and if so, how do we change it?
When the followers of 'the Way' got going we kept certain times set aside during the day to worship God. These became a formalised part of the monastic life's worship, giving us: Matins, Lauds, prime, tierce, sext, none, vespers and compline (we have a local order which keeps it). This became condensed into the Matins (the daily office - the early stuff), the Lauds (our main Sunday service) - Vespers (our evensong) and Compline (the ready for bed service) - a service which sometimes appears in the evening service slot.
So what's so special about Sunday? It was a day when most people were not working and so we broke bread together and made it a special day: Our mini Easter Sunday in which the resurrection was celebrated, the word was preached and the bread and wine offered. Just like every other day (many start each day with the daily (morning) office and end it with evening prayer or Compline - adding Communion too when they can) with the added benefit that it was a day set aside from the daily toil.
When I was a student we tended to go to an evening service on a Sunday. When I worked shifts I tended to go to the evening service because I worked on a Sunday. The Sunday evening service was for some the forerunner of Fresh Expressions (a service put on by Christians for those who otherwise wouldn't be church). During the war years, it enabled those working on a Sunday on the war effort to come into fellowship and 'be church'.
I have always enjoyed the evening service slot because it has provided a time for me to charge my batteries and get ready for the week ahead. My experience of Sunday evening services varied from place to place:
+ In one place it was a light service with 'fellowship' afterwards (we had quizzes, talks and the like).
+ In the Baptist church in our town (Marlow) it was fellowship time. Sometimes all the church and
sometimes the 'Young People's Fellowship' where we played guitars, had meaningful discussions,
and chilled out. A place of safety and somewhere for the kids to go!
(a lesson to be learned here already then?)
+ In St Helen's, Bishopsgate (as a student) it was note taking and then off to 'Mr Natural's Burger Bar
(Ludgate Circus), where we would stay until chucking out time discussing the text and comparing
notes from the service.
+ In the Pentecostal church I was part of, Sunday evenings upstairs were almost as popular as the,
even later, service in the basement! Sunday evening service was a lighter, more relaxed and
focussed part of the day where thematic stuff took place and healing services and other stuff
happened.
+ In Holy Trinity Hounslow, it would be a celebration. The morning service was formal and a bit up
the candle, but in the evenings it was sound teaching, good music and the fire falling!
+ In Christ Church, Ware, we would find ourselves in a light conversation and gentle music providing
the setting for some real dialogue, the gaining of knowledge and becoming challenged.
+ Coming to serve my 'Title Post' I found myself in a very different place to anything I had ever
experienced before. Here we had a pattern of Sung Eucharists and Evensong (with the occasional
'Prayer and Praise'). Those who came were the people who had always come - and there were few
new people added to their number - which perhaps accounts for the decline in numbers at the
'evening slot'. They are all slowly being taken off the shelves that no one has restocked!
+ Moving to where I am now, having never had an evening service, I decided to offer one!
During the Sunday slot we have done a variety of things which have included:
Taizé services, Healing, 60 minute theology, Compline, Café Church, Prayer services (prayer
stations, Labyrinths and the like), contemporary services, Celtic praise, courses and more besides -
all to varying degrees of success inn terms of numbers, but always successful in terms of growth
and praise (and surely that is the defining factor).
I will leave you to select upon what I have written - there is much more to consider here, but this hopefully lays some foundation and gives direction for us to move from. Hopefully I have started you thinking about your own experiences, because this is where you need to start from.
Consider the merits and pitfalls of your own experience and use this to start drawing out some good and bad practice, remember who came, remember why you went (or perhaps didn't come - for this is equally important). After all, how can you move anywhere without knowing where you are and where you need to be travelling to?
Pax
 |
| It's good to see so many here for a Sunday evening! |
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
'All we want is a service on a Sunday!'
One of the saddest things I encounter are the words above given voice by one or more members of a church's congregation. The suspicion made flesh causes the heart to miss a beat and the energy to become dissipated and drained away through the hole the words have punched.
The reality is that, for some, all they require from their church is a Sunday morning service and that, having ticked the boxes, is the sum total of it all. And why not? After all there's loads on the TV and who would want to be in a church building when you can watch the many tempting offerings before us?
