Ship of Fools: Deconstructed Liturgy Questions

Thread: Deconstructed Liturgy Questions Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=025886

Posted by acton bell (# 15576) on :

I was recently at a church in London where the service seemed purposefully deconstructed--with a long intro of songs of praise, announcements, gospel readings, short discussions, sermon, more announcements, and finally a short eucharist boiled down to its essentials from what I am guessing is Common Worship. I was surprised to see that many didn't take communion.

I was wondering if this is fairly common? Is this a recent innovation?. I was guessing that this is drawing from the Continuing Church Movement, but as a total outsider, I haven't a clue.

Posted by John Holding (# 158) on :

I have no idea what church you were in, but what you describe looks a lot like what goes on in churches like Holy Trinity Brompton. And HTB is a congregation of the CofE in good standing, so far as I know. The "continuing churches" as you call them, primarily exist in the US, a great deal less in Canada, and almost not at all in England -- so their influence is not likely to be an issue in this case.

Some branches of the more evangelical wing of the CofE seem to some of us to sit rather lightly to the kind of liturgical obedience most of us in North America take for granted, though Ken could give you a clearer reading of that and of how widespread it is.

THe AC wing in the CofE is also far less likely than ACs in Canada or the US to follow what seem to be the rules, but in rather a different way. In part that's because really extreme ACs (and evangelicals) left the mainline version of Anglicanism in North America to form those "continuing churches", which by and large they did not in England.

John

Posted by Olaf (# 11804) on :

quote:
Originally posted by acton bell:
I was recently at a church in London where the service seemed purposefully deconstructed--with a long intro of songs of praise, announcements, gospel readings, short discussions, sermon, more announcements, and finally a short eucharist boiled down to its essentials...

How very Lutheran. Welcome to my world. Sigh.

Now of course, the question is 'Who identifies the essentials?'

Funny how it's the people's parts that largely get excised, leaving a lot of up-front chatter.

Posted by Mr. Rob (# 5823) on :

quote:
Originally posted by acton bell:

I haven't a clue.

EVOS! Next time get the name, will ya? How can attend worship in a church and not know its name or affiliation?

Posted by acton bell (# 15576) on :

quote:
I haven't a clue.
EVOS! Next time get the name, will ya? How can attend worship in a church and not know its name or affiliation?

I know exactly which church I was attending and the denomination. What I don't have a window into is where this is drawn from, which is why I asked if it was the Continuing Church Movement.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

That structure (minus the communion) sounds very like the HTB service I attended a few years back. The notices were all on a screen and pre-recorded. That service had another long strung together collection of choruses as the final part.

There are several options for the Eucharistic Prayers in Common Worship that allow for this sort of structure.

HTB - Holy Trinity Brompton

Posted by Wyclif (# 5391) on :

That rather sounds like a charismatic Anglican/Episcopal thing rather than Lutheran. But who knows—I'm quite fuzzy on what the Lutherans are doing these days.

quote:
Originally posted by acton bell:
I was recently at a church in London where the service seemed purposefully deconstructed--with a long intro of songs of praise, announcements, gospel readings, short discussions, sermon, more announcements, and finally a short eucharist boiled down to its essentials from what I am guessing is Common Worship. I was surprised to see that many didn't take communion.

I was wondering if this is fairly common? Is this a recent innovation?. I was guessing that this is drawing from the Continuing Church Movement, but as a total outsider, I haven't a clue.

Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :

quote:
Originally posted by acton bell:
I was recently at a church in London where the service seemed purposefully deconstructed--with a long intro of songs of praise, announcements, gospel readings, short discussions, sermon, more announcements, and finally a short eucharist boiled down to its essentials from what I am guessing is Common Worship. I was surprised to see that many didn't take communion.

I was wondering if this is fairly common? Is this a recent innovation?. I was guessing that this is drawing from the Continuing Church Movement, but as a total outsider, I haven't a clue.

This is common in evangelical CofE churches, however there is almost always a more traditional BCP service done around 8 or 9 AM. I've never seen a short Eucharist however.

Basically Sunday in the evos I've attended looks like this:

9:30 AM BCP
11 AM CW roughly in the right order, longer worship time
6 PM "CW" very deconstructed, targeted at students and young people

Were you at an evening service?

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

That isn't at all what I would mean by "deconstruction"! [Smile]

Maybe I spend too much time with academics.

quote:
Originally posted by acton bell:

I was wondering if this is fairly common?

Bog standard MOTR-to-conservative-evangelical.

quote:

Is this a recent innovation?.

Nope. Quite normal for as long as I've been going to church (which is about forty years) and certainly existed before then.

