A successful Family Eucharist this morning has given us all great optimism for the future of our church. On their first Sunday the new choir of Salcombe CofE Primary school led the music while children led prayers and gave readings. The church was a buzz with babies, wandering toddlers and lots of local folk happy to be with us. The service was geared towards a family friendly version of the Eucharist using Common Worship Order 1. To their credit the church community rallied around the new format and everything ran really smoothly.
The basic premise I used for simplifying the litugy was trim down some of the Anglican verbosity that remains in our liturgy and to stick to have two readings and three hymns. Out went the Collect of Purity, most of the pentintential rite, the Nicene Creed, the prayer of humble access, and Agnus Dei. I love all these bits I extracted and especially love the creed. But our liturgies are often so wordy that it easy for the modern (or post-modern) ear to feel that you are drowning in a sea of words.
Time and time again research in the Emerging Church cultures have found that my generation (Gen X) are much more visual than textual. A picture is a thousand words! This means that the many of our prayers and litanies have to be trimmed down. Long collects are no good and very involved interecessions will not impact. For too long Anglican rites appear like those confusing overly complicated menus which always start an episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. Every dish has been thrown in for good measure and the restuarant staff cannot deliver. We dont need to use everything at once. It is overwhelming. What we need is for a noble simplicity where the signs and symbols speak for themselves.
Today, I decided to have a Eucharist as the family service. This could have backfired since the Eucharist is a complicated service on the face of it. But in the end, it remains the central act of Christian worship. It is heavy in signs and symbols coupled with a mysterious tranformation of the bread and wine which further more transforms us. The Eucharist is both mysterious and "touchy feely". In this way, done with a noble simplicity, it can offer all generations something.
However, having said that the next problem is allowing children to receive Holy Communion. I am not sure what the policy is here? In the Diocese of Aberdeen we were allowed to initiate children at primary school age. Later on, in their teenage they would then be confirmed. This struck me as an excellent policy since it included children into the fullness of the liturgy at an age when they are likely to come.
