Karen described a number of liturgical approaches at Church of the Apostles, including
1. The use of an anthem as an organizing musical theme to frame the service, including the playing of background music during the Eucharistic Prayer.
Her trinity of musicians put that idea to practice during our conference liturgies. I overheard one older priest who said she didn't care for it, but I and many others appreciated the way it supported and enhanced the spoken prayer.
2. The formation of a Liturgy Guild to read through the Sunday texts and decide what theme could be modeled throughout the service.
There is risk in trusting the dynamic of the community to come together and create liturgy, but it can yield exciting new liturgies. She reminded us that liturgy means literally "the work of the people."
3. Ask the question, "Who wants to imagine a new liturgy?"
Those who respond can then pick a new time to hold the service, use a "lost" service or feast like Candlemas, and then talk afterwards about the experience.
Karen cautioned that when trusting people to come up with a liturgy it was still important for them to report in to her and have a deadline for accomplishing the task so there's time to review, rescue, or replace the liturgy.
4. Use an alternate Creed like the Australian Creed.
I tried to find this on line, and after trying GoodSearch and Google, and finding (and discarding) one from a website called Prayer Patterns, I found this one from Reconciliation Resources (whether or not it's what Karen had in mind, I liked it, and it certainly sounds like an Emerging Church Creed!
We believe in God, creator and sustainer of life, creator of the black woman and the white woman of the black man and the white man of the woman who is not quite black and not quite white of the man who is not quite white and not quite black.
We believe in God, the Creator who gave us the desert pea and the flowering gum, the Murray cod and the platypus, the Southern Cross and the Milky Way.
We believe in God, who gave us a land to keep, to reverence and to cultivate.
We believe in Jesus, born of a woman who was not quite black and not quite white, a woman who was not quite sure of who she was or who she was to be, a woman who faithfully struggled to believe.
We believe in Jesus - risen, liberator of all humanity, Emmanuel, God-with-us, God-for-us.
We, women and men of the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit, believe in the power of the Spirit to set us free to regenerate our land, to transform our world, to work for peace, to listen to the loneliness of 'the drover's wife' and the 'weeping man'.
We believe in the power of the Spirit to transform our dealings with our sisters and our brothers of other colours and diverse creeds.
Karen talked about the need to have music which mirrors how we sing. When we used to gather at home around the piano and sang from song books, it seemed natural to sing in our churches using hymnals. But what would be natural for singing in our churches today?
How can we better engage people's senses? their senses of touch, and smell, and taste? Karen's community has used Prayer Stations to accomplish this.
A cota homily is styled as "the reverb." I liked that. Reverberations from the Gospel and other readings, and verb from the Latin word for, well, word, as in the Word of God. Sometimes she will ask lay people to give the reverb, whom she calls "Baptismal priests."
Karen also mentioned an Emerging Worship Statement she crafted with Lars Hammer, and she was kind enough to email me the text:
"Emerging worship is not so much a style as it is an approach, where the aim is the opening of space (portals, windows and passages) where an encounter with the Holy Trinity can occur.
"Emerging worship is not so much ‘led’ by ‘worship leaders or ‘presiders’ (whether priests, preachers, or musicians/bands) but is curated, realizing that the Holy Spirit is the one who leads us, making the curates work that of helping create an environment where the Spirit can work, and making it easier (as Urban T Holmes says) to’ fall in love with God.’
"Emerging worship draws upon the ancient practices of the Christian faith (Word, Sacrament, meditation, spiritual exercises, chant, hymody, symbols, ritual...) and resources from today’s culture (new media technologies, cultural stories (movies, tv, radio, literature...), cultural formats (slam poetry, art installations, club culture, community festivals...) and current musical forms.
"The aim is less to ‘blend’ elements as much as to ‘place them into contrast and learn from the juxtapostition’: the old and new, the ‘secular’ and ‘sacred,’ the ‘holy’ and the ‘mundane,’ the greatness of God and the suffering and injustice of our world, such things, when ‘brough into proximity’ have the capacity to open new space within us, where our human striving, need for redemption, desire for hope, and hunger for particpation, and God’s profound grace, saving action invitation to the Kingdom and calling to mission, meet."
Open Space. It's a concept Karen introduced in her talk and in her conference liturgies, where she gave this rubrical explanation:
You are invited to engage the stations for prayer and healing/anointing around the room, or meditate in your place, as you like. You might contemplate or wonder: What is God saying to me in this liturgy? or what is God asking me to do or be? and how is God asking me to change? This is your time with God. We will gather back together in eight minutes.
As I encountered this new idea, I immediately recalled that the ancient Hebrew stem for the word "salvation" means "'to be roomy, broad,' especially as opp. to oppression, which is properly 'narrowness' . . . Thus [the Hebrew stem] means 'to make it spacious' for one who is constricted." [Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume VII, page 973.]
Continuing the concept of Open Space, Karen said that "Liturgy is entered by people. Our task is to facilitate an environment for the Holy Spirit to act. At cota, this is done by Worship Curators with an emphasis not on who is leading but on what is happening. The curators, including Karen, try to hang back rather than take "front stage." Using "The God Mic" means that the curators can be anywhere in the worship space.
Random Baptismal Bit: cota has rediscovered the ancient practice of giving of milk and honey to the newly baptized as a symbol of having entered the promised land.
Other Random Bit: cota used a Wii Bell Choir last Easter!
For Karen, worship relates to culture in at least four ways:
1. transcultural: e.g., we find Scripture reading, Baptism, Holy Communion, and Creeds in Christian Worship regardless of the culture.
2. contextual: i.e., worship is always related to the local culture, heritage, language, etc., but always in ways that are consonant with the Gospel.
3. cross-cultural sharing: e.g., Anglos singing Black or Latino songs, or the use of icons
4. counter-cultural: e.g., baptizing untouchables in India, or otherwise challenging the sinful and oppressive and dehumanizing elements in the culture.
Final Random Bit: When Visitors get incorporated into the congregation they become Hosts!
Next: the cota Rule of Life
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