A Proposal for a Resource Website for Localizing the Liturgy

One the major challenges that 21st century Anglican churches face in North America is the limitations of the official prayer book of the jurisdiction with which the congregation is affiliated. All prayer books have their limitations. Some prayer books have more limitations than others.

The limitations may be doctrinal. For example, the book may not conform to the principles of doctrine and worship embodied in the historic Anglican formularies—a widespread problem in North American Anglican jurisdictions.

The limitations may be liturgical. For example, the services may have long sections of unrelieved text during which, in the words of Bishop Charles Lewis Slattery, “the mind becomes numb and the worship of the heart ceases.” This is one of the limitations of the 1928 BCP and the proposed BCP 2019.

The limitations may be missional. Rather than being an asset on the mission field, the prayer book’s services prove to be a serious liability due to the language of the services, their length, and the lack of opportunities for meaningful congregational participation.

In the past Anglican pastors have risen to this challenge in one of two ways. They have made unauthorized additions to the prayer book’s services. They have made unauthorized omissions from the services. When pastors begin to ignore the rubrics and to make unauthorized changes in the services, it is a good indication that it is time to revise the prayer book.

Prayer book revision is a slow process. The new book may no more meet the needs of a congregation than the old one. Too often the final product of prayer book revision reflects the ideals and preferences of the liturgical commission entrusted with the revision of the prayer book and not the realities of the parish and the mission field. In the 21st century all Anglican churches are missionary outposts wherever they may be located. Christendom is a thing of the past.

North America is far more diverse than it was 50 odd years ago. Canada, Mexico, and the United States have changed dramatically. We have entered the digital age. A cookie cutter approach to worship gatherings does not work anymore.

In the 21st century Anglican service books like the Anglican Church in North America’s proposed service book, The Book of Common Prayer 2019, are an anachronism. They are designed for a time when the North American population was much more homogeneous, demographically, culturally, and linguistically. One prayer book can no longer realistically meet the needs of all congregations in an Anglican jurisdiction.

What is needed most in the 21st century are localized liturgies, liturgies that are planned locally and are local in character, liturgies which are targeted at a particular segment or segments of the local population and take into consideration local conditions.

Localized liturgies are not a new development. They were common in the first five centuries of Christianity and even later. The Roman Rite was originally the liturgy of the church at Rome.

The notion of a single liturgy for an entire kingdom is a sixteenth century development. Its purpose was to secure doctrinal uniformity within the domain of a specific ruler. In the various German principalities Lutheranism was the form of doctrine that the Protestant princes sought to establish throughout their dominions. In England, Scotland, and the Swiss city-states Reformed Protestantism was the form of doctrine that the religious and secular authorities sough to establish in those territories. In France, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, Roman Catholicism was the form of doctrine that the Catholic monarchs and the Catholic Church sought to maintain.

A website that offers resources for worship planners wishing to craft a liturgy for a local church would a 21st century solution to the limitations that come with the adoption a single prayer book for an Anglican jurisdiction. The Church of England pioneered this concept with Common Worship (2000). A collection of liturgical books containing new services as well as alternatives to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Church of England has a website that contains all the liturgical texts published in Common Worship. The website provides directions and guidelines for their use. It also offers several different patterns of worship with which these texts may be used. It enables worship planners to craft a liturgy that meets the needs of a particular congregation.

The Anglican Diocese of Sydney has also pioneered this concept but on a smaller scale. Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Shaped Gatherings (2012) was produced by the Archbishop of Sydney’s Liturgical Panel as development and expansion of Sunday Services (2001). The services contained in Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Shaped Gatherings are variations of the services of An Australian Prayer Book (1978) and A Prayer Book for Australia (1995). These variations are permitted by the canons of the Anglican Church of Australia.

The Diocese of Sydney also has a website bettergatherings.com which explains the theology of doing church, provides helps for planning church services and other gospel-gatherings, and contains additional resources for use with the services of Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Shaped Gatherings. Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Shaped Gatherings is published in hard-cover and e-book editions.

Restricting congregations to the use of a single prayer book exacerbates the limitations of that prayer book. The compilers of a prayer book cannot anticipate all the situations that congregations which will be using the book must deal with. This may prove a serious problem when the members of the liturgical commission drafting the book are drawn from the episcopate and academia and are removed from the challenges of parish ministry and missionary work. As in the case of the proposed BCP 2019, the compilers of the prayer book may favor larger congregations with traditionalist leanings, a fondness for pageantry and ritual, and negligible interest in the Great Commission over “the little outposts of Christianity” as one prayer for missions describes them. They may not be sensitive to the needs of these smaller congregations or the challenges that they face.

The type of website that I envision would overcome the limitations of a single prayer book. It would offer a greater degree of flexibility than a single prayer book offers. It would provide a much wider variety of worship patterns. It would offer suggestions for simplifying church services and other gospel-shaped gatherings. For example, the Opening Acclamation, the Collect for Purity, the Decalogue, the Summary of the Law, the Gloria in Excelsis (or other Song of Praise), the Kyries, and Trisagion are later editions to the Eucharistic liturgy in the West. The Scottish Liturgy 1982 permits the omission of these elements when worship planners wish to simplify the service. This feature makes the liturgy more adaptable for use in a variety of worship settings. The website would provide shorter, more participative Eucharistic prayers, including a simplified version of the 1552 Prayer of Consecration. It would offer suggestions for the placement of liturgical texts like the Lord’s Prayer and the Prayer of Humble Access, which historically have been used in a number of places in the Eucharistic liturgy. The Prayer Humble of Access is a sixteenth century addition to the Eucharistic liturgy and its omission is not inappropriate. The website would provide words for the Invitation to Communion that conform to the principles of doctrine and worship embodied in the historic Anglican formularies such these words from An Australian Prayer Book (1978).

Come, let us take this holy sacrament of the body and blood of Christ in remembrance that Christ died for us, and feed on him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving.

The bulk of the liturgical material on the website would come from Anglican sources and would conform to the doctrinal and worship principles embodied in the historic Anglican formularies. Some pages would be devoted to liturgical material from other traditions, which is compatible with this material. These pages would include the Agreed Liturgical Texts proposed by The International Consultation on English Texts.

In addition to downloadable liturgical material the website would provide video tutorials on worship planning, articles for small congregations on how to make the best use of non-traditional worship settings, downloadable music files of hymns, worship songs, and service music, and other useful resources. It would also serve as a clearing house of information and resources at other websites on the Internet.

The website would offer an annual copy right license for a fee based upon the size of a congregation. This license would enable churches to download and use the material on the website. This license would be a liturgical equivalent of a Christian Copyright License International, LicenSing, and OneLicense.net music license. Some material would be downloadable and usable free of charge, depending on what arrangements are made with the copyright holders.

I believe that such a website would be far more effective way of mobilizing the liturgical resources of the global Church in the service of the Great Commission than another prayer book. Tailoring the liturgy to the locality, to the place and to the people, is the direction that the Anglican Church must take if it is to reach and engage the unreached and unengaged population segments of North America. Such a website would put into the hands of the local church the resources that it needs to accomplish this task.