In some ways its more of an organic growth from 18th/19th century Prayer Book Anglicanism than current Anglo-Catholic practice would be.

So, to deconstruct your deconstruction:

quote:
Originally posted by acton bell:
[...] a long intro of songs of praise [...]

Pretty universal among charismatic evangelicals, quite common among open evangelicals (we do it about once a months at our church), not unknown among conservative evangelicals, and also quite common on occasional Sundays in liberal/MOTR places.

quote:

[...] gospel readings [...]

The bad habit of skipping the readings that you don't intend to preach infects all sorts and conditions of churches [Disappointed]

As does the even worse habit of only ever preaching on the Gospel reading.

quote:

[...] short discussions [...]

Could happen anywhere (though usually doesn't)

quote:

[...] sermon [...]

I should hope so too!

quote:

[...] more announcements [...]

The correct placement of the announcements is a Mystery of the Church which will not be revealed till her Lord comes back for her. Meanwhile we who watch and wait must merely do our best. Doing them twice, at the beginning and the end, might be a bit redundant but at least it means everyone is likely to hear at least one set.

quote:

[...] and finally a short eucharist [...]

Tacking Communion on at the end of another Sunday service once a month is mainstream Prayerbook Anglicanism. Almost universal in the late 19th and early 20th century, still quite common in the 1980s and 1990s. Almost no-one ever had regular weekly Prayerbook Communion as the main service every Sunday morning. In the mid-20th century only markedly Anglo-Catholic parishes would, and they mostly didn't use the prayerbook service, but something cobbled together from 1928 and (later) modern Roman Catholic liturgies. In England MOTR and evangelical parishes stuck to the prayerbook and didn't start having Communion as the main service until modern language liturgies came in in the 1960s and 70s and 80s - though some conservative evangelicals held out against those because they thought the modern language theologically inadequate. Nowadays most evangelical parishes do have Communion as a main Sunday service, though not always every week. So what you saw is getting rarer but still not very rare.

Possibly enjoying a minor revival now in small and understaffed rural parishes where a priest takes the service in one church than moves on to another to celebrate a quick Communion at the end of Morning Prayer.

quote:

[...] boiled down to its essentials [...]

Which are? [Big Grin]

Enquiring minds demand to know! (*)

quote:

[...] from what I am guessing is Common Worship. [...]

In my experience almost all evangelical CofE parishes use CW pretty straight from the book, maybe with some omissions, rarely with additions. The exception would be some markedly conservative-evangelical places who stick to the prayerbook structure of the service.

And a handful who made local service booklets from ASB (or even Series 3) and never bothered to update them...

quote:

I was surprised to see that many didn't take communion.

Do you mean they left before Communion? That would have been normal in the days of once-a-month tacked-on-at-the-end. I think its much rarer now.

Or that they remained for the Communion but didn't take it? I think that's less common. There are always some who don't come up for Communion at our church but the majority certainly do.

(*) In our parish a minimal Communion without hymns would probably go something like:

- Greeting
- Confession
- Collect (said by all together)
- Gospel reading (if not already read)
- Sermon (if not already preached)
- Peace
- Intercessions
- Eucharistic Prayer (very likely H)
- Lord's Prayer
- Prayer of Humble Access
- Distribution
- Post-Communion prayer
- Dismissal

Even in full-length services we almost always omit the Gloria, and very often the Creed - if time is short we are more likely to keep the Prayer of Humble Access than either of those.

[ 08. August 2013, 16:26: Message edited by: ken ]

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Olaf:
Funny how it's the people's parts that largely get excised, leaving a lot of up-front chatter.

What "people's parts" are cut in the service described in the OP?

"Songs of praise" and "discussion" imply rather more participation than other sorts of service might have.

Posted by Fr Weber (# 13472) on :

I have fairly extensive experience in the Continuum, and I have never been in a continuing church that didn't hew to a formal, structured liturgy.

If you count ACNA as continuing (and some do), then some of its parishes are on the fairly-extreme charismatic end of things, and I imagine you might see something like what was described there. But probably not in any continuing jurisdiction that predates the current millennium.

Posted by Olaf (# 11804) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by Olaf:
Funny how it's the people's parts that largely get excised, leaving a lot of up-front chatter.
What "people's parts" are cut in the service described in the OP?

"Songs of praise" and "discussion" imply rather more participation than other sorts of service might have.

A unison prayer of confession
A Kyrie dialogue
Reading responses before and after
A Psalm
Creed
Preface dialogue
Holy
Responses within the euch prayer

Granted, some of these may very well have taken place and not been mentioned above.

