Coffee
Alan Cresswell
Admin, 8th Day Host
Something that came up in a discussion this evening, and I think it probably fits best in this forum.
We were discussing how worship leaders can bring the experiences of the congregation during the week into worship. This sometimes happens during intercessions, especially if the congregation are invited to share their concerns or offer their own prayers but more often a generic "we bring our personal prayers in silence" - but, usually problems rather than sharing the good things. It was noted that the time when the congregation gathers where what has happened during the week is during tea/coffee time. Which is, usually, outwith the formal time set for worship between the call to worship and benediction.
When we gather together to worship, how do we bring all our lives, including the events of the week? Are there other options for doing this during the formal time set for worship? Or, how do we recognise that the gathering of the people of God within a particular place starts as people arrive before the call to worship and continues after the benediction, including through coffee time? Do we have a fuzzy edge to our time of worship that in some sense extends beyond the formal bounds into the fellowship time surrounding a set time of worship?
We were discussing how worship leaders can bring the experiences of the congregation during the week into worship. This sometimes happens during intercessions, especially if the congregation are invited to share their concerns or offer their own prayers but more often a generic "we bring our personal prayers in silence" - but, usually problems rather than sharing the good things. It was noted that the time when the congregation gathers where what has happened during the week is during tea/coffee time. Which is, usually, outwith the formal time set for worship between the call to worship and benediction.
When we gather together to worship, how do we bring all our lives, including the events of the week? Are there other options for doing this during the formal time set for worship? Or, how do we recognise that the gathering of the people of God within a particular place starts as people arrive before the call to worship and continues after the benediction, including through coffee time? Do we have a fuzzy edge to our time of worship that in some sense extends beyond the formal bounds into the fellowship time surrounding a set time of worship?
Comments
Congregations often only exist in the service.
I think that the people in volunteer groups for the Op Shop and Playgroup, that may not attend a service, are more interconnected than the people who attend a worship service.
I believe I have mentioned before on the Ship that this was the pattern in the church where I grew up, with the interval between the Ministry of the Word and the Ministry of the Sacrament.
Ah. No, we wouldn't be a good fit for a regime like that. Being told what I can and can't do like that really rubs my fur wrong.
This.
Also this.
This, too.
Coffee time at Our Place is in the Hall, which has the most awful acoustics for those who (like me) easily suffer aural overload. The PCC is contemplating the installation of a suspended ceiling - not before time, but it will be expensive...
At one time, most of the congregation used to stay for coffee/tea, but this is no longer the case, so I am told. This may be partly due to people simply having other - and, to them, more important - things to do at Sunday lunch-time!
Service of the Word
Coffee/Tea*
Communion
Unfortunately as communion was at best monthly many forgot that the service was not finished on communion Sunday and went home after tea/coffee. Then came the Family Church Movement and the idea everyone should be in for communion and this changed the order with communion before coffee/tea except....
Some Churches of Christ, who had communion weekly and a much higher emphasis on it, kept it at least until the 1980s, which is when I came across one congregation practicing it.
*Actually it was always tea back then but for coherence put as coffee/tea.
It sort of worked but I always felt it interrupted the flow but context is everything.
Now I'm Orthodox we fast until we've received communion. There are generally some Eastern European goodies alongside the coffee afterwards - or kolyva if there's been a 'menorial'.
As for bringing our concerns into the intercessions etc we tend to use a litany so there isn't much scope for introducing anything that isn't in the script as it were.
'Again and again in peace, let us pray to the Lord!'
'Lord have mercy!'
When I have been to a Sikh service at a Gurdwara a vegetarian meal has been served.
I think the practice of sharing a meal together well reflects the gregarious nature of humanity. In the bible, the shared table symbolises this. I think this practice is sadly missing in the hurly-burly of modern life.
I can't imagine taking a coffee break in traditional services: That might be a failure of imagination on my part. But post-retirement, I take an ecumenical communion service in a small mountaintop community not served by any church, in the Community Hall, which of course has a bar. The bar is open during services. When I first started doing this, my predecessor insisted that the bar be closed, when it wasn't, she stopped doing services. So word got out that Revd Foaming Draught might be amenable to services which co-featured an open bar. This coincided with me taking a closer interest in Eastern Orthodox eucharists, spurred by @Climacus being drafted to that team. I observed that in a two or more hour service, the faithful would come and go, kissing an ikon here, popping out for a smoke there, and then rush in for eucharist.
So I wondered, how might that translate to my mountaintop community? It translates well, let me tell you, if maximising the soul to gospel ratio is one of your KPIs. Community dwellers who might never darken the door of a church, because it's too far from the city, they've been burned in personal history stories, they count themselves agnostic/wiccan/buddhist (we have all of those in a 300 person hamlet) abandon the bar when they hear "In the night when He was betrayed". St Paul might say that they aren't prepared, they're not discerning Our Lord's body, but they're there to hear that Jesus died for them.
Good for you and good for them.
I tend to position myself so I can hear the choir and follow along as best I can. I was in the choir for a short time before our priest booted me off. Probably very wisely on his part.
Whatever the case, I really can't imagine us stopping for coffee part way through. I'm not sure that's purely a failure of imagination on my part but as I keep saying these days, context is everything.
Did St John Chrysostom really write or collate the Liturgy which bears his name?
Discuss.
With a handle like Foaming Draught, how could you do otherwise?!
