I don't know if anyone else here remembers pumping a church organ by hand.
I've never done it, but I've been in a service where it was done: Ranworth (I think) in Norfolk, 1969.
Tangent
Ah! IIRC and I haven’t been for a few years, you can climb the tower and get brilliant views of the Norfolk countryside. Don’t remember anything about a hand pumped organ but I definitely remember the views.
Interesting. The Quakers might have something similar to say on that.
Does the written word being read aloud count?
Incidentally, @Pease, you mentioned the invention of the printing press as a game-changing technology. Yes, it facilitated the spread of Protestant ideas at the Reformation but it's often forgotten how the RCs used it to print and circulate missals.
Same technology, different application.
The Orthodox were behind the curve with printing technology but used it to print anthologies of ancient texts such as The Philokalia.
As has been observed by several Shipmates it's what the technology is used for that matters.
Speaking as someone who has a tendency to fidget, I prefer hymn books to screens. It gives me something to do with my hands. I can see why churches with limited budgets might prefer screens though. Hymn books are not cheap, and if you want to use more than one...
And hymn books sometimes include the tune. Words on screens never do.
I’ve seen words with tunes on a screen. My denominations hymnal is published in multiple formats: traditional book, electronic format that can be printed on a sheet or inserted in a printed bulletin/service booklet, projectable format (which includes tunes), and maybe another format that I’m not recalling.
I think this may be a pond difference. It's frankly unusual to even get the melody in any form - I've experienced it twice; once when I was at school mumblety mumble years ago and at my current place.
Speaking as someone who has a tendency to fidget, I prefer hymn books to screens. It gives me something to do with my hands. I can see why churches with limited budgets might prefer screens though. Hymn books are not cheap, and if you want to use more than one...
And hymn books sometimes include the tune. Words on screens never do.
I’ve seen words with tunes on a screen. My denominations hymnal is published in multiple formats: traditional book, electronic format that can be printed on a sheet or inserted in a printed bulletin/service booklet, projectable format (which includes tunes), and maybe another format that I’m not recalling.
I think this may be a pond difference. It's frankly unusual to even get the melody in any form - I've experienced it twice; once when I was at school mumblety mumble years ago and at my current place.
The "standard" version of the Church of Scotland hymnary is the melody edition. I will confess to not projecting the music, as we continue to have the books available and it's often enough of a challenge to ensure the words are large enough (and if we had anyone attending regularly who could read music well enough for it to help I'd have conscripted them by now).
It strikes me that, for many people, the use of technology is completely normalised. To attend a church which doesn't appear to use it may seem alien or even off-putting - although that could also be regarded as a challenging counter-cultural statement/
Conversely, there are people who are seeking a refuge from an overly technological world. Even if it's only for a short time, a "non-technology" church will be very attractive to them.
A church free from technology doesn't exist - church buildings are themselves technology. Wanting a church space free from electronics is not the same thing.
I think that having such a narrow view of "technology" is dismissive of the human ingenuity involved in non-electronic technology, which I dislike immensely.
Any kind of cloth used in church - whether in vestments, hangings, altar frontals etc or just in wearing whatever the normative clothing is for attending church in your tradition (which might not be any different to "normal" clothing!) has had a huge amount of technological expertise involved in making it. Anyone who has tried weaving, sewing, spinning etc knows what an enormous amount of work is needed to produce cloth, and even more to produce clothing. And that's not even taking into account rearing sheep or silkworms, or growing cotton or linen.
In fact if you think about it, bread and wine are products of technology. It is impossible to obey Our Lord's command (however you interpret his words at the Last Supper) without using technology. Why single out screens and sound equipment in particular?
The "standard" version of the Church of Scotland hymnary is the melody edition. I will confess to not projecting the music, as we continue to have the books available and it's often enough of a challenge to ensure the words are large enough (and if we had anyone attending regularly who could read music well enough for it to help I'd have conscripted them by now).
Does the CofS still use what I call 'stable door' psalters, where the tunes are at the top half of the page and the words at the bottom, with the pages split in the middle so one can match psalms in any metre with any tune in the same metre? It has always struck me as an excellent idea. It is much better than the CofE which in my lifetime has lost its memory for psalms because the nineteenth century insisted on expecting congregations to sing them really badly in prose.
It was a very good idea, and I remember these from my youth. But no, the last two editions of the hymnary has not had these. I think thy fell out of favour along with the tradition that the metrical Psalms would always be a part of a service - a tradition which continued long after the addition of ‘human hymns’ was acceptable.
My younger daughter had her wedding reception in a simple community hall. My elder daughter is very arty and graphically trained. She produced simple but effective displays and place-settings etc.
Yes, there are all sorts of examples of personal giftedness, often at least in part supported by things like public education.
Cultural conservatives who want to preserve church buildings are arguing for greater state involvement at some level; whether it's in the form of state take over of such buildings so that those grubby anti-aesthetic congregations don't get their hands on it, some form of state subsidy or state levy of the congregations in them, or subsidies to arts education.
If we are widening our view of technology, then race as a technology of dominance has had a hugely deleterious impact on worship on both sides of the pond.
Joking aside I think very good points have been made about extending the discussion beyond electronic devices to include fixtures and fittings, cloths and vestments and so on as well as cultural and racial issues.
And yes, I'd be in favour of re-nationalising the water companies.
