It’s hard to believe that June is nearly over. Soon, we’ll be celebrating Independence Day, Then August will find many of us preparing for choir season to resume, and then Labor Day is upon us before we know it, and the “program year” of choirs, Sunday School, and other activities begins again.
But with all these “green” Sundays of Ordinary TIme, what can we do to keep worship interesting and fresh but still coherent and connected to a larger picture? How do we continue doing the liturgy (whatever that looks like) over and over again while making it feel like it’s the first time?
Sometimes, letting the texts be our guide is all that is necessary. The texts may suggest that we include or omit a confession of sin. They may suggest that using the creed is in order, and may even hint at whether we should use the Apostles’ Creed with its ‘I’ language or the Nicene Creed with its ‘we’ language. They may suggest that a child read the lessons (‘Whoever causes one of these little ones to sin…”) for greater impact. The possibilities are endless.
Or perhaps your congregation could, like mine, move one of its services outside during these summer months. Or perhaps the summer is a great time to resurrect the art of the church potluck once a month, or twice a month, or even every week, allowing worship to flow into a time of food and fellowship that helps us to better live as a community of believers.
Whatever you do, be intentional. Have a purpose.
How do you avoid the risk of monotony during these summer months? What advice do you have for the rest of us?
2 comments:
I have some other musician come in every Sunday - recorder players, a couple of singers, college students, etc. Anything to allow the people to hear something besides me playing organ all the time!
And - this is important, I think - the additional musician does something liturgical in addition to playing a solo. So a cellist plays the prelude and plays along on the opening hymn. Or a singer sings "Music at the Offering" and chants the Psalm. Anything to enliven the monotony of Green.
One Sunday evening each month, we are having an outdoor worship service with a meal afterward. This is in addition to our regular Sunday services.
You make a really good point about ensuring that everything has a purpose. We change our liturgy for the summer, but when deciding on the changes it was for variety and practical reasons. Valuable "worship" wasn't really a consideration although it probably should've been.
Anyways, the major changes in the service are that we use the kyrie from Marty Haugen's Now the Feast (spoken not sung), sing the Doxology for the canticle of praise and the congregation sings "Lord to whom shall we go..." in the Alleluia gospel acclamation every week instead of using the appointed verse for the Alleluia.
We chose the Doxology after looking at several possible hymns because it was short, effective, different from the regular liturgy and something that we thought people could sing every week without getting tired of it. The kyrie and Alleluia were changed to eliminate the need for a cantor due to scheduling concerns.
Two years ago, we'd tried doing summer worship services with all the liturgy spoken, although we still sung the hymns. Although cutting the liturgical music did meet the goal of making the service a little shorter, it was amazing how the words seemed to lack so much in meaning without the music. Lamb of God and Holy Holy Holy especially seemed so empty without the passion created by the music.
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