Thursday, February 11, 2010

The Morning Prayer Model of Worship

I have been doing this pastoring thing for 4 years now. When I came here, I was convinced that I was going to shape worship into the four-fold pattern that is all the rage in liturgical renewal. I knew I would have a tough time especially with the "Table" portion of the service. We are now at the place where we celebrate the Holy Communion on the first Sunday of the month plus the major holy days. Occasionally we celebrate twice in a row (last we was the 1st and this week is Transfiguration). Rarely we get 3 celebrations in a row. I am enjoying our progress.

But my frustration continues to be with attempting to do 4-fold without doing the Table. I know many enjoy coming up with creative substitutes for the Lord's Supper, but for me there is no substitute. Either we do it or we don't. There's no having our cake and eating it too. Trying to make things 4-fold when they weren't just felt contrived and fake. So I began reading and thinking. Starting with 1 Advent we transitioned from 4-fold or Word & Table pattern to patterning our worship after Morning Prayer in the BCP. It is a loose adaptation, but I have found it to be very functional - especially on Sundays when the Holy Communion is not celebrated. Our pattern is now: (1) Confession; (2) Psalm; (3) Lessons; (4) Creed; (5) Prayers; (6) Benediction. When we celebrate communion we simply add the communion service between the prayers and the benediction just as you would if you were doing morning prayer with communion. So, here is our service for Transfiguration (it will take about 75 minutes):

The Confession
• Greeting/Welcome

LEADER: The Lord , our God, is holy.
PEOPLE: Come let us adore him.

• Confession/Pardon (for confession we do a moment of silence)
• Peace


The Psalm
• Opening Hymn: Let it Rise (ABS2 – 13): as written
• Psalm 99

LEADER: Open our lips, O Lord.
PEOPLE: And our mouths shall proclaim your praise.

LEADER: Praise the Lord our God and worship at his footstool.
PEOPLE: For the Lord our God is holy.
LEADER: The Lord is king.
PEOPLE: Let the peoples tremble!
LEADER: He sits enthroned upon the cherubim;
PEOPLE: Let the earth quake!
LEADER: The Lord is great in Zion. He is exalted over all the prophets
PEOPLE: Let them praise your great and awesome name.
LEADER: Mighty King, you love justice, you have established equity;
PEOPLE: You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.
LEADER: Praise the Lord our God and worship at his holy mountain.
PEOPLE: For the Lord our God is holy.

LEADER: Glory to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
PEOPLE: As it was in the beginning, is now , and will be forever. Amen.

• Invocation
• Praise Medley

I See the Lord (MSPW – 31): as written
O Worship the King (STL – 64): 1,2,4
Glory in the Highest (ABS3 – 76): as written


The Lessons
• Prayer of Illumination:
• 1st Lesson: 2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2 & Children’s Sermon
• 2nd Lesson: Exodus 34.5-8, 29-35 & Anthem
• 3rd Lesson: Luke 9.28-43 & Sermon


The Creed (STL – 8)


The Prayers
• Prayer Medley:

Shine, Jesus, Shine (ABS – 120): v. 1, chorus, v. 3, chorus
Love Divine All Loves Excelling (STL – 507): 1,2,4
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus (STL – 327): chorus only

• The Collect (ALL)

ALL: All Glorious God, who before the passion of your only-begotten son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Give us, as we bask in the light of his glory, the strength to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

• The Intercessions (PASTOR)
• The Lord’s Prayer (ALL)
• The Offering


The Holy Communion (for communion we do the full Eucharistic liturgy)


The Benediction
• Announcements
• Sending & Blessing
• Closing Hymn: Glory Be to God the Father (STL – 16): 1,4

5 comments:

Brannon Hancock said...

sorry folks - this is a major bummer, but looks like haloscan is down for the count. I have an CAIF (.xml) file back-up of all 800-something comments that had been posted on this blog since moving to the haloscan commenting system, and I will research how to import those into a different commenting system so they can be preserved and made public again. But for now I've removed Haloscan and reverted to the blogger commenting system. I'm drawn to "intense debate" but again, don't know of any way to import the old comments into a new system, at least in any way that would attach them to their original posts.

Darn you Haloscan! If I had only know how you would betray me! (I suppose the 3000-word truncations should have been an early warning sign!!)

If anybody knows anything about this kind of stuff please let me know. Any and all tech advice is welcome. While I'm on the subject, I should say: I am leaning heavily toward registering "sanctifyingworship.com" as a domain name for this blog and moving the whole thing to wordpress...any thoughts?

Brannon Hancock said...

P.S. if anybody wants a copy of that CAIF file w/ all the old comments, let me know via email and I'll email it to you. I don't know what you can do with it - they're not really legible in the format they're in, but if you want it, you got it. I'd rather somebody help me navigate these various transitions, though. :-)

Brannon Hancock said...

P.P.S. to clarify from my first post: "intense debate" is a commenting system. It's pretty awesome.

EF + said...

Now how am I going to implement all the changes I need to make to my service! LOL...

Brannon Hancock said...

Eric - I'll see if I can pull up Dave's comment and email it to you and to him...

nope, doesn't look like I can. crap. sorry guys. it should all be there in the .xml file. I'll look into it.