It was a very good idea, and I remember these from my youth. But no, the last two editions of the hymnary has not had these. I think thy fell out of favour along with the tradition that the metrical Psalms would always be a part of a service - a tradition which continued long after the addition of ‘human hymns’ was acceptable.
I find the filleting of the psalter to be the chief flaw in CH4. I'd like to be able to have the choice of singing at least the lectionary psalm each week without resorting to printing it out (as I did last Sunday).
Within the context of this thread, it was understood what 'technology' meant. But I do take the point. I am dependent, even at our low tech church, on my high-tech hearing aids!
Interesting. The Quakers might have something similar to say on that.
Does the written word being read aloud count?
What I had in mind is that, in this context, I find reading written words distracting and subtracting - it takes something away from participating in a communal act of worship. In that regard, I would rather not read (or be able or expected to read) written words, whether the words are projected or displayed, or printed onto sheets or leaves of paper which are supplied to the assembled.
But now that you ask the question, I think I'd also prefer not to see written words being read.
I think there's something to be said for using our memory during communal worship, with which Protestant traditions have little truck (in my experience). I don't find this very surprising, one reason being that the source of authority is the Word, by which is meant the written Word. It doesn't seem accidental that Protestant services of worship traditionally centre reading from a big heavy book on a big heavy lectern located in a prominent position.
Thinking about this now, it occurs to me that this focus overshadows the Word as logos and rhema.
Incidentally, @Pease, you mentioned the invention of the printing press as a game-changing technology. Yes, it facilitated the spread of Protestant ideas at the Reformation but it's often forgotten how the RCs used it to print and circulate missals.
Same technology, different application.
The Orthodox were behind the curve with printing technology but used it to print anthologies of ancient texts such as The Philokalia.
As has been observed by several Shipmates it's what the technology is used for that matters.
Does it assist? Or does it detract?
I don't agree with the premise that it's what it's used for that matters. For one thing, this suggests a view that technologies are primarily assistive, which is a long way from being the case for all technologies. Particularly in the context of services of worship, I think it's the effect that technologies have on the people using them that matters.
I would describe some of the technologies described on this thread as technologies of convenience, the imbued values of which don't obviously accord with communal acts of worship.
I don't know if anyone else here remembers pumping a church organ by hand.
I've never done it, but I've been in a service where it was done: Ranworth (I think) in Norfolk, 1969.
Tangent
Ah! IIRC and I haven’t been for a few years, you can climb the tower and get brilliant views of the Norfolk countryside. Don’t remember anything about a hand pumped organ but I definitely remember the views.
(Also) not really a tangent. A church tower with bells is worship technology that is meant to be seen and heard.
I'm reminded that one of the technologies I appreciate the absence of, in a service of worship, is the written word.
Ah yes. I remember those narrow uneven steps. A scary challenge. But well worth it for the view!
Now that’s certainly a metaphor for something. Worship may often include narrow uneven steps and put people off. But if we persist it’s worth it for the view.
You raise some interesting points @Pease. Someone observed to me recently that it would be better if the Orthodox read the Bible rather than simply kissing it.
I told him that we do both.
Both/and. Predictably.
But I know what he was getting at.
In our Liturgies of course the clergy and servers process with a big heavy Gospel book which they place on a prominent stand in order for the priest or deacon to read. It's generally intoned with a bit or a flourish at the end.
Some Protestants would have an issue with that of course but Protestant visitors I find are often surprised by how much scripture there is in our liturgical texts.
I know what you mean about word-heavy Protestant services although I'm not sure you'd find our services any less so, even though it's done in a different way.
I don't know if anyone else here remembers pumping a church organ by hand.
I've never done it, but I've been in a service where it was done: Ranworth (I think) in Norfolk, 1969.
Tangent
Ah! IIRC and I haven’t been for a few years, you can climb the tower and get brilliant views of the Norfolk countryside. Don’t remember anything about a hand pumped organ but I definitely remember the views.
(Also) not really a tangent. A church tower with bells is worship technology that is meant to be seen and heard.
I'm reminded that one of the technologies I appreciate the absence of, in a service of worship, is the written word.
Ah yes. I remember those narrow uneven steps. A scary challenge. But well worth it for the view!
Now that’s certainly a metaphor for something. Worship may often include narrow uneven steps and put people off. But if we persist it’s worth it for the view.
Perhaps they could knock some holes in the walls so we get a preview
In fact if you think about it, bread and wine are products of technology. It is impossible to obey Our Lord's command (however you interpret his words at the Last Supper) without using technology. Why single out screens and sound equipment in particular?
Yes, this is actually a point I made in some devotional thingamabob I wrote. He didn't pick something simple from nature, like water, or a fruit. He picked natural things that had a heckuva lot of human involvement in getting them to where they are--bread and wine.
My experience is that anything that possible can go wrong with tech (particularly sound tech) in church definitely will so it can end up being a distraction. I don't know quite why Anglican churches particularly seem to jinx microphones but all my experience is that they do.
I've worked hard-ish over the years to keep an ancient, simple PA going for our church - because it is the simplest thing possible and I am still the only one who can use it dependably / is not frightened of it (just an old mixer-amplifier, not a desk). Keeping things very, very simple is quite important in our context.
We bought a screen and a projector - I was rather against the latter, as I'd prefer visiting preachers (Methodist church) to bring the whole caboodle which (if they bring it all) one assumes will work together, and has been recently trialled as such. IT changes too fast to make me want to attempt to be sufficiently forward-and-backward compatable, in a church where someone new is at the front most weeks. And then there's funerals...
