The purpose of the liturgy of the church (our worship) is to glorify God. We glorify a God of constancy. As The Book of Common Prayer commends, we give "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.” And yet, according to the biblical witness from beginning to end, God was and is and always will be doing “new things.” The God of constancy is… constantly doing new things!
This year the principal guide to our worship & liturgy, The 1979 Book of Common Prayer, had its 32nd birthday. But the church, as much as our world, has changed a lot since the mid to late 1970’s. And perhaps more so than most other contemporary religious groups, our prayerbook is central to our faith – it’s the guidebook to our public and private worship as well the source from which much of our theology (our thinking about God) is derived.
One of the great contemporary pioneers of the theology of The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is Leonel L. Mitchell, who, in the Introduction to his great book Praying Shapes Believing (Morehouse, 1985), tells us that the traditional dependence of theology upon worship has been expressed in the Latin maxim lex orandi lex credendi, or more accurately legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi, which means that the way that we pray determines the way we believe. The implications of this are legion, and also mean that when it comes to The Book of Common Prayer, we better get things right! And if the reverse is equally true, which I think to be the case, then lex credendi lex orandi: the way we believe shapes the way we pray. Hence, when our faith changes in deep and abiding ways, we must incorporate the evolution of that belief into our forms of corporate and private prayer.
Thanks be to the Church, amending or supplementing the liturgy of the church is an incredibly thoughtful process that takes years and years to complete and alterations to the BCP must be approved at a General Convention of the Episcopal Church. This is partly why long after taking a progressive stand on same-sex blessings in the church we have yet to incorporate liturgical Rites for such blessings in our prayerbook – we haven’t figured out how to get them right yet.
Because the process for prayerbook revisions is painstakingly long and careful, from time to time The Standing Liturgical Commission of the Church, through the General Convention, will approve and issue trial liturgies as well as supplements to the BCP for use by the church. These worship supplements come as booklets entitled Enriching our Worship, and are not designed to supplant the prayer forms in the BCP but rather to “provide additional resources to assist worship communities wishing to expand the language, images and metaphors used in worship.” Use of such Rites in parishes must be approved by local Bishops and the “ultimate aim of such expansive language experiments in the Episcopal Church is to create a language of prayer for all God’s people.”
At St. George’s we have lived through a “liturgical renovation” lasting more than three years. These changes have followed a course much like revisions to The Book of Common Prayer. We have utilized trial liturgies, altars and configurations and all along the way have listened to the impressions of our members, worship leaders and staff. Last Sunday we celebrated Holy Communion in a reconfigured church nave that attempts to utilize the architecture, the signs and symbols and the liturgy of the church to communicate both our traditional and contemporary understandings of God. Our last major change, the relocation of the baptismal font, will take place soon. This Sunday (October 6th) we will begin to incorporate expansive language from the Enriching Our Worship series of liturgical supplements issued by the Episcopal Church. All of this is the result of our belief that the way that we pray determines the way we believe and what we believe shall determine how we pray. I am so very thankful to be the Rector of a church that has resoundingly embraced the necessity of tradition in worship as well as the importance of innovation. May the God of constancy and newness bless our prayers and our common life.
Jim+
