worship or performance
This week’s editorial at Anglicans Online ponders the question When is a service worship and when is it performance?.
4 CommentsOur friend enjoys the cleansing end-of-the-day, beginning-of-the-week feel to Compline on Sunday evenings. She, like us, views the services of the Daily Office as worshipful expressions of our beliefs and faith. Imagine her surprise when she sat down with the pew sheet: The second word on the inside cover was ‘performance’.
Compline as performance? She brought us the pew sheet. We read it through. Unfortunately, this time the sung service of Compline seemed to be replaced with a concert based on Compline. Soloists were named, a long biographical sketch of the conductor was included. No mention was made of the history or role of Compline in the worship life of our tradition. No mention of welcoming the congregation to a time of prayer. Perhaps we are being too picky. Perhaps it is enough the service is being offered no matter the circumstances.
We were left to ponder: When is a service worship and when is it performance? Does it matter? Should it matter?
Cathedral Evensong
Gerry Lynch writes Why is Cathedral Evensong Growing and What Does It Mean? — an article that was published in the May/June 2014 edition of Salisbury Cathedral News.
He concludes:
Evensong is not necessarily undemanding. It gives tremendous space for daily study of Scripture, and disciplined prayer sustaining a life of Christian service.
2 CommentsMaybe Choral Evensong needs to grow in depth and geography. Can we help more parish churches provide a weekday Evensong, perhaps weekly in larger towns and monthly in rural areas? And can we help people grow in depth and knowledge of faith when we see them mainly across the choir on Tuesday nights, and never on a Sunday?