When our current Book of Praise (Presbyterian Church in Canada) arrived there were complaints that "This thing is too heavy!", which amused some of us. Nearly thirty years later, I give thanks not only for the relief that the screen provides for my increasingly decrepit body, but also for the much improved singing - even my own - from being able to sing up and out instead of peering down and mumbling. So that's positive in my view.
There was a new Psalter published at the same time, and you'll find them in the pews of a few churches. They usually still crack at the spine if you open them.
In discussions we had about electronic enhancements before I retired from the session I always argued that Sunday morning was the time when we did everything ourselves: singing, reading, speaking (and very briefly, liturgical dance). It seemed to me that it was not the occasion to present anything recorded by others, except the occasional message from or about a mission project. We were simply there to participate and to give our personal and collective best in worship. I've ranted elsewhere about unholy bands, and I don't think it's too much to ask that the material be chosen thoughtfully and rehearsed with care. Thoughtful choice is perhaps a key factor. I'd still rather hear a band that is doing its best than endure the recorded noise sold by the Christian music manufacturers.
My church is different from most here as it is a charismatic church, with worship band, meeting in a small warehouse so no altar or other traditional features. Congregation is approx. 250 in the morning (includes all ages Sunday school) and up to 150 in the evening (with youth group and older Sunday school). We are very tech friendly, which is unsurprising as Cambridge is one of the main tech hubs in the UK.
We have a couple of screens each side of the band so that words can be seen from various angles and heights (of which I am appreciative as I am 4 foot 11). Another screen at the back so the leader/preacher/band can see what others are seeing. Before and after the service, the screens show slides for various church events, during the service they contain notices, song words, preaching notes, mission videos, etc. The band are given iPads with words and music and order of service, as well as the rotas so they know who should be there to do IT, sound system, room set up, etc.
People read the bible from either book form or phone, nobody minds, but there are more phones being used. Most people who read or preach use books and paper as it is clearer but people going up with notices or to ‘give a word’ usually use their phones. We tried a digital countdown, presumably because it is difficult to get our informal and chatty congregation to sit down at the start of the service, but we didn’t like it and it was soon got rid of. We have some church members join us via Zoom which is not broadcast more widely.
We don’t have collection plates and people usually donate regularly from their bank accounts. We usually have pizza after the evening service and we have card readers for donations for this.
Because we have screens, sound desk, stage lights, etc, we let our building for Christian conferences, speakers and bands.
Addendum to my last... I don't object in principle to ipads and the like, but my experience is that whenever I handle one of those confounded things the screen clears itself. I'd hate that to happen when I'm at the lectern, so I always print the reading.
Context is everything and if I visited @Heavenlyannie's church I'd accept it on its own terms and view their use of technology in that way also, as appropriate to that milieu.
I hope that 'lays the ghost' of sarky and inappropriate things I've said in the past.
It's got a lot to do with expectations too, of course. I wouldn't expect Heavenlyannie's congregation to genuflect like RCs or cross themselves or venerate icons or sit in silent contemplation like Quakers (although they may so the latter privately or corporately from time to time).
Given their context, I would also expect them to be more pragmatic and adaptable in their use of electronic and digital technology than some settings I know - which sounds like a value judgement I know but bear with me a moment and challenge me afterwards.
I was struck by how @Heavenlyannie's church has tried the digital countdown thing but abandoned it because it doesn't work for them.
I think that's a healthy approach, even though I'm in a context which very much goes in for doing things because 'that's the way we do it' however awkward it might be at times.
I started pontificating on this thread about the digital countdown in particular because part of me suspected it might be a 'me-too' fad or fashion which some churches were adopting because they thought it was cool and trendy and the sort of thing 'lively' churches should do - rather than it having any pragmatic purpose.
I'm not accusing Heavenlyannie's church of doing that.
When I became involved with the restorationist scene in the early '80s it struck me how churches and networks formed just five or six years previously had already developed recognisable styles and formats that pretty much applied every week.
It also struck me how other churches which didn't share our ecclesiology or modus operandi would 'borrow' some of our songs and ways of doing things without buying into our particular 'package' in its entirety.
I had a bit of an issue with that at the time but it doesn't worry me now, just as it doesn't worry me - as it does some Orthodox - if people adopt prayer-ropes, the Jesus Prayer, iconography or whatever else in settings outside OrthodoxyTM.
I don't think any Christian tradition is immune to fads and fashions, including my own, and these can sometimes 'stick' and become part and parcel of how things are done.
In time to come there may be those who ask, 'Why is your church still using screens or that digital countdown thing? That's so 2020s ...'
I recently went to a classical string quartet concert where the players "turned the pages" by pressing on a foot button. (Wouldn't work for a pianist!)
I’ve seen a number of pianists use them.
Yes I'm fairly happy using a foot pedal except when I need to combine that with using the una corda (left) pedal, swapping backwards and forwards between the two 'devices' tends (at least for me!) to be error prone! Organs are rather more difficult with an extra pedal!!
My music display app has a mode where you can turn pages by raising an eyebrow or smiling - so far I've found this to be far too easily triggered!
If we’re ever there on a Sunday we’ll drop in. I know it’s part of a network headed by Mike Betts who I’ve met a couple of times and liked very much. He’s preached at my local church, was very good.
