Micro-services...
Bishops Finger
Shipmate
This Church in Wales initiative was mentioned in the Guardian a week or so ago, and today they report on the first *Micro-service* at St David's Church, Swansea:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/23/swansea-churchgoers-praise-first-micro-service-wales
Short weekday services are hardly anything new, though I guess they usually take the form of a very minimalist Eucharist, or maybe a said Office (Midday Prayer takes only a few minutes).
Thoughts?
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/23/swansea-churchgoers-praise-first-micro-service-wales
Short weekday services are hardly anything new, though I guess they usually take the form of a very minimalist Eucharist, or maybe a said Office (Midday Prayer takes only a few minutes).
Thoughts?
Comments
To my mind, the thing about 15 minute services is that they need to happen where people are - you're not going to get people to commute 15 minutes each way for a 15 minute service, but if people are there anyway, it might be viable.
I wouldn't think that a 15 minute service was a substitute for a Sunday Eucharist, but if I could reasonably stop in somewhere on the way to work and say Morning Prayer, that's a thing that a number of people could easily fit in to their day.
FWIW, the daily Mass at Our Place usually takes about 20 minutes (with a congregation of 2 or 3 most days), but includes a responsorial psalm (between the 1st reading and the Gospel) and a very short homily - no more than 3-4 minutes.
IOW, it could be condensed to 15 minutes without becoming irreverent - FatherInCharge never rushes the Eucharistic Prayer...
Some Baptists couldn't hack this - they can't imagine a service which doesn't begin with a 20-minute "worship time" (= singing). Micro-services will have to be very carefully curated to make sure they stick to time yet not feel rushed.
It's often assumed that, back in the day, when people tended only to receive communion once or twice a year, they didn't do much praying the rest of the time. Daily prayers were a feature of many households.
Anyhow, whatever the case, that was then, this is now ...
I don't see why Baptists and other 'Free Church' types couldn't adapt something to fit a 15 minute format. I've seen Methodist and URC ministers conduct short, pithy services in university chaplaincies for instance.
Ok, they might have to use something like an Iona Community office or a Northumbria Community service but many Baptists I know would be very comfortable with that.
I remember lunch time services of about 25 minutes in some cathedrals. Also elsewhere similarly during the week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
I find that walking in to a church gets me in to the frame of mind for worship quickly, so I find "in church buildings" helpful. I can do personal prayer wherever, but that's not the same frame of mind as "worship".
I'd probably say that I should be able to worship God anywhere, but I find the trappings helpful.
That’s how the Salvation Army started. They realised the people they were trying to attract weren’t interested in attending a church.
"Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there will be an acoustic guitar* amongst them".
Whether anyone can play it (or should be allowed to) is not specified.
*on which it is only permitted to play D, G and A7
If only that were so. Indoors too in my experience when I was moving in those circles.
And I say this as an acoustic guitarist...
Whatever the format, any micro-service of 15 minutes or so needs, as @Baptist Trainfan says, to be carefully curated.
A short Office of some sort, with a set prayer or two for the congregation (the seasonal Collect of the week, or the Collect appropriate for the time of day), a short versicles-and-responses bit, and, of course, a Bible reading, seems to me to fit the bill.
However, the set parts do perhaps need to be available to the congregation on (say) a laminated card, so that everyone can join in, and it doesn't become monopolised by the minister/officiant.
Given the short time allowed, it's important for the service - whatever form it takes - to be unhurried, and to not feel perfunctory.
I was impressed by the 35-minute Sunday morning services at one of Minneapolis' Lutheran megachurches: to accommodate their huge Sunday attendance, they had, at least pre-COVID, four services on the hour with about 20 minutes between services for the cattle call that the hallways and parking lot must have turned into. The liturgy, with organ and often with choir, featured at least a couple of hymns, perhaps two stanzas each, standard confession, the minimum required readings and psalm, a five-minute sermon of some substance, and somehow the Communion rite. It proceeded efficiently but not in a rush.
Here's a recent example...I see they have three services now, at 9, 10, and 11. One stanza per hymn. Very many Amens sung to a IV-I cadence accompanied by organ. It almost gets funny after a while.
So maybe not a micro-service, but an example of getting it all done in a short time without a rush. As for a weekday 10- or 15-minute service, I'm sure some would say it's not worth the effort to get to church for something that short unless you're a Palmarian.
I'd hate it
I'm disappointed and feel like we haven't finished properly if our place cuts the processional hymn short because the procession has finished. There's a progression of thought in the stanzas, and if you miss out the conclusion and just ...stop... then it feels so terribly unsatisfactory.
A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing;
our helper he, amid the flood
of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
does seek to work us woe;
his craft and power are great,
and armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.
That’s what you want to stop on?!
I doubt if any of us would sing all 18 verses of "O, for a thousand tongues", although it might be fun to include "Harlots and publicans and thieves" together with "Murderers and all ye hellish crew"; I'm not so sure about "washing the Aethiop white" though!
I can agree with that. My dear late father, and I imagine most parishioners of the Roman Catholic parish I grew up in, could never understand why we'd want to keep singing a hymn if Father had reached his place and looked ready to start. But then, Dad often parked the car nose-out so our post-Mass getaway would be a quick one. Church was something to get done, not linger over.
What's this? It's the first time I've seen any reference to the 'body and blood' of Mary as well as the Body and Blood of Christ.
We Orthodox are very Marian of course but I've never come across the idea that we receive Mary as well as Christ in the Eucharist. I am aware that some forms of Marian devotion in the RCC go beyond anything we'd be comfortable with but what's going on here? Is it a Palmarian thing or something that can be found elsewhere?
Coming back to the OP.
Could an Orthodox service he condensed to 15 minutes? Yes, a non-eucharistic one most certainly.
The Trisagion prayers, Lord's Prayer and something from the Hours could easily fit that timescale with room to spare.
Lord help us ...
Even if they have had several popes in the last few years and seem to have more bishops that lay people.
Judging by their Youtube clips they must have very wealthy backers - their place is blingtastic.
The service was led by university students and consisited of a psalm, a reading and a prayer. Not a single note of Bach (or anything else) was sung. It was both moving - Bach and the role of Leipzig's churches and their young people in the fall of the communists in E Germany - and frustrating that I didn't get to hear the building "sing" so it didn't come to life.
It's like a version of Rule 34 (don't Google it at work) but for weird sects: whatever bizarre and pointless heresy you can come up with someone, somewhere, will already have conceived it and founded their own church with 15 bishops and a dog-deaconess.
...... and far more arch-whotsits and sub-whatevers in fancy clobber than lay people. And just around the corner a breakaway sect who went their own way after a dispute about tassles.
Religion is a funny old world!
I was a mouse-click away from joining the Humanist Society or the Secular Society ...
@Forthview - I'd half-wondered whether they were a break-away sect or simply some fringe element within the RCC - which, like any other Church (including my own) contains more than its fair share of oddballs and eccentrics. As soon as I Googled them I realised they weren't kosher.
Lord have mercy!
In the interests of fairness I should note that this isn't limited to the Catholic end of things. Reading the saga of the dispute that led to the split between the Free Presbyterians and the Associated Presbyterians is enough to drive anyone to drink. It's almost as absurd (and thankfully less violent) than the history of Combat 18 I read on Wikipedia the other day.
The 'khlysty' anyone?
And also, sadly, a draconian track record on clamping down heavily on groups or movements that weren't regarded as kosher.
No, these things aren't confined to any form of Christianity, Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox.