My New Favouritist Thing In the World for Today

While all of you have been sleeping and waking, working and playing, eating and drinking, fighting and loving - a process has been taking place that few people ever see. It is a thing that takes place in deepest darkest secret, emerging complete like a mysterious creation from another world.

Well, sort of.

Today I have been mostly building services - a sort of Liturgy Construction Site where the framework of our worship has taken form. 

And it is the most fun in the world, let me tell you (unless you happen to be my Sacristan [and he reads this] in which case it is a source of much concern).

With all services and liturgies, you could open up a book, start at the beginning and get to the end, doing as directed in a blind way until it becomes just another register entry. Alternatively, you can build a living thing, that has shades of light and dark, periods of noise and silence, spells of great pathos and emotion. And so it is that I have been putting together the big services that regale the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord. I have completed Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and rather than having formed four distinct liturgies, have crafted one liturgy in four movements. 

Fashioning liturgy is a wonderful thing, and this is the first year I have done it on this scale (for, perhaps, obvious reasons). Until now, I have picked up the book or Order of Service and done what is said. This process gives a depth to that which I finding incredibly helpful. It's in little choreographic moments that so much can be achieved in these services that we all know and love (if we know and love them) - for example, matching the three points where the Cross on Good Friday enters the church to those where the Paschal Candle enters a day later. Another is the use of the Pangue Lingua and its tune - once on Maundy Thursday, and again in echo at the time of the Veneration on Good Friday. The use of bells and their discontinuation - all these things, small and apparently accidental, give so much flavour, so much more meaning. 

Finally, I get liturgy. It is orchestral. It isn't linear as it sometimes appears or is delivered, but a beautiful movement of events that rotate, rise and fall. Needless to say, this Easter will now mean even more to me than I ever thought it could - because I have been granted a rare opportunity to shape worship (not as frequent an event in the life of a Vicar as you might imagine)

Killing the Old PCC

Kum Ba Ya, M'lud

Fret not, I am not about to emerge as the next headline after One Direction have moved aside. I have not strolled into church with my Ouzi Nine Millimeetah and popped caps into asses. No, none of that.

But ... the Old Order is no more. A new dawn breaks over Whitton.

Those of you familiar with the Parochial Church Council as an entity will know that it is a gathering of the willing who gather periodically to be talked at, either by the Vicar or else the Treasurer, or else the wind-bag who always has an argument for every occasion. They are normally constituted by the faithful and willing who, when they are elected are bright-eyes and fluffy-tailed. By the end of their tenure, they are The Haunted - characterised my sallow-eyes and rictus grin. They will have given up many hours of useful life and devoted it to sitting in and among the Windbags (see above), then dutifully getting on with the task in hand - or put another way, everything that needs doing around the place. 

The level of work covered is very distinctive at such meetings. The wattage of the bulb for use over the Decani choir stalls, so that Old Mrs Miggins cataract isn't scorched; the pile gauge and weight of the carpet sample for the littlies to sit on so that their fragile derrieres are not assaulted by the curvature of medieval stone; the correct  brand of nasty powered-coffee for use after parish events with and without liturgy; the colour of the door knob to the parish office up the stairs that no-one can climb without crampons and a rope; oh, and the pre-payment and accrual basis of the accounts in the fiscal year to date (that only a graduate accountant can fathom). Get the idea?

Well, things they are a-changing. I have never enjoyed sit-in-circles PCCs where every minute detail of every irrelevancy is discussed to the Nth degree (by three people while the remaining fourteen lose the will to live). There is much to be learned by the models established by many school Governing Bodies. 

From now on, the members of my next PCC will all belong to a committee. There will be six committees that range across all of parish life (comms, finance, pastoral, hall, buildings and fabric, children and young people). They needn't run those committees, but be critical friends and communicators (in both directions of that). They will submit reports prior to PCC meetings so that we can read them and come armed to fewer meetings, not more. There will be no such person as a PCC member who does not exist on a committee. What would be the point? In the end, it won't be the onerous duty of a dozen or so press-ganged people to run the entire show; with smaller groups working in this way, half the parish will share the fun.

When Family is not Family but is Still Family

A Typical English Family

It might be a British thing, or it might just be a Christian thing. It might even just be a British Christian thing, and possibly even a Christian British thing, but a thing it is and I intend fully to speak about it now. 

Liturgies, Services, Acts of Worship, Praise Sessions - or whatever label you may wish to apply, have different stylings and those stylings tell the trained observer a great deal about what to expect. 

They are also a euphemism.