In our Liturgies of course the clergy and servers process with a big heavy Gospel book which they place on a prominent stand in order for the priest or deacon to read. It's generally intoned with a bit or a flourish at the end.
Some Protestants would have an issue with that of course but Protestant visitors I find are often surprised by how much scripture there is in our liturgical texts.
I know what you mean about word-heavy Protestant services although I'm not sure you'd find our services any less so, even though it's done in a different way.
Thanks - that led to me thinking about God being God of the Word, and also the extent to which the Word is synonymous with the written word, and the extent to which the written word is venerated, in a variety of ways across different traditions and Traditions.
My church is different from most here as it is a charismatic church, with worship band, meeting in a small warehouse so no altar or other traditional features. Congregation is approx. 250 in the morning (includes all ages Sunday school) and up to 150 in the evening (with youth group and older Sunday school). We are very tech friendly, which is unsurprising as Cambridge is one of the main tech hubs in the UK. …
Thanks, Heavenlyannie, I found your sketch helpful.
I'd be unable to worship in such a setting. I'm OK with worshipping in a warehouse (or a barn), but I'd spend the whole time thinking about everyone's data privacy, and all the personal data being donated to the big US tech companies, and how cross-referencing that information with each other's direct and inferred location data could be further monetised.
Well I used my tablet at our manuals only organ yesterday. Everything (hymns, Mass parts, voluntaries) organised in a set list. Lovely and bright screen helped my ageing eyes and a welcome absence of bits of paper and weighty books with markers in them. The page turn pedal worked a treat too.
Win, win.
My wife always takes her tablet. It has Universalis, an app with the complete texts and reading for all daily and Sunday Masses plus the entire breviary. Commentaries on the readings too which she finds useful when the homily is poor. Though when she is a reader she uses the "big book. "
Addendum to my last... I don't object in principle to ipads and the like, but my experience is that whenever I handle one of those confounded things the screen clears itself. I'd hate that to happen when I'm at the lectern, so I always print the reading.
In our Liturgies of course the clergy and servers process with a big heavy Gospel book which they place on a prominent stand in order for the priest or deacon to read. It's generally intoned with a bit or a flourish at the end.
Some Protestants would have an issue with that of course but Protestant visitors I find are often surprised by how much scripture there is in our liturgical texts.
I know what you mean about word-heavy Protestant services although I'm not sure you'd find our services any less so, even though it's done in a different way.
Thanks - that led to me thinking about God being God of the Word, and also the extent to which the Word is synonymous with the written word, and the extent to which the written word is venerated, in a variety of ways across different traditions and Traditions.
My wife always takes her tablet. It has Universalis, an app with the complete texts and reading for all daily and Sunday Masses plus the entire breviary. Commentaries on the readings too which she finds useful when the homily is poor. Though when she is a reader she uses the "big book. "
These three posts highlight for me the ways in which use of technology and liturgical considerations can intersect.
I am indebted to the late Rev. Paul F. Bosch, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada who for many years maintained a “Worship Workbench” series of essays, for the concept of “Ritual Clarity.” Ritual Clarity, as he described it, involves the way in which how we do things in worship, where we do them (at the altar/table or the pulpit/lectern/ambo or somewhere else) or what we use (books, printed sheets, electronic devices) silently communicates things about what we’re doing.
In one essay, he specifically talks about the difference in what is communicated when Scripture is read from printed sheets rather than a nicely-bound book:
Where I live, one sometimes encounters congregations which use such a three-ring binder for all Services, even reading the scripture lessons from photocopied pages inserted into it. I can understand that it might be handy for worship leaders to have access to the actual texts of the scripture passages to be read in worship. But I’d shy away from actually reading the lections from a three-ring binder, rather than from a handsome Bible or Lectionary. To read the lections from a worthy volume—a handsomely-bound Bible or Lectionary or “Gospel book”—is an action that itself constitutes a “sign” in worship. And the volume read from is a separate and distinct and irreplaceable “sign”. To read scripture publically from photocopied pages in an improvised “altar book” is to frustrate the principles of Ritual Clarity.
In other words, reading the lessons from a nicely-bound book that carries a sense of permanence communicates something different than reading the lessons from a sheet that will be thrown away or recycled after the service.
At our place, the lessons are read from the lectern Bible. When I’m the reader, I often want larger type than the lectern Bible affords, so I may print the reading out on a sheet. But I put that sheet on the open Bible, so that it’s not apparent to the congregation that I’m not reading from the book itself.
I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong answer here. What’s “right” in one context may not be “right” in a different context. I’m saying that if we’re in a church context where there’s any leeway or choice in the ways that we do things, we do well to ask questions like “What does it communicate if we do it this way?,” and “Is that what we want to communicate?”
Rev Bosch has hit the nail on the head. It's about the signs that are used and the meanings they convey.
Provided the actual gifts--that is, the word and sacraments--aren't compromised by the signs that are chosen.
Case in point: We have services in a language in which we have the choice between a decently bound Bible with a crappy translation or a printed out sheet with a good translation. (No, we can't hide the sheet inside the Bible, eyesight and other issues forbid that.)
It's entirely possible for people who are working in a less dominant language (how's that for delicate language?) or who have a range of disabilities to be forced to choose between beauty/solidity and, well, utility. Our entire Vietnamese congregation was recently forced to move to 14 point print. There are no Vietnamese worship books printed in 14 point print anywhere in the world, to my knowledge; we are stuck with printed sheets if we want to communicate at all.