However, on the many occasions that pastors inform me of their desire to shorten, simplify, or make the service more informal/casual, it invariably involves parts that are assigned to the congregation. Services such as the OP one invariably relegate the people's parts to singing and the Lord's Prayer, if that. With an easy ability to print and display text to aid people in worship, there should be an increasing, not decreasing, amount of lay participation.

A frequent request I receive: move directly from collection to Words of Institution to Lord's Prayer to distribution, cutting everything else out. (Saves about 2 minutes, but seems to be perceived as closer to 15.)

My point is simply this: I don't think any parts assigned to the common pewfolk should be pulled out from under them without their assent.

Posted by PD (# 12436) on :

The ld Evangelical way of dealing with Communion was to drop everything before 'Ye that do...' and tack it on to Matins or Evensong after most of the congo had bolted.

In the sort of 'poker up the bum' high church circles I grew up in Communion was celebrated at 8am, and once a month after Matins until just before I was conscious of what was going on. Straight by the BCP, but that BCP may have been deposited - if you see what I mean. However, my earliest memories are of 'by the book' Series 2.

What you describe sounds a bit minimalist, but not un-Anglican. It would piss me off severely, as I would expect the minimum to be

Greeting
Confession
Kyrie/Gloria
Collect
OT or NT
Gospel
Sermon
Creed on Sundays
Prayers of the People
Peace
Eucharistic Prayer
Lord's Prayer
Fraction
Communion
Post-Communion Prayer
Dismissal

However, my time with the liberal-ish Evos taught me to expect a set of Choruses before the Liturgy as a warm up rather than an organ voluntary. I expect things to be done decently and in order, and this sounds a bit off. What worries me is the limited amount of Scripture read rather than anything else.

PD

[ 09. August 2013, 07:00: Message edited by: PD ]

Posted by Try (# 4951) on :

quote:
Originally posted by acton bell:
I was recently at a church in London where the service seemed purposefully deconstructed--with a long intro of songs of praise, announcements, gospel readings, short discussions, sermon, more announcements, and finally a short eucharist boiled down to its essentials from what I am guessing is Common Worship. I was surprised to see that many didn't take communion.

I was wondering if this is fairly common? Is this a recent innovation?. I was guessing that this is drawing from the Continuing Church Movement, but as a total outsider, I haven't a clue.

In the United States the sort of "deconstructed" service you described, including a "shortened" Holy Communion would be quite common in the United Methodist Church, particularly in urban and suburban churches offering two or more worship services per week. In Texas there is at least a 50% chance of Holy Communion being weekly at this sort of service, but in Ohio Communion will inevitably be monthly. In the UMC these services come about because the pastor is pressured to offer a "contemporary" service but does not want to simply adopt a Vineyard model

Posted by ButchCassidy (# 11147) on :

The OP description is a standard setup in the charismatic Church of England Anglican churches I have attended - one big'un that hasn't been mentioned is All Souls Langham Place, dominant student church and home of the blessed John Stott (also its Oxford twin, St Aldates).

Been said a million times, but English Anglicanism contains virtually every shade of Christian worship - from what I read here, what American shipmates think of as Episcopalian worship would be used by only a sector of the Church of England. Indeed every sector of that tribal US religious landscape - Southern Baptists included - could find its counterpart in the CofE.

Just to set the Ecclesiantics screaming, I attended St Helens Bishopsgate, another mighty London Church of England shack, for over a year, and the eucharist was celebrated Not Once [Two face]

I currently attend a fairly Catholic place, and we wouldn't do a few of PD's 'minimum requirements' (what in Gods name is a fraction?)..

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ButchCassidy:

(what in Gods name is a fraction?)..

Fraction is breaking into fragments, ie breaking the bread.

I'm sure I'm fairly ignorant of many charismatic practices and jargon, but I wouldn't take my ignorance as an excuse to sneer at them.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ButchCassidy:

I currently attend a fairly Catholic place, and we wouldn't do a few of PD's 'minimum requirements' (what in Gods name is a fraction?)..

It would be interesting if you specified the elements that are omitted. I often worship and/or officiate in a number of very low-down-the-candle evangelical churches and can't think of one thing on PD's list that is not normally done.

Now that venbede has explained the Fraction, surely it must be done in your church too?

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ButchCassidy:
Just to set the Ecclesiantics screaming, I attended St Helens Bishopsgate, another mighty London Church of England shack, for over a year, and the eucharist was celebrated Not Once

I attended St Helens for 5 years in the 1990s and the standard practice for the evening service (mainly 20 something professionals, 300-400 attending) was to have communion once a term with the minimal amount of liturgy attached. Not sure about the morning service as I only occasionally attended that but I'm guessing once a month. There was very little in the way of liturgy at all most weeks, I became a Christian there and the only liturgy I was very familiar with was the Grace, and we occasionally said the general Confession.