A High Mass will be one of sacrament, music, vestments and choreographed ceremonial. Mattins is a non-sacramental service of hymns, readings and prayers, as distinct from Morning Prayer that is more rooted in reading and prayer (with the odd spoken song [canticle] interspersed). Evensong is likely to be in language older than your grandmother, a little singing and hymn-based mirth. Compline is not a slimming product but one of the Hours (that array of liturgies that those in the religious life did or still do throughout the day and night), typically observed in the late evening - a short and gentle act of worship rooted in Psalmody and Responsory. Get the idea? If you know the name, you know what to expect. 

Then you get the Family Service. We who provide such things want them to be regarded as accessible, family friendly (read 'not boring to kids') that is perhaps a little shorter than the normal offering. We would want you be know that the music might be a little less 'specialist' (which is to say short, punchy and not according to the four-part harmony structure so loved by church choirs). With any luck, that is the message received bu the passer-by, the seeker, the enquirer. It is a liturgical styling not without its issues, however.

If the Family Service is for the young, the un-initiated perhaps, then the Sung Eucharist must surely deserve the title 'The Grown Up Child-free Specialist Not for Beginners Service for those Who Pay Their Subs and Are on The Electoral Roll Service'. No, of course not. To my mind, every act of worship in the church's life deserves the title 'Family Service'. We are, after all, family in Christ. This is partly the reason why in many churches (though not where I have worked or worshipped, gladly), on the other Sundays when there isn't a Family Service, children are little higher that vermin - a noise curse to be chased out of the building. No dear, you belong at the Family Service. This is partly the reason why in many churches (though not where I have worked or worshipped, gladly) the "main service" is a specialist affair where strangers fear to tread, or if they do they are gathered up, hidden in a darkened room and converted to within an inch of their lives (before they get a chance to escape). 'Family Services' have become Eucharist-Lite, theologically and  qualitatively, or they have become Praise Service Dumbed Down, musically and spiritually. They are shorter in duration, because only true proper Christians can cope with a full-length service, surely. 

The thing is, children are pure theologians. As early-speaking toddlers they are wrestling with the deepest truths of life and existence. As young school-age kids they are working out what life is in the context of death. They grasp the facts and the meaning of Good Friday all the while us adults euphemise and fret. They, like us all, want to be enlivened, not patronized and condescended to. Half of me wants to ban Family Services as a curse to all liturgy. The other half wants to ban all other liturgy and work on getting Family Services right for all people. 

The Extra-Ordinary Value of The Ordinary

For those of you familiar with the language of Thomas Cranmer, this is not a post extolling the virtues of bishops, though let me state plain here and now, I have no issues with the consecrated Order. 

No this is a post about liturgy delivery.

I have had a part in two services so far today, as the rest of this part of the world melts in the heat of the day. The first was a funky fusion of an All-Age Patronal Festival, the second a baptism where we welcomed a church full of guests and strangers. Both felt like good services, and I certainly enjoyed them - as too did the punters. At both, someone came to me and commended my style of delivery - along the lines of 'you make it so ordinary'.

To begin with, I received them as cutting worlds of insult and what self-respecting Angry-Carflick wouldn't, but after some reflection over my steak-and-kidney pudding lunch, thought perhaps they were meant as compliments. 

I seem blessed with a gift to take the extra-ordinary beauty of our liturgy and mould to the gathering. It is tiring, as I have commented before, but better my exhaustion that the boredom of guests and new acquaintances. At the baptism, as I launched into the first lines as written on the wipe-clean card, I pondered on how many had ever been in a church, let alone taken part in a service. I resolved that that number was very small. I am quite comfortable with having a little fin with our guests, even to the extent of pulling their legs, but I think the best tool that I have (maybe even the only one, who knows) is to be just ordinary. 

It is easy to become lofty and take on the vicar-voice of Dick Emery but I think that, acoustics allowing, an ordinary tone and deportment in gatherings like that does so much good. Sadly for one of the Godfathers, his mobile went off mid-anointing and rather than tutting and making the gathered throng feel like they had pooed on my bed, I made light of it. In fact, I pulled the geezer's leg and that did much to diffuse the implicit tension that accompanies unfamiliar crowds. 

Talking in the ordinary, having a little fun where appropriate, humour in its place, warmth towards the children, warmth with the adults there under duress, sympathy with their discomfort  - these things mean that I can take the Holiness of what I am there to do for God and them, and do it well. No-one would ever quibble about the quality of my liturgy (I don't think), but I deliver it humanly and I hope, with generosity for the newcomer, the young, and the un-believer. 

Some would chase de-loused and un-washed (or something like that) men around with a butterfly net to get them into church. Just treat them as equals and every one else. Treat like as you find them. I believe very strongly in the extra-ordinary value of the ordinary in liturgy, in that it is the means of communicating the most profound Grace and Holiness in most situations. 