It may seem obvious, and maybe it is. But I'm remembering a fight we lost over the question of whether we should go for beauty and solemnity in language vs. clarity and understandability. The majority of the national conference voted for beauty and solemnity. The text at issue? the Vietnamese Small Catechism, used for children and new converts just learning about the faith. Because we lost (yeah, you know what side we came down on!), there is no published Small Catechism in our language that comes in at under a university age reading level. (Our converts tend to read at maybe a 3rd to 6th grade reading level, that is, age 8 to 12.)
I am indebted to the late Rev. Paul F. Bosch, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada who for many years maintained a “Worship Workbench” series of essays, for the concept of “Ritual Clarity.” Ritual Clarity, as he described it, involves the way in which how we do things in worship, where we do them (at the altar/table or the pulpit/lectern/ambo or somewhere else) or what we use (books, printed sheets, electronic devices) silently communicates things about what we’re doing. …
Thanks Nick Tamen.
This reminds me of Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message" (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964), although McLuhan is rather more skeptical of the nature of the relationship between content and medium, which echoes Lamb Chopped's point.
Intriguingly (if not fascinatingly), Paul F Bosch directly addresses the point I made earlier about the preponderance of written words in services of worship, in his essay The Tyranny of Texts: Christian Worship as Pre-literate:
9 So. Here it is. The Tyranny of Texts. Why Christian Worship is Essentially, Inherently and Necessarily Pre-Literate. (Some alternative sub-titles: Throw Away Those Printed Lections! Remove Those Bibles From the Pew Racks! Unplug That Electronic Overhead Projector!)
10 I hear you asking: What's wrong with providing worshipers with printed lections every week? With putting Bibles in the pew racks? With printing out the peoples' participation in prayers and litanies each Sunday? With beaming prayers and scripture texts from electronic projectors onto overhead screens? I'll tell you. Here's what's wrong. Three reasons.
…
26 Which brings me to my final point: a LITURGICAL argument. When we insist on providing print resources – scripture lections, prayers, litanies – to every worshiper every Sunday, in the expectation that they'll be reading from those texts, we run the risk of appearing to support that liturgical sectarianism I have called word-reductionism.
…
28 Word-reductionism, I contend, is that liturgical pathology – especially pernicious among Lutherans – that equates worship with words. Worship equals words. It implies that our work is done, in worship preparation and practice, when we have the words down right. Words printed. Words spoken. Words sung. Words prayed. Heaven knows these days, words projected onto looming overhead screens!
…
32 To insist on printed resources for every worshiper every Sunday is to risk supporting a pernicious pathology that is ultimately anti-sacramental and anti-incarnational.
Our Gospel reading is from a book. The other two readings are from members of the congregation who use whatever they find easiest. We do need to bear in mind that our rota of readers includes six under 18s, one visually impaired person and several people whose first language isn’t English. I would rather the younger ones read confidently from a phone than fumbled with a Bible, if that’s what they prefer.
In the example you have chosen, pragmatic considerations should take precedence of course.
Indeed, and that’s why I approach, or at least try to approach, Pastor Bosch’s thoughts on ritual clarity as questions to be asked rather than absolute answers. In the case @Lamb Chopped gives, and in the context of her congregation, I’d argue that using the printed sheets communicates the message that the congregation’s ability to participate fully in worship takes precedence over aesthetic concerns, and I think that’s a very appropriate message for her congregation.
I thank you, but given the latest quotes from him, I'm wondering how he possesses a congregation without a sizable contingent of deaf and hard-of-hearing folks. I mean, IUDs his whole congregation under 50?
(Forgive the crabbiness, my son has gone to seminary and the English-speaking pastor has apparently decided that in his absence, there's no further need to print large-print bulletins--although I know for a fact that he's been approached by two people on the subject, one of whom offered to take the whole chore of his hands if he'd just email the completed regular bulletin a day or so ahead--and at least five people need them.)
I thank you, but given the latest quotes from him, I'm wondering how he possesses a congregation without a sizable contingent of deaf and hard-of-hearing folks. I mean, IUDs his whole congregation under 50?
Yes, I often thought his opinions reflected a presumed ideal that didn’t always take into account the needs of people—though my memory is that reading his essays as a whole showed some development in that regard.
In any event, it’s why I take what he posited as questions worth asking rather than The Way It Always Ought To Be. The Sabbath being made for humanity and all of that.
(Forgive the crabbiness, my son has gone to seminary and the English-speaking pastor has apparently decided that in his absence, there's no further need to print large-print bulletins--although I know for a fact that he's been approached by two people on the subject, one of whom offered to take the whole chore of his hands if he'd just email the completed regular bulletin a day or so ahead--and at least five people need them.)
That boggles my mind. Every place I’m familiar with provides large print bulletins and large print hymnals as a matter of course. It’s just a given.
While I take Bosch's point about listening rather than reading, wouldn't this mean us having to have a precentor "lining out" hymns so we could sing them, unless it was known that they were very familiar to everyone.
While I take Bosch's point about listening rather than reading, wouldn't this mean us having to have a precentor "lining out" hymns so we could sing them, unless it was known that they were very familiar to everyone.
Not necessarily. In other essays, Bosch was very approving of the Lutheran hymnals-service books.
