Different Church

My pastor was on vacation this weekend and the music director and his wife conducted a mini-Bible study in place of a sermon at all three of the services.  The retired pastor who would be the liturgist didn’t want to do a sermon but was willing to preside over the services.  Part of the mini-Bible study involved a power point and they volunteered to do all of the power points for the weekend.  This gave me the weekend off from church work (other than helping out with the Blueberry Festival).  I took advantage of this opportunity and attended a church where our former vicar is now the head pastor.

The church itself was founded over 125 years ago, as opposed to my church, which is around 40 years old.  There is a lot of history with the church and it was interesting to see how that church conducted a service in comparison to how my church runs the service.

First of all, they use Now the Feast and Celebration for their liturgy.  There are nine settings for the liturgy in the new cranberry hymnbooks put out by the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) but Now the Feast and Celebration is a completely separate liturgy that my church has done on occasion and isn’t included in the hymnbook.  But now that we have access to the new hymnbook, we tend to use that more often than not. So the liturgy was familiar to me but only vaguely familiar.  But still lovely and worshipful all the same.

The second thing I noticed is that they don’t have one person as worship assistant for the service.  At my church, one person serves as worship assistant and wears a robe, does all the Bible readings, leads the Apostles Creed, leads the prayers (writing them also – usually), and helps serve communion. There are also a few other small things the worship assistant does likes leads a few prayers during the course of the service, hands out the offering plates, etc.  Basically the person is there to assist the Pastor with conducting the service.  At the church I attended today, one person did the Bible readings and lead the psalm and another person did the rest although they both helped to serve communion.  Neither one of them wore robes although the pastor wore a robe and stole.  Actually, during communion, there were two additional people who helped but I will explain more of that helping in a moment.  I wonder where the tradition of worship assistants wearing robes at my church came from and why, when our church is so much younger than their church, we wear robes and they don’t? I will have to ask one of our founding members the next time I see them.

The third thing has to do with the prayers.  During the prayers after the confessing of the creed, the pastor and the worship assistant moved down the center aisle to stand among the congregation and from there they did the prayers. So it was the prayers of the people among the people.  Everyone turned to face the pastor and assistant so it felt very much like a communal effort.  After the prayers, the pastor started sharing the peace and everyone was already facing each other which made sharing the peace that much easier.  At my church, there are only certain times of the year that the pastor will stand in the midst of the congregation: on certain holidays he may read the gospel from that point in the church and when he conducts a baptism.  For the baptism, the font is brought mid-way up the center aisle and the baptism is conducted among the people.  Usually our baptismal font resides in the back of the church so that people can dip their fingers in it to remember their own baptism as they are entering and/or leaving the sanctuary.  It is something that I don’t think is usually done in a Lutheran church and not everyone does it.  But those people who are former Catholics really appreciate it.  I did find that I liked having the prayers done from the center of the congregation and I will have to bring that up at the next Worship Committee meeting.  It is a lovely tradition.

The fourth thing I noticed was during communion.  At my church, at our Sunday services, we have a goblet with wine for people who want to drink out of the goblet and who like to do intincture (dipping the bread into the wine) and then a tray of small glasses, like shot glasses but smaller, for those who like to use them and for those who want grape juice.  I prefer the small glasses to the goblet because I don’t think the goblet is all that sanitary. The only time I use the goblet is when I am worship assistant and then I am the first person to use it.  At the church I attended today, they had a whole line of small silver goblets upside down on a shelf on the other side of the communion rail. After people kneel and receive the bread, they pick up a goblet, turn it over and the worship assistant pours wine into it as they say “the blood of Christ, shed for you”.  Then each worshiper leaves the goblet on the shelf and another person comes along to collect the used goblets and replace them where needed.  I e-mailed the pastor and asked her where that tradition came from and she said that she would have to find out.  It was a different way to serve communion and a way that I had never experienced before and I have received communion at a number of churches.  I will follow up if I ever find out where the little silver goblet tradition originated.

All in all, it was a wonderful worship experience.  The people at the church were very friendly and kind.  It was nice to see our former vicar in her new job.  I really enjoyed seeing how much she “owns” the position and seems to be very much at home with her new congregation. I really paid close attention to the service since it was new for me even though it was a Lutheran service.  It was also very nice to be able to just attend a service and not think about power points, the soundboard and who I needed to talk to after the service.  I love that I have the opportunity and ability to serve the church but it was nice to have a Sunday off. Hopefully I will be able to go back and visit again.  Maybe I can convince some of the other members of my church to attend with me.  Just to let our former vicar know that we miss her and that we support her in this new path in her life.

One final note, it is fascinating to me that, even though we are all Christians and, more specifically, Lutheran, we have different ways of worshiping and praising God.  No one way is right or wrong.  It is just what each person and congregation feels is the best way to express love to God and to draw His children closer to Him. I think this is something we can lose sight of when we are making plans or changes at church.  God loves us now matter how we worship.  He made us all different and appreciates those differences.  I will have to keep that in mind the next time we have a contentious argument at church and remind people that, in the grand scheme of things, God probably doesn’t even care and we need to keep our eyes on the big picture.  Arguing and infighting will drive people away from God faster than a difference in the sniggly little details. And we really don’t want to drive people away from the church and God. Just something all of us need to pray about and meditate on as we do our best to serve God.