Just saying...

Towards a Contemporary Catholicism

I am unashamedly Anglican Catholic, and in that there will be no surprises for you, dear readers. It isn't that I was raised in a particularly Anglo-Catholic environment either, because I wasn't. My church life, before ordination, ranged from membership of a modern church in an 'urban priority' area, through what could be construed or labelled as middle-of-the-road, all the way to Roman Anglo-Catholic (as distinct from the English Anglo-Catholicism of Percy Dearmer). Only the latter of these was my personal adult choice, the others being as a result of where we lived as a family in my formative years. 

I know what I like, and what enlivens and nourishes my encounter with God. By choice I seek it out when I am not the 'one at the front', but I have also experienced a quantum shift in what I believe the wider world wants. What I want and what the world wants are, I am fast learning, very distinct - even if there are some overlaps. 

Part of the 'problem' of Anglo-Catholic worship (which I will reiterate - I love with my whole heart) is that is it stuck in about 1845 if they are of the 'Romanising' style, or c1900 if they are of the Dearmerite 'English' style. In a digital on-demand age, such liturgical expressions are become much loved, revered and but sacred museum pieces. In my heart I crave a way in which the Sacraments can meet the world in which they are given by God, and at the point in time where we meet God in this age. 

You can cast your eyes around church websites or articles and find labels such as 'modern-catholic' or 'liberal catholic', 'traditional Anglo-Catholic', or a mix of them all and then you will quickly see the tell-tale markers of where that community is rooted in the context of the debate concerning women in ministry. They will display Resolutions or not, and the priest will be be suffixed 'SSC' or not. In short, the labels are contextual and in a fairly limiting way. My issue with 'modern' is that the rest of world will claim a 'post-modern' existence, with 'traditional' that it is regarded as the anti-women camp, and with 'liberal' that it is a little bit and pink and wishy-washy. None of these is the case, but they bring their problems as all labels do, including the one I am about to speak about (and may possibly be of my own invention, who knows): Contemporary Catholic. 

This is fast becoming the label that I apply to myself. The failing of present Anglo-Catholicism is that it is often received as the celebration of a former glory, as old, as out of date, arcane, fussy, strange, 'not for beginners' - and in many ways this is all true to a certain degree. I seek an Anglo-Catholicism that speaks of the moment, of now. This is not to suggest that I am proposing a poor mish-mash of incense and Matt Redman, because that would lack integrity in the hands of most of us. Our experience of God is found in the sensory, in beautiful  music, visual feasts, the counterpoint of silence and and exuberance, and in the adoration of God through the Sacraments. In that, it is the best of things, in my opinion - a position lost in political hang-ups and historical battle-lines. There must be a way that we can return to our Sacramental roots and still be children of digital 2011. The two are not, and cannot, be mutually exclusive. If they are, we are dead already.

I am not positing any answers or a new church order. I just express a developing and deepening sense in me that Anglo-Catholics need to find a new relevancy of the order achieved by Newman and Pusey in their day. It might even be a 'back to the drawing board' thing, I don't know - but something needs to happen. I know that I am not any breed of evangelical because I wasn't made that way or called to be. I am what I am, and so are many others, which is to say that a modern catholicism shouldn't be a slightly spiced-up evangelicalism. The world needs both to be done well in partnership. 

As I move towards incumbency and a whole world of fresh opportunity and potential, I place these thoughts here as I grow in new directions. If you saw me in action, you would already sense that I am unlike any Anglo-Catholic you have ever seen, liturgically - but change and development doesn't and shouldn't mean that the quality and integrity of the encounter with God be lost. 

* If you were wondering what the practical out-workings of the distinctive Anglo-Catholicisms were, be they Roman or English, it is to do with simplicity in the case of the English. English Anglo-Catholics, in being guided in some part by the Parson's Handbook will not favour the Roman taste cottas, myriad buttons on cassocks, umpteen candles on altars etc and will cherish a hymnody that is closely allied to that of Methodism, in the favouring of Vaughn Williams's versions of Wesley's hymns, for example. English catholics regard Romanisers as fussy and as a breed of lace-wearers!!

Loose Liturgy

This is for you Anglo-Catholics and you Charismatics out there!

This is Easter Day, the culmination of the arduous journey of Lent, the steep climb of Holy Week, the pause for relief of Mothering Sunday, the agony of the Passion and the desolation of the Cross. Today is the day when we see Him rise. 

