Liturgy In Dynamic Anglicanism

POMT Diocese of Nelson Unit 58

June 12th, 2009

Dynamic Anglicanism

INSPIRING PEOPLE – dynamic Anglicanism offers ‘decent, ordered’ worship Good liturgical practice Peter Carrell Back ground material A. “Your ministers are in general poorly educated. Some of your small dioceses ordain dozens of untrained ministers at a time. Your province runs a tikanga system that the primates meeting, one of the instruments of Anglican unity, entreated you not do. You have two bishops running a diocese together equally contrary to all episcopal ecclesiology from the early church. Your worship life is in chaos and what is there is often barely recognisable as being part of historic Anglicanism both in texts or practice. You have squandered your stewardship of inherited financial bounty. Your churches are generally shrinking and aging alarmingly. … You have preaching and practice that is barely recognisably Christian.” Excerpt from comment by Anonymous about life in our church, ACANZP, https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3915617830446943975&postID=7957783800274899873

B.

“Basically there seem to be two choices for both Catholics and Anglicans: find complicated answers to complicated problems and emerge with Graham Greenish styles of catholic Anglicanism and anglican Catholicism. Or follow the present Papal model, which Micklethwait described as a 'two-speed Catholic Church' with an inner core of orthodox believers and an outer core who 'travel along for the ride.' There could be room, he thought, for a sophisticated Christianity which sounded a bit 'David Jenkins' to me, but which would seem to mean embracing God and doubt at the same time. But he admitted that the evidence suggests religions succeed when they go in the other direction. He kept apologising for talking in terms of brands, the market place, bottoms on seats, but he couldn't help it. He is after all editor of the Economist.”

Excerpt from blogpost/article by Ruth Gledhill, Times religion correspondent, interviewing John Micklethwait, co-author with Adrian Wooldridge of God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World, Penguin, 2009 [http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/06/god-is-back-author-they-do-not-see-their-job-as-bums-on-seats.html#more ]

C.

Title D Canon 1 part A 4. LITURGY:

It is the responsibility of Ordained Ministers to lead God’s people in praise and thanksgiving to God, to ensure reverent, regular and carefully prepared divine service using the forms authorised by this Church. (Title D is the canon on The Maintenance of Ministry Standards. This canon constitutes both the charter for our ministry aiming for the highest standards and the grounds on which complaint can be made should we fall below ‘ministry standards’). It can be sourced from http://www.anglican.org.nz/Canons%20Reprint/Pdf.%20Files/8.%20Title%20D%201%20to%204%202006.pdf )

D. A comment from a colleague recently which noted that the way an informal liturgy was constructed seemed to represent a lack of training in ‘principles of Anglican liturgy’!

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Introduction To be Anglican is not to value “Anglicanism” per se, but to value continuity and development of church life in an unbroken history from the day of our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles. That value includes appreciation of the refining of doctrine on the anvils of the first Ecumenical Councils (think ‘Creeds’) and the English Reformation and Settlement (think ‘BCP, 39 Articles, the Ordinal’), and the shaping of liturgy which expresses that doctrine, gives voice to our prayers and praise faithful to Scripture, and draws us into communion around the table of the Lord (think BCP, NZPB). In the background here is the history of worship in Old and New Testaments: the order and structure of Tabernacle and Temple worship; the participation in the same by Jesus and the apostles; the regularity of worship for Jews and Christians around the Mediterranean; the injunction that worship builds up the church (1 Corinthians 14:26) and is done ‘decently and in order’ (1 Corinthians 14:40). To be sure there is an ‘Anglican’ character to the way we worship which is different to (say) Roman Catholicism and Presbyterianism (both claimants to continuity with the apostolic church). But the point of being Anglican is to be Christian where Christian represents the whole history of understanding of what it means to be Christian, a follower of Christ. From this understanding we ought not to be casual about the role of liturgy in our worship. Through liturgy we carry forward the history of the church into its future, and by using authorised liturgies we maintain, even contend for the doctrine of the church given once for all the saints!1 In the background material (A) we are challenged about the general standard of our liturgical practice; in (B) we are challenged to find the broad liturgical formula for a church which catches the wave of religious interest in the twenty-first century; in (C) we are reminded of our duties as leaders of worship to ensure reverent, regular and carefully prepared divine service using the forms authorized by this Church; while (D) alerts us to the value of training in liturgy. But alongside A, B, C , and D we can also place what we know from our experience of parish life: Sundays matter! Sure parish life is a complex amalgam of services, small groups, groups for various ages and genders of people, stretching through seven days of the week. But Sundays matter. First, at the core of any definition of church is ‘gathering’, so Sunday services for worship, teaching, and communion are the primary expression of church life. Secondly, Sunday services for most of our people are the door through which they walk to enter the community life of the parish. So, what happens in church on Sunday is very important. The depth of commitment to parish life, the return of visitors to our church depends on what happens on Sunday. Clearly all sorts of things happen in church on Sunday which influence the intention to commit to this particular parish and thus to enhance Anglican dynamism: winter heating, quality of sound, warmth of welcome, facilities, fellowship after the service, and ministries for children and youth. But ‘good liturgical practice’ is (arguably) the most important of them all! (By ‘good liturgical practice’ I include the preaching that is part of the service. A long, boring sermon undermines the quality of the whole service. An outstanding service will include ways of reinforcing the message of the sermon).