There is space in the Litany following the Gospel for the inclusion of individual names. That depends on people making a request to the priest in advance for such prayers. I have, I think, only come across one Orthodox parish in UK where this is done on a regular basis.
I have the impression that communality has suffered with the increasing fragmentation of people's lives.
Is this the view of others?
Are there successes in improving communality in your experience?
We could easily cope with a meal during a service; when our church returned after the pandemic, they were seated around tables instead of in rows of chairs for the morning service to help re-build community.
What strikes me is that formal liturgies are stylized meals - bread and cup - that don't feel at all like a meal with loved ones, at least not to me. I loved liturgical services, when I was attending church, but I never felt (and probably never really understood) the whole thing about communion with other people.
We are in the middle of a transition. Our current pastor is going to retire at the end of the month. We expect to have a short interim, and a new minister will be installed probably by fall. I would hope we could build on what the kids shared with the new minister coming on board.
I think there is a sense in which a formal liturgy is akin to a dance, or perhaps a drill team if you prefer. There are a lot of dancers, we all know our parts, and we dance together. It is absolutely a communal effort.
There might not be very much free-flowing interaction going back and forth, but I don't think that's necessary for us to be united in common purpose.
Our Lenten Celtic Communion services were an occasion to feel a sense of belonging, especially the final one, where we all joined in singing with the recorded music, then chatted afterwards about experiences of visits to the Holy Land, and our Vicar’s gifts of albums of photos and memorabilia from the classes at the church school which she visits weekly. ( She is retiring after Easter). Such occasions are rare, but will be all the more important during the forthcoming interregnum.
More seriously, as my new mantra has it, 'context is everything.'
Just when you thought you'd had enough 'both/and' Gamaliel introduces a new and even more persistent aphorism.
It all depends what you are used to.
The sort of interactive activity that @Heavenlyannie describes certainly does build a sense of community. But I also get that impression watching people queueing for communion in my parish as the choir sings, 'Receive the Body of Christ, taste the fountain of immortality ...'
@LatchKeyKid probably wouldn't and would prefer something more informal.
I suspect that whatever style of worship we adopt it's unrealistic to expect church services in and of themselves to create a sense of community. That comes, I think, from shared activity both within and beyond the gathering for worship. Our parish is ethnically diverse, like many Orthodox parishes and the sense of community takes time to develop beyond the ethnic groups represented there. I'm only gradually getting to know some of the Romanians for instance and find it's worth making the effort.
I've heard it said that some cathedrals are finding that worshippers there are building a stronger sense of community than one might expect, given that some people attend cathedral services precisely because they aren't all interactive and overtly communal.
It's easy to make value judgements about other traditions or churches which do things differently to how we do them ourselves. We don't know what's going on beneath the surface.
Some forms of Christian fellowship are almost claustrophobic in their intensity. Others run to the opposite extreme and have very loose levels of engagement and community.
There's some kind of balance somewhere between those two polar opposites.
We rely on a rota of people to operate the recorded music box.
Organist? Is outrage!
Church music should be a capella...
😉
But no, @Arethosemyfeet, I feel your pain.
We have an equal issue in the dearth of trained cantors.
Some parishes have choirs that can lift you to the heavenly places.
Others have wheezy chant that can drag you down to the depths of Hell.
But thanks be to God through Christ Jesus our Lord ...
Rotas? LUXURY! Here the "rota" consists of me, myself, and I. When I'm away I have to set everything up in advance and hope that whoever is there can manage to press "play".
'They have torn down your altars and killed all your prophets. And now ...'
Preferably a slim one who'd fit through the letter box.
We rely on me to set up the music on the laptop. Occasionally (and usually unintentionally) we sing a capella, and I'm not too bad at being a cantor.
That bit doesn't matter for us (no-one locks doors and letter boxes let the wind in). But it's helpful if they're lighter because then they come by plane and get here faster.
(Heavy smilies)
I jest, of course. You are both far further into the Kingdom than I am.
We sing a cappella because we have no musicians bar my son, who is being shy about his skills--and has now gotten himself committed to other stuff during that time frame, so there you go. It doesn't seem to hurt anybody's enthusiasm. Ear drums, well...
we've got rather a good device which has all the hymns for a variety of hymnals pre-loaded, and you dial up the hymnal you use (or set it, given that no church in it's right mind is chopping and changing hymnal week to week... but this is SoF and I'm sure someone will be along shortly...) then you can vary the number of verses, the speed it plays at, and how many stops etc you want out. If you hide a decent speaker behind/under the organ, no one's any the wiser.
It's not great not to have an organist, but somewhere along the line we've acquired what amounts to the next best thing.
The only experience I've had of recorded backing track music was during a visit to my former charismatic evangelical 'new church' - now defunct and its members scattered elsewhere.
To my surprise and horror they were using a banking track that made it sound like they were raving it up and a large charismatic rally rather than there being about 35 adults and quite a few children.
It wasn't just an instrumental backing track, it was full on voices and so on.
A rather unsettling experience.
I'm sure the backing music you all use, those who do so, isn't at all like that.
I did visit a URC church once, thinking about it, where the minister played a jolly track on a CD part-way through the service to make some point or other. He did an embarrassing little jig to it, bless him, but nobody else joined in.
It was some kind of souped up version of 'Lord of the Dance' or something similarly egregious if I remember rightly, but I've erased the spectacle from my memory banks.
Bless him. I'd give him 10/10 for sincerity.