I sit here as a tired little curate, one who earned his pennies this last few weeks. The last twenty-four hours, in our church, have witnessed some extra-ordinary scenes, liturgically speaking. What we witnessed was lively liturgy, liturgy in the moment, worship of the second and of the people there - but I have discovered that it doesn't happen by accident.

Last night we had the great celebration of the Easter-eve Vigil, and with it twelve confirmations and eight baptisms. That meant that we had to re-arrange the church to accommodate what was to take place and those who would  come to witness it (a case for churches without pews, just there). Having such a large gathering comprising many who were strangers to our edifice meant that we were often at the mercy of circumstance, within a framework. I am fast learning that 'catholic' acts of worship are at their best if they compromise to the moment. A liturgy that is wrought-iron might look fabulous and is without doubt beautiful, but it offers no room to breathe. A loose liturgy knows where it is going, what needs to happen, and also what can be sacrificed if the need arose. For the gathering, we hope a healthy mix of the formal and the informal; for the priests, a considerable effort not unlike sailing a yacht close to the wind. Our liturgy was acrobatic, spontaneous catholic liturgy, and it worked. 

Today's celebration of Easter welcomed three little ones for baptism. It meant yet more welcome guests who were unsure of what they were doing. It meant, happily, a coach-load of visiting kids who felt comfortable in our Medieval Barn. Some parents worried that their children were too boisterous, but they weren't.

Knowing what is meant to happen when and where is important. It means that liturgy has structure, direction, flow and meaning. I am not one for excessive spontaneity for fear of getting to the end without having journeyed to all the places required, so I have learned the art of holding tight to the rope, while it hangs loose. To a casual observer, the Eucharist may have seemed chaotic, and perhaps in odd moments it was. I firmly believe that good liturgy tabs into order at given points, with times of fluidity interspersed between them. It is, I think, more tiring for we the leaders of the service, but that is the joy of our work. To be thanked by a visitor to our church with comments about how the formal and informal was helpful, made my day.

Happy Easter to you all. Christ is risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Sticky Liturgy

During a nimble browse through Blogdom yesterday, I picked up on a sentence typed by the excellent Labradoodle-loving Curate's Wife. She pondered, in passing, how odd all this holy Week stuff must be for kids, and how they might cope with the panoply of perpetuated praise.

I am, as you may have gathered, a liturgical kinda guy. I love the 'doing' of liturgy. There are likely to be many explanations for that, and why we all fall into ecclesial pigeon-holes when it comes to such stuff; but for me, it is all bound up in good liturgy. It might be to do with a slightly extrovert nature, a pragmatic style of learning, a tendency to see the world in image and not, say, in words or numbers. It will have a little to do with the 'nurture' argument too - though perhaps less, because I found my own way to liturgy. 

Another thing that is also true to say, is that liturgically minded Christians tend to 'do' Holy Week and the Triduum well. This week is, in many ways, a show-piece of living liturgy. And I can also say with absolute certainty that it was that aspect of worship that hooked me into faith. Most kids who have ever been near a church will be familiar with Palm Crosses, and in my experience, a good many will know what they represent. For me the most chilling, haunting, beautiful, stunning, affective liturgical moment is the desecration of the church after the catastrophic key-change in the Maundy Thursday Eucharist. We enter the church in white, we leave the church is disarray into a silence of vigil-prayer. We rip every thing beautiful from the place, leaving the altar naked, defiled. With the words of either Psalm 31 or 22 being intoned or read-gently while this stripping takes place, there is no moment in church life that more connects me with the agony of the Passion. And it was so for me as a child. Wide-eyed, dumbfounded, awe-struck - in every sense, a believer. 

I can illustrate my faith journey and maturation not in encounters with people, but in encounters with God through beautiful liturgy. I do not speak of professional-ceremonial though - liturgy and ceremonial, while very closely related, are not at all the same. Beautiful liturgy can happen in the midst of 250 kids all making noise together. The joy of liturgy is that it is, by definition, hands-on. Being caused to process, to wave palm-crosses, sit in drowsy vigil in the Garden of Repose, tear a church apart - all of things demand an action, a committed involvement.

In this post, I  also disclose my plans for the rest of Holy Week. As a personal devotion, and for use to you if you want it, I shall blog the Stations of The Cross all week. There are a few of them, so it will mean three or four posts a day. They are my prayers and thoughts - I offer them humbly, and ask that you do what you will with them. 

Liturgical Leftovers

Life for me, these days, is a tapestry of funerals marriages and CBeebies. I work, I come home, I relax with the Twins Aculae - and share with them their pleasures. CBeebies.

