Choral Evensong
rhubarb
Shipmate
We wish to resume the service of Evensong, which unfortunately went by the board during Covid restrictions. Enough time has passed and there is a general wish to try again. One difficulty is the choice of time of day. We had one minister who was keen on 3pm, but that hardly gives the choir or morning congregation time to go home, have lunch and return. I certainly wouldn't be keen to return as a member of the congregation and the provider of family meals. 5pm was also strongly suggested (was our original time), but I feel that is especially difficult in the winter, particularly as some people have a long way to travel and have young children to get home. I'm keen on 4pm which would deal with any problems mentioned. It is suggested that we just start with one service a month which could increase if there is any demand. How do other churches organise themselves to be able to provide morning services plus evening worship? Maybe you prefer not to go with Evensong which is not a heavily attended service. Possibly we don't even need a sermon if our minister feels exhausted. But it would be a pity to lose the traditions of our church.
Comments
It’s been a while since I’ve done an Evensong - our occasional Evensongs became a long-term victim of the COVID disruption - but it can be a beautiful service and not one where a sermon is needed if the clergy feel they have already done their heavy lifting in that department in the morning.
My prayers as decisions are made.
Or have a very early said eucharist, these are Anglicans after all.
I would prefer 4pm in winter, but 6 is fine in summer as it leaves the day or afternoon free( preferably without the 5pm practice).
We normally have a 9.15am Communion, and we get the same sermon twice. Occasionally I don’t mind, as there is more to digest, but it could be shortened. A brief homily or short reflection is sufficient, but I appreciate that is more work for our priest who has five churches, so 3 services as a norm.
We also have a monthly informal family service on a different Sunday, no choir required, and would prefer that to be on the same Sunday as Evensong. We feel Evensong might attract more congregation from those who prefer not to attend the informal service, rather than hoping people will attend twice in one day.
Good thinking.
Main bugbear? If we have a priest to take the service they invariably "re-cycle" their morning sermon which, of course, is based on completely different readings. Fortunately, most Evensongs are taken by a Lay Reader (from another parish) who is aware that the readings are different.
I’m not the person responsible, but please would you remind me where to find the different Evensong readings?
I suspect our priest bends the rules to save herself the time of preparing a different sermon. In my previous church we always had different readings at Evensong, but I somehow thought it meant using a different Year.
Our Place has Evening Prayer on Sundays at 6pm (British Summer Time) or 5pm (Greenwich Mean Time). TBH, it doesn't really make a lot of difference, as it gets dark towards 5pm fairly early on in November, so they might just as well keep it at the same time all year round.
The attendance is usually just the priest and one other person - the latter is not driving at the moment, so FatherInCharge says the Office in an empty church...
FWIW (not much, as any suggestions I make as to timing of services are dismissed out of hand), I'd go for a monthly service, and advertise it widely.
I know that Vicars are supposed to say the Daily Office - but is there really much point in doing so in an empty church, especially if heating, lighting and travel costs are incurred?
I'd ask the same question if there was no congregation except the choir, but I know I'd get shot down by people saying (i) "The choir is the congregation"; (ii) "God and the angels are listening"; (iii) "You never know, a visitor might come in"; or (iv) "It's part of our tradition". [Other comments are, I'm sure, possible].
The suggestion made by @rhubarb - 4pm on one Sunday a month, and see how it goes - is sensible. Maybe only a few choir members would be needed each month, perhaps on a rota basis?
Do you bet on whether they make it to the end of the Magnificat without throwing up?
In the lectionary. There are two lectionaries in the BCP, one at the front and then the Revised Lectionary of 1922 at the back - both are authorised under current CofE rules for liturgy. There are readings daily reading for the principal service, the second service (usually taken to mean Evensong) and for the third service (usually taken as Matins but also to be used for a "low" communion). Or you could use the readings in the modern lectionary, but if doing a "proper" 1662 service it jars if you use a modern translation - at our place we use the KJV.
One of the candidates for our place queried our having Evensong and Matins, saying he had never knowingly (his word) been at either service - looked rather non-plussed when one of our churchwardens expressed surprise since saying the Daily Offices is something
they promise to do at their Ordination. 😈
As I recall it is a brave preacher who attempts to take the third service on Sunday readings as their text. It tends to feature a lot of the dull and ugly bits of the Bible.
