Writing about Universalist Christianity and improving how churches work
I “discovered” a hymn and worship reading resource at the Harvard Square Library site: the Humanist We Sing of Life and its companion We Speak of Life. They may be used effectively with a careful editorial eye.
Note: these are large PDFs. We Sing of Life is 69 Mb and We Speak of Life is 13.7 Mb
If you’re interested…
An old form, but well integrated and — as it was for evening — restful in its own way. Note that the Bible readings are from the American Standard Version, the grandparent of the NRSV, and once favored on the progressive end of the Protestant spectrum. The tip-in hymn was from the Open Hymnal Project and the fonts are from the Linux Libertine family: my go-to.
Order of service (PDF, 80 kb)
Please excuse a moment of somewhat-silly ecclesiastic conjecture. Regular readers know I am considering working with a congregation that will meet for worship once a month. I know what you’re thinking: Once a month! Why so much? Geez. Slow down! Don’t you have anything else to do?
Well, I do know of some churches that meet once or twice a year. Why?
This last case seems to be the case of some non-English-speaking Lutherans in the United Kingdom. (Don’t ask what got me reading about these.) Consider the Icelandic Lutherans in Hull, who only worship in Advent and early June. Or the Latvian Lutherans in Swansea, seen twice a year. Or the Icelanders in Edinburgh who only meet (once) in Advent. Likewise the Norwegian Lutherans in Cardiff and Bristol, who also get a tree-trimming party as a part of the package.
There are two other once-a-year worship services I can think of: the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship communion service at General Assembly and the Sunday morning ecumenical Christian service at the U.S. Esperanto Landa Kongreso.
These two in particular make me think of how a once-yearly service might be helpful, say for Unitarian Universalist Christians and Esperanto-speaking Christians (and others of course): to start a religious presence, rather than wind one down. One, of course, can lead to more and little is better than none. But there’s something to be said for a yearly service here, and one a couple of towns over, and so forth until a network is created. And unlike a more frequent service, a yearly (or twice- or thrice-) service can also be the basis of a regional invitation. A weekend or even longer: a conference rather than a single Sunday morning.
Now, if once a year, when? The Advent dates above suggest a pre-Christmas — so as not to conflict with more regular congregation — observance, but All Souls or Rally Sunday (first Sunday in September) have their appeals. So also the last Sunday in May, to take advantange of the Memorial Day weekend, especially if the intent is to restart a church with a graveyard. Week of Christian Unity (in January) or World Communion Sunday (in October) might be better for the Esperantists, especially since December is already in play for the language’s founder’s December 15 birthday.
Hubby and I wandered into a well-known church supply house on Saturday. I was struck by how shabby so much of the gear and books looked. Were the 1980s and 1990s the high mark for church design? Must everything come in plastic.
Consider the home communion set made of a plastic clamshell box (which will surely wear badly), containing the kind of plastic bottle one would carry shampoo while travelling in (for the wine), another thin plastic tub containing thin plastic cups, and a tiny spun aluminum vessel with a tight fitting lid — serving as something between a pxy and a ciborium — for the wafers. The price for this disaster? $80. It was neither large enough to be useful not small enough to be tucked into a handbag or laptop case. Of course, there are also fine church artisans, but it’s hard to justify so much a premium on goods when church budgets are under such pressure. And frankly, do we need another generation of neo-Gothic, neo-Byzantine or neo-Colonial whatsits?
I’ve written before about how church goods should be fairly sourced, and how secular goods can be repurposed for church use. For the next little bit I will consider alternatives of the economical parson who wants well-made and tasteful equipment. And I’d like your help if you have ideas.
Long-time readers may recall my on-and-off interest in churches with less-than-monthly services. Like here. And I write about liturgical calendars and their use.
Now I have a (possible) use case: a church with monthly services. I’ll be recording my workplan here, but wondered: do you have a regular plan of monthly themes you use for a monthly service series? A sanctoral cycle might work, but a lectionary seems a bit of a stretch.
This is an outline of Service Eleven from Hymns of the Spirit, previously mentioned. I’ve removed a couple of prayers, including the litany, written by Von Ogden Vogt, and which are probably copyrighted. More about what it means later.
The Service may begin with a Chorale, an Introit, a Processional Hymn, or with selected Sentences.
by the Minister and people:
[in full, deleted here]
The Lord be with you.
And with thy spirit.
Praise ye the Lord.
The Lord’s name be praised.
if desired.
if desired.
Then the Minister may say:
Here endeth the reading of the lesson.
by the Minister, the responses to be said or sung by the people:
Let us pray. O Lord, show thy mercy upon us.
And grant us thy salvation.
O God, make clean our heart within us.
And take not thy holy Spirit from us.
[Bidding collect, then litany with sung response.]
ending with the music of the following chant.
Now unto God, the unseen fount of all our life,
And source of all wisdom and strength,
Be glory and majesty, dominion and pow’r, forever and ever. Amen.
to be said by the Minister and people, standing.
[In full, here deleted. Not familiar to me.]
Working on a blog post that’s taking some fact checking before I release it. But in the meantime, enjoy the writings of Anglican priest and blogger Edward Green at Future Shape of the Church His work on lay ministry and the appropriate role of liturgy in rural parishes — which have some parallels to struggling in-town churches — was what drew me to him.
Another phone-typed blog post as I wait for my bus to church this morning. Yesterday I wrote that one service was unlike the others. This is incorrect: there are two. In the editor’s words:
The first five services are of a traditional type, based upon forms long familiar, but printed with greater detail and choice of content. The Sixth to the Ninth Services follow a similar but simplified sequence of events, and are ethical in tone, as are the Tenth and Fourteenth Services. The Tenth and Eleventh Services follow a somewhat different pattern, which has proved acceptable in some churches. The Twelfth to Sixteenth Services are for use at Christmas, Easter, a Spring Festival, Thanksgiving Day or Harvest Festival, National Anniversaries or a service for International Peace. For other special occasions, — Whitsunday [Pentecost — ed.], All Souls’, Children’s Sunday, etc. — the usual order of service can easily be adapted by the use of appropriate scripture and responsive readings, and of prayers selected from the section entitled Additional Prayers and Collects.
Two issues come to mind. First, that Hymns of the Spirit is essentially a Unitarian project that the Universalists joined, as evidenced by the list of miscellaneous services core to the Universalist calendar. (Did the publishers fear low Universalist adoption?) See also the set of hymns at the back that “do not enter into the general scheme of the book. ”
But that’s the past. Consider instead the opportunity. So often, an old mode of worship is judged poorly as if it were an anthology of elements. But a service also includes a framework, directions, themes, and the provision of options. These are also valuable in discerning the liturgical theology of a church and tradition. (The physical space and use of light, sound and artifacts too.)
Which brings us back to Service Eleven to consider for rehabilitation in the New England tradition of liberal Protestant churches.
The old 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist hymnal, the Hymns of the Spirit had orders of service and liturgical elements that I suspect were well used through the 1960s and 70s, with use continuing til today.
You could divide the services into clearly Christian, something other than Christian but familiar and services for holidays and special occasions. Leaving the holiday services aside, I was pleased to discover that all but one of the other services walked down the well-established path of Morning Prayer with Sermon, with its origins in the Elizabethan prayer book. The not-Christian services were (on the whole) simpler, and the Christian services had the — or rather, a — litany preceding the collects, but the lineage is unmistakable. Certainly to the Episcopalians and others heralding to the same tradition — optional Presbyterian service books come to mind — since Morning Prayer and Sermon would have been the default service back then.
Which should make me happy? Not quite. Morning Prayer and Sermon is a hybrid affair, and the sermon feels like an indigestible afterthought. But with really good music and a careful preacher it functions like a stimulating alternative to Evensong. Alas, I have small congregations with little access to fine music in mind. More mission post than cathedral.Â
For these, the service which was the exception might help. More about that next time.
For the record, I’ve written this on my phone with the WordPress app — a first for me.
Regular readers know my affection for the series of prayerbooks first arranged by Charles H. Leonard, Universalist minister and seminary professor, and later extracts and abridgments. The first dates to 1867; the last, a local extract, was printed in 1957. I type out the collects and readings from the former each week.
Careful readers will also my suggestion that, for very small and minister-less Unitarian and Universalist churches, especially the older ones, I recommend reviewing the old church school literature for worship forms and themes. The structure are simple but churchly, the themes timeless (good for congregations that meet less than weekly) and are easily “matured” to an adult or mixed-age congregation. The Beacon Song and Tune Book serves as an analog to the hymns and services of the “old red” Hymns of the Spirit.
Now I have just found a parallel to “Dr. Leonard’s prayer book”: Sunday School Hymnal with Offices of Devotion (1912). It’s not quite as evergreen as the Beacon Song and Tune Book but this nearly hundred-year-old book wasn’t meant to be. I’d use it as a resource book: to see what psalms and gospel passages work together to make a service. The prayers, at first glance, can be abandoned and replaced, once the themes are recorded.