Charles Olsen of the Alban Institute offers some suggestions for Ways to Pray in a [Church] Board Meeting. Here’s an excerpt:

Resistance to infusing the work of a board with prayer tends to come from the conviction that “there is a place for everything and everything should be in its place”—that worship belongs to Sunday and sanctuary and prayer belongs to worship. But an inspirational moment in a meeting does wonders in loosening the strings of resistance, and those inspirational moments will come once worshipful work is attempted. Let the only rule be “meetings are worship.” All else will flow to and from that fountain. Then we can drink from its fullness!

Some interesting ideas here. Maybe we should develop an Order for Vestry (and other!) meetings. We could even have a new supplemental book, the Book of Regular Meetings, perhaps? A Worship committee seems like a good place to start. Other ideas?

(Via Episcopal Cafe.)

His first two points I largely agree with–although I would also add that I think there are reasons beyond aesthetic that projection screens are not generally a good idea in a worship setting (more on that in another post).

His third point I think needs more discussion, however, partly because it echoes an objection I see pretty often especially in regard to liturgical innovation. Here’s the point he makes:

3. New is not necessarily better. When drawing together a diverse group in worship, incorporating prayers and/or music that everyone will recognize will unite the gathering and bring in those who feel displaced by liturgical innovations.

I agree to a limited extent with the general intention here; this is, for example, why I am sometimes hesitant about using musical settings of the Lord’s Prayer–because if someone without much church background knows one single prayer, that’s the prayer it’s likely to be.

It as absolutely true that new is not necessarily better; at the same time it is also true that older is not necessarily better, either. Older liturgical materials have been around long enough to be tested and filtered so that (perhaps) much of the really bad has been filtered out. But everything old was new once; more important is finding what is good, what works. This is sometimes a process of trial and error. It seems unsurprising to me that someone would take the opportunity of a large conference of folks at an Emerging Church conference to try out a whole lot of new stuff with a group that has self selected to be fairly receptive of new stuff.

More important, however, is the question raised in the second sentence–what is the best way to bring together a diverse group in worship? I think the assumption that there are specific prayers and hymns that everyone will recognize is an increasingly hazardous one to make, particularly as the diversity of the group increases. One approach to this problem is to try and identify different subgroups and make sure that each will find something that is familiar to them. But even this can be a an assumption dangerous to evangelization; there are a great number of people for who are not familiar with any of our prayers and music. We hope that some of them will find their way into churches, and keep coming back.

It is a great danger to our ability to be hospitable, to our ability to welcome strangers into our midst, if we become too comfortable in what is familiar. It may lull us into assuming that everyone knows the same things, comes from the same background.

This is particularly important for those who plan and lead worship. IF we assume that everyone knows the prayers we are using, the music we are singing, we may forget to teach, forget to lead. We may even forget how to open what is familiar to ourselves so that we can be joined in it by those for whom it is new. Indeed, most of us never learned how to do this in the first place. But it is vital that we do so.

It is, of course, entirely possible to use new material in ways that are closed and opaque to outsiders. I suspect that is at least in part what happened in the liturgy that inspired Father T.’s rant. This is as much, or even more of a problem, as when it is done with traditional liturgy. But such an experience can be instructive, if it helps us remember what it is like to be a stranger, to be experiencing something new and unfamiliar for the first time.

And better yet, working with new material may remind us of the care we must taken to open all liturgy to anyone who may come, and remind us to take as much care with the old as with the new–and that, I think, is what will really help unite a diverse gathering, and bring everyone in.

“Rather than allowing symbols, gestures, and environment to communicate for themselves, many want to explain every symbol to within an inch of its life. The multivalent, multi-dimensional symbol becomes the private possession of the worship leader or text-author whose personal piety becomes inflicted on the gathered community destroying any complexity and reducing the symbol to a single dimension. Translating and explaining symbols into words implies that the words do the job better – and one wonders why the symbol is there at all. “

The problem of trying too hard to explain symbols always reminds me of a church that we love very much, but at least some years back had a practice of explaining, while giving a baptismal candle to the newly baptized (or their parents), “This candle represents the bond that exists between the church and the newly baptized.” Now, a burning candle is not really a very good symbol of a bond, and this was inevitably highlighted when the candle was extinguished as the family returned to their seats.

Then, the movie “A Mighty Wind” came out, which includes a scene where one of the musicians is performing a ritual for a sort of new age color religion, lights a candle and says,

“This flame, like all flames, represents the light and darkness.
It also represents the uncertainty of life and its delicacy.

It also represents a penis.”

Which is certainly a much fuller and more accurate exploration of the symbolism of a lit candle, but it also means that I have to work really hard to keep myself from laughing inappropriately whenever someone tries to explain the symbolism of an object.

Generally, I think that feeling a need for explanation of symbols or symbolic action is a symptom that suggests that something about the use or application of that symbol has failed. Explanation is unlikely to fix the problem, but the desire to explain may be a helpful diagnostic.

Addendum: For another interesting take on the issue of explanation in a Jewish ritual context, see Reb Zalman’s discussion on the seder:

“it is important that at each Seder there be a totally new reason for these things we do. Just because someone once in the thirteenth century gave a reason, why should that remain the only reason forever? There were very good reasons for that person’s understanding of the universe; but the Seder is bigger than that moment; it is that continuity, that covenant, that household of Israel that keeps going on in freedom. So your own reasons are vital.”

(Via Velveteen Rabbi.)

So here you go, some nice fresh open threads for the Holy Week liturgies: discuss, share your brilliant ideas and you horror stories, whatever else you have.

• Palm/Passion Sunday
• Maundy Thursday
• Good Friday
• Easter Vigil

I’ll be looking out for especially interesting comments to highlight in posts of their own (with permission of the original commenters).

(Via 37signals.)