Personally I think it’s a lot of work, not to mention time out of my weekend, if nobody other than God and the angels are there to enjoy it. I think it’s worthwhile to try to time things so that people will show up, whatever that may happen to look like in the concrete.
Just so.
When Our Place was under the laissez-faire rule of Father F***wit, he did (largely for family reasons) at least come to the church every day (Mondays to Fridays) for Morning Prayer at 930am. I often attended, too, as did several others, and it was not unknown for the congregation to reach double figures - we used the contemporary-language Franciscan Office, rather than the BCP - though the usual turnout was 4 or 5.
Bu**er all if some of the recently ordained I and friends have encountered are typical. And the same goes for so-called training placements for deacons.
Oh, I don't know. For example, I once heard a splendid sermon on Jael ...
IMO Evensong is just an old word for Evening Prayer, whether sung or not. But I agree that more and more, the usage is that the "song" part requires actual singing.
I was in the chapel choir at uni and we sang it cathedral style twice a week with all it's wonderful music.
It is the one bit of worship I would happily borrow from the CofE. But few RC places have the resources to do it properly.
In my present church, especially now that the choir has improved, the congregation, such as it is, seems to have given up singing. A shame. It is not as if we are cathedral standard, especially for the psalm. It is a service of worship, not a performance, after all.
They also did not sing from fancy psalters with the pointing marked in with little lines. Only choirs had those. The congregation sang from the psalm section in the BCP.
And yet things like pointed psalms and canticles can be a barrier to folk who think, "I don't understand how this works, it's clearly not for the likes of me".
Many churches and cathedrals do use settings of the Gloria etc in which the expectation is for everyone to join in. I've never come across this at Evensong.
BTW I've heard sermons preached at Choral Evensong at (at least) St David's and Winchester cathedrals, both of them excellent.
Do vicars still actually say the Daily Office at all?
I can't imagine charismatic evangelical vicars doing so, and I'm sure some conservative evangelical ones don't either.
A friend whose father and uncle were both vicars, tells me that back in the late 50s/early 60s his uncle would bemoan the decline in attendance at Evensong, blaming in on the cinema, which he pronounced kinema.
'So few people at Evensong these days,' he would intone in a parsonical voice. 'I blame it on the kinema ...'
A little later on, "Jesus of Nazareth" didn't help, either!
When I lived in Lisbon, Portugal, in the late 70s/early 80s, our main church service was at 9pm. (This was in the context of theatre and cinema performances often starting at this time).
Spot on - brought him the butter, chap fell asleep and she banged a tent peg through his temple.
At St Pete's we have Evensong (of sorts*) on the first Sunday of the month at 6:00 pm, but in truth it's usually just the "choir", with occasional other attendees. No sermon, but four hymns, which imho is three too many.
The darkness doesn't really make any difference; in the depth of winter at this latitude it's going to be dark by about 4:00 anyway.
* just chants for the Mag & Nunc (the same chants every time) plus a chanted Psalm (different chants, but not necessarily suitable or enjoyable ones ...)
I enjoyed Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds on Sunday afternoons, probably a bit earlier in the day.
Our Place just advertises Evening Prayer (and Benediction) on Sundays, but, as I've said, at the moment FatherInCharge is often on his own.
I'd be interested to know the proportion of Anglican vicars who actually follow this practice though. I suspect it wouldn't be high.
FatherInCharge is C of E, but I believe he too prays the Office at home, albeit using the RC book! I suspect a lot of C of E clergy at the higher end of the candle use the RC service, finding the book a bit easier to negotiate than Common Worship.
Sadly I'm sure you are right. However the conservative evangelical vicar of my nearest parish church (who has now retired) rang the bell diligently every morning and said the morning office daily. I have no reason to think he didn't say Evening prayer as well but I've not noticed the bell so it might have been flexi-time.
At one time that would have been the norm. However with the increasing need for one priest to minister to two or three churches there is more pressure on them to be ubiquitous. I hope and pray that most priests in the catholic tradition say the office regularly, but sadly it seems to be seen more as a private devotion than part of the corporate prayer life of the parish.
Personally I don't like having the worship done on my behalf without being able to join in.
That was my experience in the second (choral and preserved in aspic) church of my yoof
The daily office in Common Worship is very easy to follow if you use the app, but I agree that following in the book is a nightmare. That said, we used to say the RC daily office in my place and that was equally difficult to negotiate f you weren’t used to it.