For those who kindly read this on distant shores, CBeebies is the BBC television channel aimed at the six-and-unders. We have such joys as The Tweenies, not one of my favourites; Mr Tumble, a great love in the hearts of my kids; Bob the Builder (yes he can); Mr Maker and the unquenchingly energic Sarah-Jane. A new programme has emerged in this year, an excellent production - Let's Celebrate. It is a production that focusses on the great celebrations of the world-faiths and other community. For us, Easter and Christmas have both been done, as too has the Notting Hill Carnival. Eid for the Muslins, Wesak for the Buddhists, and also Vaisakhi, Eid al-Fitr, Holi, Purim, Diwali, St Patrick's Day, St David's Day, St George's Day, St Andrew's Day, Norouz, and Chinese New Year. Marvellous!

Even though I am 32 years too old for CBeebies, I find this programme informative and enjoyable, and the kids love it - and that is always good. The quality and balance of each programme is laudable - even if Thomas Ticker is a pain in the derriere! However, it is wonderful that the BBC provides such a programme, a celebration (broadly) of the joyousness of faith and its outpourings in the lives of so many people. 

What is also interesting is the liturgical structure that so many of the World Faiths have. Ceremony is hugely important. As a ceremonially-biased Christian, I pondered this. I pondered and wondered why it seems that only in Christianity, so many want to lay aside ceremony and that dirty-word 'liturgy.' The head of our Body, Jesus Christ, was himself a liturgical creature. He was born and raised into a practicing Jewish family where Temple presentation, baptism, and even the rites surrounding death were held as important. I would even go so far as to suggest that humans are liturgical creatures. Watching the expressions of other faith groups pressed home to me the apparent fact that only Christians in some quarters want to do away with such things. I worry about it, if I am honest. 

The drive for absolute spontaneity and freedom in worship worries me. Why are we so heart-set on putting aside ritual and ceremony? Such things are often regarded as stifling and limiting, which is wrong. Ceremony, ritual - liturgy; these things provide edges and a direction. Such 'routine' ensures that we do what needs to be done, that we share in the re-enactment of the same rituality of our ancestors whose ritual inheritance we enjoy in our lifetime. Spontaneity within liturgy is good and right, but why is it that only Christians seem to want to distance themselves from their past. It isn't just about now, because 'now' is about us, and our faith is altogether more than just 'us'.

Old Expressions of a Fresh Church

I am just back from a visit to Lincoln and the cathedral which I took with the crowd from the parish. We had a wonderful time, welcomed as we were by so many people, including the Diocesan Bishop who just happened to be wandering past us when we were in the great Edifice. 

As I had a little spare time and didn't feel inclined to bankrupt my family in the cathedral shop, I paused a while and reflected on all that Lincoln Cathedral represents in a Christian context that is fast changing (or fast developing the appetite to change). Change is good, don't get me wrong, but not wholesale change. Whilst I consider it laudable that we have churches that seek to be messy, one-size-fits-all nuture courses for the 'un-churched' masses, play that is Godly, I wonder where the past and all that we have as a rich heritage fits into the funked-up world of the twenty-first century church of Christ. 

Lincoln Cathedral's offering to the worshipping people was this:

 - Simple structured liturgy done well

 - Beautiful music sung ably

 - Pastoral flourishes done with an open heart and outstretched arms

 - Dignified worship that wasn't self-centred but a vehicle for the adoration of God

 - A proper acknowledgement of the rich inheritance of the past that we enjoy (and take for granted) today.

 - ...and all done to be inconspicuous so that we all may gaze on the Cross of Christ

Informality and its companions are good, but are only part of the story. If all of Christendom were funky and spontaneous I think it would all become uniform and mute. We would quickly become immune. There are those who condemn the worship at the catholic  'end' as 'old hat', 'disconnected', 'boring', and 'irrelevant'. I suspect that they have never been to a cathedral to witness its worship because to see it is to know that it is still very profound, connecting and wholly relevant. And yes, worshipping the Lord in the same place that a millenium's congregations have poured our their hearts and souls to Christ is itself a humbling and wonderful thing. The stones are like sponges; you can hear the music in the place many hours after the last soprano leaves the building; you can feel the prayer ricocheting around like so many atoms. The Spirit is palpable in such places.

Amen to the future; amen to moving forward; amen to new advances and new intiatives in worship. However, I can't help thinking that when the messy church is finally tidied, the godly play comes of age and the one-size-fits-all nurture course is found to be terminally restrictive - at that point I sense that Lincoln Cathedral will still be doing simple  structured liturgy well, singing beautiful music ably and with a pastoral heart and arms. To move forward without regard and respect to the past inheritance feels a little like the antics of the Prodigal Son!