I don’t think his point was that there should be no reading at all. I think his point was that the congregation doesn’t need all the words of a liturgy, but rather they only need the words they will say or sing. (Though if they know those words by memory, I think he would have said all the better.) He would say, for example, the congregation doesn’t need the words to prayers that will be said only by one person. Likewise, the readings that will be read by one person. He would rather have them listening than reading along.
I have some sympathy with that approach, but I have to quickly admit my sympathy is almost certainly connected to my own quirks. I can’t listen and read at the same time. I can either read a text myself, or I can listen to someone else read it, but I can’t do both. (Similarly, taking notes while listening to someone else speak is a skill I lack. Once I start writing, I stop hearing.)
But I know not everyone shares my quirks, so it doesn’t bother me at all if, say, someone else wants to read along with the lessons because they’ll take it in better if they do.
3 But I have come to believe that High Technology has no place in Christian worship. Instead, Christian worship should take us back to Primary Experience.
4 Yes, of course: Even a candle, even a book, is a technology. But these are low tech: technologies of Primary Experience. Generations have lived without screens and projectors. No generation – including our own and including generations still to come – can live without candles or books.
19 But here’s a prophecy: One day soon I will not be the only voice critical of High Technology in worship
9 Yes, a bound book with paper pages is a technology. So is a candle. They’re both Low Tech. So I hear you protesting: You’re saying it’s OK to use Low Tech but not High Tech in worship? In a word: Yes. That is correct. That’s my argument.
23 I suppose, once again, I’m in the minority among contemporary Christians on this issue. You’ll hear the argument “Using High Tech in worship is simply using our day’s technology, the way other generations have used their technology. It’s just a matter of Getting With the Program.”
24 But I’ll stay with my thesis: High Technology does not belong among us in worship. And other, smarter and more articulate culture critics than I will argue the same. It’s likely you’ve just never run across them.
Which is pretty unequivocal. (And which made me laugh.)
It seems that the use of assistive technologies hadn't occurred to him. It occurs to me that a given technology can, at the same time, be assistive, exploitative, convenient and intrusive.
I’m really trying to get my head around this statement: “No generation – including our own and including generations still to come – can live without candles or books.”
Except, of course, for all the generations and cultures that did and do live without books.
As for candles, I’m really not sure how it can be claimed that our generation cannot live without them.
That sentence was one of the things that made me laugh. He's completely oblivious to the arbitrariness of his distinction between low tech and high tech.
Comments
(Also) not really a tangent. A church tower with bells is worship technology that is meant to be seen and heard.
I'm reminded that one of the technologies I appreciate the absence of, in a service of worship, is the written word.
Does the written word being read aloud count?
Incidentally, @Pease, you mentioned the invention of the printing press as a game-changing technology. Yes, it facilitated the spread of Protestant ideas at the Reformation but it's often forgotten how the RCs used it to print and circulate missals.
Same technology, different application.
The Orthodox were behind the curve with printing technology but used it to print anthologies of ancient texts such as The Philokalia.
As has been observed by several Shipmates it's what the technology is used for that matters.
Does it assist? Or does it detract?
There are lots of us.
I think this may be a pond difference. It's frankly unusual to even get the melody in any form - I've experienced it twice; once when I was at school mumblety mumble years ago and at my current place.
The "standard" version of the Church of Scotland hymnary is the melody edition. I will confess to not projecting the music, as we continue to have the books available and it's often enough of a challenge to ensure the words are large enough (and if we had anyone attending regularly who could read music well enough for it to help I'd have conscripted them by now).
A church free from technology doesn't exist - church buildings are themselves technology. Wanting a church space free from electronics is not the same thing.
I think that having such a narrow view of "technology" is dismissive of the human ingenuity involved in non-electronic technology, which I dislike immensely.
Yes, there are all sorts of examples of personal giftedness, often at least in part supported by things like public education.
Cultural conservatives who want to preserve church buildings are arguing for greater state involvement at some level; whether it's in the form of state take over of such buildings so that those grubby anti-aesthetic congregations don't get their hands on it, some form of state subsidy or state levy of the congregations in them, or subsidies to arts education.
If we are widening our view of technology, then race as a technology of dominance has had a hugely deleterious impact on worship on both sides of the pond.
Count Binface proposes to nationalise Adele.
Perhaps we should nationalise churches?
Oh wait ...
And yes, I'd be in favour of re-nationalising the water companies.
I find the filleting of the psalter to be the chief flaw in CH4. I'd like to be able to have the choice of singing at least the lectionary psalm each week without resorting to printing it out (as I did last Sunday).
But now that you ask the question, I think I'd also prefer not to see written words being read.
I think there's something to be said for using our memory during communal worship, with which Protestant traditions have little truck (in my experience). I don't find this very surprising, one reason being that the source of authority is the Word, by which is meant the written Word. It doesn't seem accidental that Protestant services of worship traditionally centre reading from a big heavy book on a big heavy lectern located in a prominent position.
Thinking about this now, it occurs to me that this focus overshadows the Word as logos and rhema.
I don't agree with the premise that it's what it's used for that matters. For one thing, this suggests a view that technologies are primarily assistive, which is a long way from being the case for all technologies. Particularly in the context of services of worship, I think it's the effect that technologies have on the people using them that matters.
I would describe some of the technologies described on this thread as technologies of convenience, the imbued values of which don't obviously accord with communal acts of worship.
Ah yes. I remember those narrow uneven steps. A scary challenge. But well worth it for the view!
Now that’s certainly a metaphor for something. Worship may often include narrow uneven steps and put people off. But if we persist it’s worth it for the view.