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But note that we are not authorised to contend for our pet doctrinal theories and hobby horses!

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Good Liturgical Practice Let’s assume that what we plan and prepare meets the canonical requirement for ‘authorised worship’ (see separate section below). Our question then concerns the quality (which may be hard to define) of a service to which people want to return and to participate in regularly: what are the quality(s) of great services? A related question concerns the extent to which we can ‘control’ that quality (through planning, preparation, practice, and actual performance): how can we improve the quality of our services? Another question concerns the nature of inspiration in worship: does God breathe God’s life into our services, i.e. are our services God inspired? (Can we facilitate or impede that?) Are people inspired by our services? (For what: deeper devotion? More motivation in mission? Becoming a better spouse, parent, worker, student?) What are the ingredients which make for an inspiring service? What is our role in the performance of inspiring services? It’s possible that someone among us answered one of the above questions with ‘all you need is a good band’! It’s more likely that we touched on the importance of leadership as one of the keys to inspiring worship: whether it is an 8 am prayer book service in a stone cold church, a 10.30 am family service in a modern auditorium, or a 7.29 pm Taize service, leadership is the key to great services in which ‘good liturgical practice’ is found. Dynamic Anglican worship involves a number of factors, one of the most important of which is leadership, and is not confined to any one form of service. Good liturgical practice models: a general observation about our diocese and the models it is following:Model A:

formal service via NZPB with hymns

Model B:

informal service with songs and some formal elements from NZPB

Or Model B*:

informal service with songs and just one or two formal elements from NZPB

What we see little of (if at all) is:Model C: formal service blended with informal elements, songs and hymns to create an awesome, inspiring prayer book based worship service. In my experience, to find Model C one needs to attend one’s local Catholic parish!

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One question for ‘dynamic Anglicanism’ is its vision for the long-haul of church life spread across a diversity of parishes in a wide geographical area: with respect to worship … If the vision is essentially for offering outstanding musicianship to create inspiring services and/or to reply on sourcing excellent songs from worldwide distribution networks (i.e. Model B or B*), then questions arise about replication in 26 parishes through many generations. To give a specific example: in some of our parishes Model B or B* is only sustained through reliance on musical CDs (or DVDs). This is working, but is it an effective strategy for consistently offering inspiring services over a long period of time? One advantage of Model C is that it is simpler and easier to replicate across many parishes because it does not rely on any one dominating element.

Conclusion There are no magic bullets guaranteeing inspiring worship. What we can do is to take responsibility for: following the canons safeguarding the long-term future of the church & ensuring our congregations leave our services inspired for their mission

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Authorised forms of worship: what does this mean? (1) Services authorised for use in Anglican worship, i.e. as printed in BCP and NZPB (2) Services which conform to patterns for worship laid down in NZPB (note the phrase in the canon, ‘carefully prepared’).2 a. Non-communion services: pp. 35- 52 NZPB offers a mixture of things expected and things encouraged but not required. Here is a ‘minimal’ content from these pages: Greeting, Sentence, Songs of praise interspersed throughout, Confession, Absolution, Bible readings (yes, plural), Sermon, Intercessions, Collect of the Day, The Lord’s Prayer, Blessing, Dismissal The order can be flexible, especially around the placement of the sermon. b. Communion services: pp. 511-514 NZPB offers a ‘minimal’ structure which specifically requires a Gospel reading, and just two authorised parts to the eucharistic prayer (institution narrative and anamnesis (p. 513)) but presumes a substantive well prepared and ordered service, including a full eucharistic prayer even though some flexibility about some sections is provided for.3 In other words, many (but I suspect not all) informal services in Anglican parishes, whether of an evangelical/charismatic (e.g. ‘family services) or catholic flavour (e.g. Taize services) are canonically approved, providing certain basic requirements in content are met.

It is important that we provide for reasonable expectations and protect ourselves from unnecessary complaints. Reasonable expectations include at least one of two Sunday services in an urban parish being according to the prayer book (at least one parish in this diocese does not conform to this). Unnecessary complaints could be those which arise when we openly pursue liturgical practices which are ‘unAnglican’ e.g. using a Presbyterian eucharistic prayer; or esoteric because we follow our own mind on liturgical matters rather than the mind of the church. What does ‘authorised forms’ not mean? Already implied above, it does not mean filching a eucharistic prayer from another church, flicking the order of the liturgy round to suit, or filleting an Anglican eucharistic prayer so its theology suits our tastes! All formal liturgical practice should be Anglican! That is, whole services, and formal parts of informal services (esp. eucharistic prayers) should be those authorised for use by General Synod. Why? In our prayers we express our theology. To be Anglican is to recognise that theology is greater than any one individual’s understanding of theology so we pray the theology of the whole church when we meet as church.

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What I have put below is, I suggest, a more effective route for preparing informal services which constitute ‘good liturgical practice’ than the Template route (which I will not explain here, but which is more or less the same thing). 3 Note that older printings of NZPB, on p. 511, have a rubric which says this form is for occasional use only. This has since been omitted by General Synod.

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