Hello St. Paul’s,
In the course of developing our new strategic plan we have heard a call for reining in the length of our 10:30 Sunday morning service. As our post-pandemic attendance has increased, so has the time needed for administering Communion, and this call is a timely reminder not to take for granted the valuable and limited time of our parishioners. I’ve consulted with my liturgical colleagues, and over the next few weeks you may notice a few small changes, introduced gradually, that we hope will “tighten up” the service without making it feel rushed and without losing any of the essential elements. Here are some of the things you may notice:
- Offer a shorter welcome at the beginning
- Play shorter introductions to hymns we regard as familiar
- Say the Creed rather than chanting it.
- Eliminate the Offertory hymn
- Add a third Communion station
- Restrict the names read aloud on the prayer list to recent requests (note that we read the entire list every day at Morning and Evening Prayer, and that you can always add names in response to “those we now name”).
- Process out during the closing hymn
I cherish our tradition of taking a prayerful moment after the sermon and after Communion, and I want to preserve that dynamic.
There are other measures we could take that would make a greater impact on our worship. For example, we could omit one of the Scripture readings (only the Gospel is required), but it is one of the strengths of our tradition that we hear four significant chunks of Scripture every week; I would be reluctant to water that down. We could omit some verses of the hymns, but that would be disrespectful to the author and would deprive us of the words’ full meaning: I would never recite only half a poem. We could say the entire Eucharistic prayer instead of chanting the beginning and ending: that would change the tenor of our principal service in a way that I am not ready to adopt.
I hope you will let me know your thoughts on these changes as you experience them and on the dynamic of our liturgy in general. Many of you became members of St. Paul’s because of the beauty of our worship, and we want to maintain that high standard.
See you on Sunday, as we celebrate Cathedral Day!
Your sister in Christ,
Penny
Excellent…I agree with all the suggestions to tighten up the length of the service.
I would love to keep our cherished traditions. Please keep all readings. Singing the Creed is beautiful and keeping in our Church’s tradition. I think all hymns should be sung in all verses, and all chants be done completely.
Love the way the Services are now! People need to work on their attention spans. I feel there is no need to tighten things up.
I entirely agree with you, Richard.
I agree with all of Penny’s suggestions under “Here are some of the things you may notice.” I suggest we implement these on a trial basis and see how it goes. I’ve been a member of St. Paul’s long enough to remember when Sunday 10:30 liturgy used to be structured this way, with only one or two differences. Families, especially, will appreciate tightening up the time span. And I believe newcomers will, too. And, I confess, I think some ‘senior citizens’ will, too.
Yes Nancy I remember the old days too and long for a return to a shorter service
I hope we will not eliminate the offertory hymn nor any verses of the hymns we do get to sing on Sunday. I’m not quite clear on why anyone would want to “tighten up” our current 10:30 service. It seems to me that it goes perfectly well. I really don’t think we ought to cater to people whose attention span is not great enough to spend 1-1/2 hours in weekly worship.
I understand both sides. Is it possible to implement these changes to one or two services a month to see how it affects attendance/new attendees? I greatly appreciate the current format of our 10:30 service (as does my family). It’s a time to slow things down and disengage the busyness of the week to spend quality time in worship and reflection with the Lord. I greatly appreciate the efforts of all involved in making St. Paul’s a place welcome to everyone, where they can enjoy a worship experience second to none.
Eliminating the Offertory hymn is a terrible idea. I would be very disappointed if that were to happen as I believe in prayer through singing. I do like all the other suggestions.
As someone who’s unable to attend the 1030 service, since I care for my disabled domestic partner, I fined it hard to believe that some folks would want to shorten the liturgical experience! I especially love the music/choral and the organ solo afterward. Please stop complaining about the service length. If you don’t like it go to the 500pm Evensong. Thank you very much!!
I can not believe some of us are telling Penny, Richard and Brooks how to do their jobs.