Posted by Abigail (# 1672) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
I often worship and/or officiate in a number of very low-down-the-candle evangelical churches ...

This would probably describe my church.

I have only discovered what 'Fraction' means from these boards. I have certainly never heard the word used in a church situation and I doubt very much if many (any?) people at my church would have a clue what it meant.

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
I ... can't think of one thing on PD's list that is not normally done.

Well, as for my church: I'm not sure about 'Kyrie/Gloria' - I don't think we do that - I'm not totally sure what it is, and as for 'OT or NT' and 'Gospel'- as I've mentioned in other threads (more than once in my small number of posts because it really bugs me) we have one but not both and certainly not all three! Other than that, yes, we normally do everything else.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Kyrie - usually said in Lent and Advent - various repetitions of:

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

can be led by the minister with the response from the congregation or sung

The Kyrie replaces the Gloria, which is either said or sung:

Glory to God in the Highest
And peace to his people on earth ....

At family services I've come across other versions of the Gloria, for example the Peruvian Gloria (the link is to a very tuneful You tube - I've mostly heard it led off key (one minister was flat and the other sharp))

Posted by Sergius-Melli (# 17462) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Kyrie - usually said in Lent and Advent - various repetitions of:

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

can be led by the minister with the response from the congregation or sung

The Kyrie replaces the Gloria, which is either said or sung:

Glory to God in the Highest
And peace to his people on earth ....

At family services I've come across other versions of the Gloria, for example the Peruvian Gloria (the link is to a very tuneful You tube - I've mostly heard it led off key (one minister was flat and the other sharp))

I think that you are a little too certain with when the Kyrie and Gloria are said/not said, especially when you give the impression that they are never used at the same time.

All the Churches I have been in have used the two together (except when the Gloria should be omitted of course).

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:

The Kyrie replaces the Gloria, which is either said or sung:

Well, in contemporary Anglican practice, it may and often does. But traditionally, both are used except in penitential seasons when the latter is omitted.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Lutherans can be all over the map when it comes to liturgy. Some can be very high mass, others can be very simple. Liturgy for us is neither commanded (by Scripture)nor prohibited.

Most Lutheran Congregations seems to take a balanced approach with a mix of traditional and contemporary.

I would say, though, it does seem that chanting the liturgy is more on the wane in Lutheran circles.

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Abigail:
I have only discovered what 'Fraction' means from these boards. I have certainly never heard the word used in a church situation and I doubt very much if many (any?) people at my church would have a clue what it meant.

I don't suppose many at my church know what the word means in a church context - although most will know what a fracture is and would be able to work out the general meaning from that.

Just because I don't know the technical name for something doesn't mean it isn't unimportant.

The breaking of bread was introduced into the Christian eucharist by that well known fussy ritualist, Jesus of Nazareth.

Posted by pererin (# 16956) on :

The minimum can be less than that. Page 25 of Common Worship shows quite how much one can get away with leaving out. And the only bits that need to follow an authorized text are:

Confession/Absolution
Collect
Eucharistic Prayer

Furthermore, New Patterns for Worship contains the following rubric:
"There should preferably be at least two readings from the Bible,
but it is recognized that if occasion demands there may be only
one reading. It may be dramatized, sung or read responsively.
The readings are taken from an authorized lectionary during the
period from the Third Sunday of Advent to the Baptism of Christ,
and from Palm Sunday to Trinity Sunday. When A Service of the
Word is combined with Holy Communion on Sundays and Principal
Holy Days, the readings of the day are normally used."

Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :

Just looked at page 25.

There are a whole number of other items needed, as well as those three. It's just they don't need an authorized text.

Breaking of bread is necessary. Kyrie and/or Gloria are not. Neither is more than one reading.

But most of PD's list is there.

Posted by pererin (# 16956) on :

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Just looked at page 25.

There are a whole number of other items needed, as well as those three. It's just they don't need an authorized text.

I wasn't meaning to suggest otherwise. It's just that much of the rest can be free-formed (e.g. a discussion instead of a sermon; open intercessions) or done entirely manually whilst the band is playing (e.g. the Offertory). It would be fairly easy to create something totally in compliance with the rubrics that looked very little like a traditional service.

From a congregational perspective, the main other item that would be obviously liturgical is the Peace. But that might just be my liturgical tastes entering into things, and someone will no doubt point out some way of deliturgizing it.

quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Breaking of bread is necessary.

But it is possible to regard that aspect as a necessary precursor to distribution on a totally practical level. You don't have to say "We break this bread..." or anything at all for that matter. Again it could hide behind the band (who presumably would be singing something other than the Agnus Dei).

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0