Speaking the Call to Ministry to One Another

Speaking the Call to Ministry to One Another: A re-visioning of the Chrism Mass Holy Week liturgy, with bishop, clergy, and laypeople. Where might we go with the Maundy Thursday Chrism Mass and Reaffirmation of Ordination Vows? Donald Schell writes of twenty-five years experience of the ‘Chrism Mass’ and Renewal of Ordination Vows in Holy Week, valuing the experience for its collegiality and but also wondering how diocesan and cathedral liturgies for this event, shaped when the 1979 Prayer Book was new, could be reframed to give clergy and laity in Holy Week opportunity to celebrate and nurture their shared call to service and the servanthood in friendship that Christ commands in John’s Gospel.

Starting from Scratch

Starting from Scratch: What Church Panting Looked Like for St. Lydia's is a new Open article now online. Click the image above to read the article by Emily Scott.

Emily Scott tells of the first months of founding St. Lydia’s, her new effort at liturgical evangelism and community building with young adults in New York City. The congregation that she began and that’s now taking steps to shape its own life is still, as she says, ‘hot off the press,’ and she tells the beginning of a story that invites us to ask for more.

Here as St. Lydia’s is just begun and while the thinking and experience are in formative stages she writes about what prompted this beginning, how she made initial choices, what church and organizational thinking she drew on to shape a new start-up. With the unguarded voice of those moments of beginnings, she’s asking what the work of starting something really is. That question of how to begin something new can speak to any church leader and any congregation. It’s always going to be specific and local, anyone risking the spiritual and practical work of first steps will welcome hear not just of the progress St. Lydia’s has made, but how that progress was made, and what they learned along the way.

Anticipated Returns: The Advent Project

Anticipated Returns: The Advent Project is a new Open article. Click the image above to read the article by William Peterson.

We publish Bill Petersen’s article on the North American Academy of Liturgy’s “Advent Project Seminar” in time to challenge any of us who plan liturgy to restore Advent to its ancient seven week length, sidestep the ‘Christmas culture,’ and find our way to much-needed preaching, teaching and reflection on what Christian eschatology actually looks like, how it’s different from ‘End Times’ speculations of the Religious Right, and how the end which has come to us in Christ invites us to live differently NOW. The North American Academy of Liturgy’s ecumenical conversations took this renewed approach to practical ideas including the observation that the Revised Common Lectionary anticipates such a change, or at least supplies suitable readings for a seven week Advent. The seminar also suggested experimental use of the “O” Antiphons one by one for this longer seven week Advent, and invited making new sources (or adapting existing ones) such as hymnody and psalm antiphons to give the extended season character and life. This article was invited by APLM Council member John Hill and is also published in Liturgy Canada.

Read it and see what your congregation can do to linger in reflection on the coming and presence of God’s kingdom. The seminar is particularly interested in hearing of experiments this advent – what you tried and how it worked. Read, ponder, and join this ecumenical and international effort to renew and enlarge our Advent in practice.

Pews, Mission, and Worship

Pews, Mission, and Worship: A Pastoral Letter to a Parish is a new Open article now online in PDF format. Click the image here to read Philip Carr-Janes article.

Writing a pastoral letter to his congregation about the history of church furniture (particularly the seating) and what it can do to serve or hinder or worship, Phil Carr-Jones gives broad Biblical background, a solid sketch of the history and evolution (or decay) or Christian practice and proposes a full seasonal cycle for reordering the church space with a rationale for the seating of each season.

Open, Spring 2008 Issue

The Spring 2008 issue of Open is now online in Adobe PDF format.

In this issue of Open, “What is Baptism for?” is the organizing question, whether it is directly addressed by our authors or not. The gifts of the font in each of our lives reaches far beyond its immediate environs, and when a church community begins to really live out the power of God’s blessing in water, we all take note.

Articles including those on "Public Work" at St. Paul's Chapel in New York City, When Signs Signify by Louis Weil, Baptism or Confirmation? by Joe Morris Doss and an accompanying report by Robert Brooks, Against Inclusivity by Juan Oliver, and Going to Church in the First Century by Jamie Howison. The articles are listed below and this blog is intended to be a place where we can dialogue with the authors and one another on the ideas presented in the journal of the Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission.

Open: Good Liturgy at 9/11

The Spring 2008 issue of Open includes the latest of Donald Schell's ongoing look at real stories of good liturgy.

What might worship might look like that is a “Public Work” for pilgrims who visit the 9/11 memorial at St. Paul’s Chapel adjacent to Ground Zero in New York City? Donald Schell describes the power liturgy has to create meaningful connections between worshippers and visitors pouring off tour buses. The article is online here: Real Stories of Good Liturgy.

Open: When Signs Signify

The meaning of our sacraments must be transparent, reminds liturgical theologian Louis Weil. We see, feel, touch, hear and smell the rites of the Church, and we experience the transformation they effect. Anything less than that trivializes those sacramental rites. The full text of the article is online here in Adobe PDF format: When Signs Signify

Open: Baptism or Confirmation?

Bishop Joe Morris Doss asks whether we really believe that Baptism is at the heart of Christian ministry in the Church. In thishistorical review, he warns us that recent General Convention actions are returning Confirmation to a central role we decided against over thirty years ago.

As a companion piece to Doss’ article, Robert Brooks reports on recent years’ efforts to respond to the canonical actions of General Convention, and the amazing coalition of theologians, bishops, educators, parish clergy and others who have been energized to bring Baptism back to the center of our understanding of ministry, while addressing the needs of the Church for adequate formation and leadership training.

The full text of the two companion articles is online in Adobe PDF format here: Baptism or Confirmation?

Open: Against Inclusivity

Juan Oliver begins his article “As a Latino Episcopalian, I am against being ‘included.’” What are the special liturgical gifts of bicultural Episcopalians, and what are the opportunities for the vast majority of “monocultural” Episcopalians? The full text is online in Adobe PDF format here: Against Inclusion.

Open: Going to Church in the First Century

Jamie Howison’s parish in Winnipeg—already highly identified as a table-centered, Eucharistic community—experiences a richer engagement with the meaning of Eucharist as they gather to practice pre-Nicene liturgies. The full text of the article is online in Adobe PDF format here: Going to Church in the First Century

Open: Faith on the Ground

Amy McCreath introduces us to the chaplaincy at the University of Michigan which finds that the practical meaning of Christian living is revealed through intentional engagement with the lives and stories of the saints.

In the same file, Rebecca Wolf, a student at the University of Michigan, preaches on how the story of Constance and Her Companions reveals the meaning of her own choices and vocation as a follower of Jesus.

The two are online in a single Adobe PDF file: Faith on the Ground