When I first became a Christian I couldn't keep out of the church building; I longed for the company of other Christians as discussions of the challenging bits the Bible and our praying together. As I grew up I found myself married and slowly and surely along came our children. We'd go to church as a family in the morning and then, leaving Wendy to look after the kids, would go back in the evening to get more of the same. Sometimes we'd switch and Wendy would go to the evening service and I'd stay at home - but the reality was that the Sunday evening slot was something special. The same was true of the various groups we belonged to during the day for Wendy and in the evening for me.
Now I'm not saying this to display my Pharisee-like observance of doing church but making the point that from the earliest days church was an opportunity to meet with other believers and sing God's praise, to hear His word and to continue my love affair with Him and those who shared my passion. My parents used to complain that I was never home for when I wasn't in church I was playing sport or woking shifts as an engineer.
'Times have changed,' people tell me when this topic arises, 'We have family and other things which crowd in and demand our attention,' and yet it was ever so and yet evening services were still being well supported!
The Christian faith is about so much more than 'just going to church'; it is about being so taken up with the love of God that you cannot wait to be with other believers and get excited about God in their company (you do get excited about God don't you?) and sing songs which put your feelings into words and excite you still further and hear words from the Big Black Book which excite you and challenge you and . . . Sorry, you seemed to have nodded off then!
There are many who tell me (by words or attendance patterns) that church is something that happens when there are no other distractions or demands: Church is, it seems, something we have to do rather than something we want to do!
So here is a challenge for you (and me - even though I know people tell me it's different for me because, 'I have to be in church,').
Step back for a moment and ask yourself what your church attendance looks like: Regular and frequent or hit and miss? Sitting in a pew or sat in front of the TV?
Now ask yourself when you last opened your Bible and read it; or took the sheets with the readings home and read that? Can you even find your Bible (last time I asked someone that it was under the coffee table stopping it rocking - honest!)?
When did you last spend time talking to God? What was your last prayer over (sorry, praying the person in front would get out of the way doesn't count!)?
Church attendance is a habit many of us has lost and as we allow our faith life to slow we begin a process which sees it eventually come to a halt. Just like some places and their evening services perhaps?
The reality is that, for some, all they require from their church is a Sunday morning service and that, having ticked the boxes, is the sum total of it all. And why not? After all there's loads on the TV and who would want to be in a church building when you can watch the many tempting offerings before us?
When I first became a Christian I couldn't keep out of the church building; I longed for the company of other Christians as discussions of the challenging bits the Bible and our praying together. As I grew up I found myself married and slowly and surely along came our children. We'd go to church as a family in the morning and then, leaving Wendy to look after the kids, would go back in the evening to get more of the same. Sometimes we'd switch and Wendy would go to the evening service and I'd stay at home - but the reality was that the Sunday evening slot was something special. The same was true of the various groups we belonged to during the day for Wendy and in the evening for me.
Now I'm not saying this to display my Pharisee-like observance of doing church but making the point that from the earliest days church was an opportunity to meet with other believers and sing God's praise, to hear His word and to continue my love affair with Him and those who shared my passion. My parents used to complain that I was never home for when I wasn't in church I was playing sport or woking shifts as an engineer.
'Times have changed,' people tell me when this topic arises, 'We have family and other things which crowd in and demand our attention,' and yet it was ever so and yet evening services were still being well supported!
The Christian faith is about so much more than 'just going to church'; it is about being so taken up with the love of God that you cannot wait to be with other believers and get excited about God in their company (you do get excited about God don't you?) and sing songs which put your feelings into words and excite you still further and hear words from the Big Black Book which excite you and challenge you and . . . Sorry, you seemed to have nodded off then!
There are many who tell me (by words or attendance patterns) that church is something that happens when there are no other distractions or demands: Church is, it seems, something we have to do rather than something we want to do!
So here is a challenge for you (and me - even though I know people tell me it's different for me because, 'I have to be in church,').
Step back for a moment and ask yourself what your church attendance looks like: Regular and frequent or hit and miss? Sitting in a pew or sat in front of the TV?
Now ask yourself when you last opened your Bible and read it; or took the sheets with the readings home and read that? Can you even find your Bible (last time I asked someone that it was under the coffee table stopping it rocking - honest!)?
When did you last spend time talking to God? What was your last prayer over (sorry, praying the person in front would get out of the way doesn't count!)?
Church attendance is a habit many of us has lost and as we allow our faith life to slow we begin a process which sees it eventually come to a halt. Just like some places and their evening services perhaps?
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