Ship of Fools: St John the Baptist, Tuebrook, Liverpool
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Ship of Fools: St John the Baptist, Tuebrook, Liverpool
Beautiful building, wonderful liturgy – but scant attendance
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I wondered if the sparse attendance might be due to a carol service being scheduled for later in the day, but no - the carol service is on 27th December (the Bank Holiday Monday).
Our Place had a very poor turnout this cold and foggy morning - about 50% of the usual attendance, which is small enough to start with - but I don't doubt that some of the Missing Persons came to this afternoon's carol service instead of the Mass...
Even using the BCP Sunday Collects etc., they wouldn't have had the Visitation story, though, so maybe they use the common(ish) Lectionary, but someone slipped up...
BTW, the Visitation is found only in Luke's Gospel, so only comes round on this Sunday once every three years, this being the year in which Luke is read at Sunday Mass/Eucharist. I heard a cracking sermon on the subject from a church in Scotland yesterday (online, that is).
Fog and Covid may well indeed have kept folk away. Our Place has a number of young families, but it only takes one or two of the children to be unwell, and there's a big hole in the attendance!
The last vicar but one (no radical) attempted some changes: nave altar with versus populum celebration, 3 year Common Lectionary, being the most obvious. These were reversed by his successor. Presumably the congregation either disliked or were indifferent to the modest changes. Nowt so strange as (church) folk.
The nave altar was removed, and the High Altar was brought back into use, as the architecture of the church required - the nave altar really did look out of place IYSWIM.
I don't know about the Lectionary, but I think the church still uses the English Missal.
@Amanda B Reckondwyth
Lead Editor, Mystery Worship
Back to Tuebrook, then, and I'd be interested to know if the liturgy they use is, in fact, the English Missal.
Asking for a friend, who loves the EM...
I still chuckle when I recall the time he told me about their Easter Vigil with the lighting of the Papal Candle. I didn't have the heart to correct him.
I can only speak of what happened a couple of years ago, not now with the current incumbent. It appears that not much has changed liturgically.
The actual book on the altar was a compilation by the then vicar which was rather like a home-made attempt at the English Missal, and incorporated a few minor elements from Common Worship. That replaced the official CW altar book which had been in use previously; that in its turn, almost certainly, having replaced the EM 20 or so years ago. I could never understand why they didn't just simply use the EM itself.
(Risking Miss Amanda's wrath, I may say that Our Place still has a beautiful EM altar book, out of use now for over 30 years, but lovingly preserved in the Sacristy against possible reintroduction...
Thanks for the information, though, @angloid!
"And the sparse attendance was a little saddening; Liverpool is much more a Catholic city than an Anglican one,".
There were recusants in Lancashire, but Liverpool gets what you think of as a Catholic flavour from Ireland. Catholics in Liverpool are Roman ones. And remember that ferries come into Liverpool from both Irish capitals.
A chap I know who went to be a vicar in Liverpool some years ago said that under the Irish influence, his congregation were markedly Prod even to a degree that some of them painted the woodwork on their houses orange. There were others in the neighbourhood who painted their woodwork green for the same reason.
I don't know Liverpool at all well but I wouldn't have expected there to be much call for Anglo-Catholicism there.
There's some truth in that (except that there isn't much call for any flavour of Anglicanism these days, and not just in Liverpool). For a variety of reasons, a major one being the fact that the first Bishop of the diocese (J C Ryle) was a ferociously anti-Catholic evangelical, the 'default mode' of most parishes has been evangelical. Over the years (and especially since the famous partnership between Bishop David Sheppard and his Catholic counterpart Archbishop Derek Worlock) this has softened a great deal and there are very few churches of the extreme con-evo 'Reform' flavour. Most are 'laid-back low' of some description.
It's a very long time since Anglo-catholicism was feared or persecuted, and besides Tue Brook there are a fair number of parishes of that tradition; some accepting of women clergy and some (a minority, but including Tue Brook) not. There are at least as many which denizens of this website might describe as MOTR – chasubles and Parish communion – but few 'Mattins and harvest festival' churches associated with the comfortable middle Anglicanism of the shires because it is a predominantly urban diocese with very few rural villages.
St John the Baptist, Tue Brook is not one of them, which seems odd, if they are anti-OOW (though that position could apply more to the priest than to the congregation).
https://seeofbeverley.org.uk/directoryDiocese.php?imageField.x=15&imageField.y=7&area=Liverpool
We RCs do not mark Harvest either for the same reason. A fact that became apparent when I was asked to suggest favourite RC harvest hymns for an ecumenical service. We are largely urban in the UK.
I think that's a bit out of date. St Agnes & St Pancras is now in vacancy. The present Vicar of Tue Brook was instituted (last summer) by the Bishop of Beverley, with the diocesan in attendance and preaching.
I wondered if it might be out-of-date - none of the PEVs seem to keep their websites very well (Richborough's isn't too bad).
@Amanda B Reckondwyth
Lead Editor, Mystery Worship