You raise some interesting points @Pease. Someone observed to me recently that it would be better if the Orthodox read the Bible rather than simply kissing it.
I told him that we do both.
Both/and. Predictably.
But I know what he was getting at.
In our Liturgies of course the clergy and servers process with a big heavy Gospel book which they place on a prominent stand in order for the priest or deacon to read. It's generally intoned with a bit or a flourish at the end.
Some Protestants would have an issue with that of course but Protestant visitors I find are often surprised by how much scripture there is in our liturgical texts.
I know what you mean about word-heavy Protestant services although I'm not sure you'd find our services any less so, even though it's done in a different way.
Perhaps they could knock some holes in the walls so we get a preview
Yes, this is actually a point I made in some devotional thingamabob I wrote. He didn't pick something simple from nature, like water, or a fruit. He picked natural things that had a heckuva lot of human involvement in getting them to where they are--bread and wine.
I've worked hard-ish over the years to keep an ancient, simple PA going for our church - because it is the simplest thing possible and I am still the only one who can use it dependably / is not frightened of it (just an old mixer-amplifier, not a desk). Keeping things very, very simple is quite important in our context.
We bought a screen and a projector - I was rather against the latter, as I'd prefer visiting preachers (Methodist church) to bring the whole caboodle which (if they bring it all) one assumes will work together, and has been recently trialled as such. IT changes too fast to make me want to attempt to be sufficiently forward-and-backward compatable, in a church where someone new is at the front most weeks. And then there's funerals...
There was a new Psalter published at the same time, and you'll find them in the pews of a few churches. They usually still crack at the spine if you open them.
In discussions we had about electronic enhancements before I retired from the session I always argued that Sunday morning was the time when we did everything ourselves: singing, reading, speaking (and very briefly, liturgical dance). It seemed to me that it was not the occasion to present anything recorded by others, except the occasional message from or about a mission project. We were simply there to participate and to give our personal and collective best in worship. I've ranted elsewhere about unholy bands, and I don't think it's too much to ask that the material be chosen thoughtfully and rehearsed with care. Thoughtful choice is perhaps a key factor. I'd still rather hear a band that is doing its best than endure the recorded noise sold by the Christian music manufacturers.
We have a couple of screens each side of the band so that words can be seen from various angles and heights (of which I am appreciative as I am 4 foot 11). Another screen at the back so the leader/preacher/band can see what others are seeing. Before and after the service, the screens show slides for various church events, during the service they contain notices, song words, preaching notes, mission videos, etc. The band are given iPads with words and music and order of service, as well as the rotas so they know who should be there to do IT, sound system, room set up, etc.
People read the bible from either book form or phone, nobody minds, but there are more phones being used. Most people who read or preach use books and paper as it is clearer but people going up with notices or to ‘give a word’ usually use their phones. We tried a digital countdown, presumably because it is difficult to get our informal and chatty congregation to sit down at the start of the service, but we didn’t like it and it was soon got rid of. We have some church members join us via Zoom which is not broadcast more widely.
We don’t have collection plates and people usually donate regularly from their bank accounts. We usually have pizza after the evening service and we have card readers for donations for this.
Because we have screens, sound desk, stage lights, etc, we let our building for Christian conferences, speakers and bands.
Would that be City Church Cambridge by any chance? Some student friends of ours went there; liked it a lot.
I hope that 'lays the ghost' of sarky and inappropriate things I've said in the past.
It's got a lot to do with expectations too, of course. I wouldn't expect Heavenlyannie's congregation to genuflect like RCs or cross themselves or venerate icons or sit in silent contemplation like Quakers (although they may so the latter privately or corporately from time to time).
Given their context, I would also expect them to be more pragmatic and adaptable in their use of electronic and digital technology than some settings I know - which sounds like a value judgement I know but bear with me a moment and challenge me afterwards.
I was struck by how @Heavenlyannie's church has tried the digital countdown thing but abandoned it because it doesn't work for them.
I think that's a healthy approach, even though I'm in a context which very much goes in for doing things because 'that's the way we do it' however awkward it might be at times.
I started pontificating on this thread about the digital countdown in particular because part of me suspected it might be a 'me-too' fad or fashion which some churches were adopting because they thought it was cool and trendy and the sort of thing 'lively' churches should do - rather than it having any pragmatic purpose.
I'm not accusing Heavenlyannie's church of doing that.
When I became involved with the restorationist scene in the early '80s it struck me how churches and networks formed just five or six years previously had already developed recognisable styles and formats that pretty much applied every week.
It also struck me how other churches which didn't share our ecclesiology or modus operandi would 'borrow' some of our songs and ways of doing things without buying into our particular 'package' in its entirety.
I had a bit of an issue with that at the time but it doesn't worry me now, just as it doesn't worry me - as it does some Orthodox - if people adopt prayer-ropes, the Jesus Prayer, iconography or whatever else in settings outside OrthodoxyTM.
I don't think any Christian tradition is immune to fads and fashions, including my own, and these can sometimes 'stick' and become part and parcel of how things are done.
In time to come there may be those who ask, 'Why is your church still using screens or that digital countdown thing? That's so 2020s ...'
Yes I'm fairly happy using a foot pedal except when I need to combine that with using the una corda (left) pedal, swapping backwards and forwards between the two 'devices' tends (at least for me!) to be error prone! Organs are rather more difficult with an extra pedal!!
My music display app has a mode where you can turn pages by raising an eyebrow or smiling - so far I've found this to be far too easily triggered!
@Heavenlyannie meet @Barnabas62.
I've heard of Mike Betts but can't remember the context.
Thanks, Heavenlyannie, I found your sketch helpful.
I'd be unable to worship in such a setting. I'm OK with worshipping in a warehouse (or a barn), but I'd spend the whole time thinking about everyone's data privacy, and all the personal data being donated to the big US tech companies, and how cross-referencing that information with each other's direct and inferred location data could be further monetised.
Win, win.
My wife always takes her tablet. It has Universalis, an app with the complete texts and reading for all daily and Sunday Masses plus the entire breviary. Commentaries on the readings too which she finds useful when the homily is poor. Though when she is a reader she uses the "big book. "
I am indebted to the late Rev. Paul F. Bosch, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada who for many years maintained a “Worship Workbench” series of essays, for the concept of “Ritual Clarity.” Ritual Clarity, as he described it, involves the way in which how we do things in worship, where we do them (at the altar/table or the pulpit/lectern/ambo or somewhere else) or what we use (books, printed sheets, electronic devices) silently communicates things about what we’re doing.
In one essay, he specifically talks about the difference in what is communicated when Scripture is read from printed sheets rather than a nicely-bound book: In other words, reading the lessons from a nicely-bound book that carries a sense of permanence communicates something different than reading the lessons from a sheet that will be thrown away or recycled after the service.
At our place, the lessons are read from the lectern Bible. When I’m the reader, I often want larger type than the lectern Bible affords, so I may print the reading out on a sheet. But I put that sheet on the open Bible, so that it’s not apparent to the congregation that I’m not reading from the book itself.
I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong answer here. What’s “right” in one context may not be “right” in a different context. I’m saying that if we’re in a church context where there’s any leeway or choice in the ways that we do things, we do well to ask questions like “What does it communicate if we do it this way?,” and “Is that what we want to communicate?”
Provided the actual gifts--that is, the word and sacraments--aren't compromised by the signs that are chosen.
Case in point: We have services in a language in which we have the choice between a decently bound Bible with a crappy translation or a printed out sheet with a good translation. (No, we can't hide the sheet inside the Bible, eyesight and other issues forbid that.)
It's entirely possible for people who are working in a less dominant language (how's that for delicate language?) or who have a range of disabilities to be forced to choose between beauty/solidity and, well, utility. Our entire Vietnamese congregation was recently forced to move to 14 point print. There are no Vietnamese worship books printed in 14 point print anywhere in the world, to my knowledge; we are stuck with printed sheets if we want to communicate at all.
It may seem obvious, and maybe it is. But I'm remembering a fight we lost over the question of whether we should go for beauty and solemnity in language vs. clarity and understandability. The majority of the national conference voted for beauty and solemnity. The text at issue? the Vietnamese Small Catechism, used for children and new converts just learning about the faith. Because we lost (yeah, you know what side we came down on!), there is no published Small Catechism in our language that comes in at under a university age reading level. (Our converts tend to read at maybe a 3rd to 6th grade reading level, that is, age 8 to 12.)
This reminds me of Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message" (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964), although McLuhan is rather more skeptical of the nature of the relationship between content and medium, which echoes Lamb Chopped's point.
Intriguingly (if not fascinatingly), Paul F Bosch directly addresses the point I made earlier about the preponderance of written words in services of worship, in his essay The Tyranny of Texts: Christian Worship as Pre-literate:
(Forgive the crabbiness, my son has gone to seminary and the English-speaking pastor has apparently decided that in his absence, there's no further need to print large-print bulletins--although I know for a fact that he's been approached by two people on the subject, one of whom offered to take the whole chore of his hands if he'd just email the completed regular bulletin a day or so ahead--and at least five people need them.)
In any event, it’s why I take what he posited as questions worth asking rather than The Way It Always Ought To Be. The Sabbath being made for humanity and all of that.
That boggles my mind. Every place I’m familiar with provides large print bulletins and large print hymnals as a matter of course. It’s just a given.
I don’t think his point was that there should be no reading at all. I think his point was that the congregation doesn’t need all the words of a liturgy, but rather they only need the words they will say or sing. (Though if they know those words by memory, I think he would have said all the better.) He would say, for example, the congregation doesn’t need the words to prayers that will be said only by one person. Likewise, the readings that will be read by one person. He would rather have them listening than reading along.
I have some sympathy with that approach, but I have to quickly admit my sympathy is almost certainly connected to my own quirks. I can’t listen and read at the same time. I can either read a text myself, or I can listen to someone else read it, but I can’t do both. (Similarly, taking notes while listening to someone else speak is a skill I lack. Once I start writing, I stop hearing.)
But I know not everyone shares my quirks, so it doesn’t bother me at all if, say, someone else wants to read along with the lessons because they’ll take it in better if they do.
Four Reasons why High Technology is out of place in Christian Worship High Tech or Low Tech? The Case for Primary Experience
Which is pretty unequivocal. (And which made me laugh.)
It seems that the use of assistive technologies hadn't occurred to him. It occurs to me that a given technology can, at the same time, be assistive, exploitative, convenient and intrusive.
Except, of course, for all the generations and cultures that did and do live without books.
As for candles, I’m really not sure how it can be claimed that our generation cannot live without them.
(I occasionally recognise my own obliviousness.)