It Is Time to Simplify

By Robin G.Jordan

The need to simplify our church services was once more brought home to me this past Sunday at the small Continuing Anglican church in which I am involved. Last Sunday was a Communion Sunday.

By special arrangement between the two church’s respective bishops, the priest of the other tiny Continuing Anglican church in the region conducts a Communion Service on two Sundays of the month, preaches a sermon, and administers the sacrament of Holy Communion. The two churches are about fifteen miles apart but are affiliated with different jurisdictions. Before this arrangement was made, a priest of the jurisdiction with which the church is affiliated was driving from Franklin, Tennessee once a month to supply the church. The drive takes two and half hours or longer one way, depending on road conditions and the weather.

The church is very small and has not had a priest of its own for at least three years if not longer. It passed up an opportunity to have a priest of its own, concluding that this arrangement was sufficient for the church’s needs. It did not require the church to make the kind of changes that it might have been required to make if it had availed itself of that opportunity. The church is adverse to any but the most minor changes. Having a priest of its own might have entailed changing the way that it does things. Members of the congregation talk about the need for young people to replace them when they are gone. However, their lack of enthusiasm for significant change prevents them from supporting the kind of change needed to reach young people in the community. It is a common problem in declining churches. They cannot keep things the way that they prefer them and engage young people in the community.

On Communion Sundays the service is much longer than it usually is on Morning Prayer Sundays. It is long on Morning Prayer Sundays but not quite as long as on Communion Sundays.

One of the reasons for the length of the service is that the priest uses all the options in the 1928 Prayer Book. Rather than choosing between the Ten Commandments and the Summary of the Law and Kyries, he uses both options. He also says the optional Collect for grace to keep the Commandments. The result is the service drags from the outset.

The service does briefly pick up pace during the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel. The congregation sings a short Alleluia Verse between the two lessons. It then goes back to dragging again.

The 1928 Communion Service is a lengthy service as it is, much longer than 1662 Communion Service. It has long sections of unrelieved text—the Prayer of the Whole State of Christ’s Church, the Absolution and Comfortable Words, and the Prayer of Consecration. A lengthy delay occurs between the consecration and the communion. The space between the consecration and the communion is occupied by a number of devotions—the Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer of Humble Access, and an optional hymn.

It is the custom of the priest to say the Ecce Agnus Dei before the distribution of the communion elements and to show the elements to the congregation. It is also the custom of the church to say the Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi before the distribution. These two supplement texts from the Anglican Missal not only lengthen the delay between the consecration and the communion but also are redundant. They give voice to sentiments that are similar to those which have been expressed in the Prayer of Humble Access. Moreover, it is the custom of the church for the congregation to join the priest in saying the Prayer of Humble Access.

Rather than being brought to a rapid conclusion after the parting Blessing, the service is dragged out not only with a final hymn but also a lengthy closing prayer, the ceremonial extinguishing of the altar lights, and the Ite, missa est, “the Mass is ended.” Sometime I must restrain myself from shouting “hallelujah.”

The priest who conducts the service describes himself as a “Low Churchman.” You would not able to tell that from the way he vests for the service and the way that he conducts the service. It is not just “High Church” but Anglo-Catholic “High Church.” The only thing missing is incense, which he uses at his own church. I do not doubt that he genuinely believes that he is “Low Church.” I do not believe, however, that he knows the difference between “High Church” and “Low Church.” I also do not believe that he is alone in not knowing the difference. The jurisdiction with which he is affiliated is reputedly “Low Church.” Based upon the remarks of its chief bishop and his past flirtation with one of the more “advanced” Anglo-Catholic Continuing Anglican jurisdictions as well as this particular priest’s lack of a real grasp of what being “Low Church” means, I have my doubts.

The rector of the Episcopal parish church that I attended as a teenager wore eucharistic vestments. But he stuck closely to the Prayer Book service. He also took advantage of rubrics permitting the shortening of the service. After the Collect for Purity and Ten Commandments he moved on to the Salutation and the Collect of the Day. There was no long, drawn-out opening rite. The congregation sang a short hymn between the Epistle and the Gospel and the choir sung an anthem at the offertory. The service moved at a brisk pace and did not drag. Communion immediately followed the Prayer of Humble Access. During the communion the choir sung a hymn or anthem and sometime both. The congregation sung the Gloria or a hymn of praise after the Post-Communion Thanksgiving. After the parting Blessing the priest and the choir exited to the singing of a hymn. The priest stationed himself at the church door to greet the exiting parishioners. There were no smells and bells. No excessively-elaborate ceremonial. No prayers and other devotions after the final hymn. The service was far simpler than the service of the church in which I am presently involved.

Even then I experienced the services as tediously long. I looked forward to the hymns, the congregational parts of the service, and the end of the service.

The highpoint of the service for me was the sermon. I preferred to listen to the sermon rather than go to Sunday school. In fact the only time I went to Sunday school was to teach a class of fourth graders. The rector was a former missionary and I believe that I learned more from his sermons than I would have learned in Sunday school. Since I was not confirmed until the last year of high school, I did not receive communion.

One of the pillars of the church offered to pay tuition and fees if the Holy Spirit should incline my heart to become a minister of God’s Word and I should desire to attend seminary. To this day I regret not taking her upon her kind offer. During that season of my life the Holy Spirit would incline my heart to become a student of God’s Word but not a minister of his Word. That would occur later in life.

During my college years in the late 1960s and early 1970s I drifted away from the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Student Center was open only on Wednesday nights for Canterbury Club meetings. These meetings consisted of a shortened Communion Service. There was no sermon or Bible talk. After the service the ladies of local parish church served a meal of fried chicken, lettuce and tomato salad, mayonnaise dressing, and Parker House rolls. The menu was the same every week. The Episcopal Student Center offered nothing else. I attended a handful of the meetings, only to quickly lose interest.

I first commuted and then lived off campus. I do not remember attending church very much during that time. It was not on my list of priorities.

I did not return to the Episcopal Church until my three nieces had reached school age. They had been going to one of their maternal aunt’s churches but my oldest niece had an unpleasant experience at that church. Her Sunday school teacher had cut the head off a doll while telling her class that is what God did to bad girls and boys. It was an Assembly of God church. My mother and I decided to take them to my mother’s church which has also been my church when I was a teenager. Since my mother sang in the choir, I agreed to sit with the girls during the service. I would be recruited as a choir member and a lay reader and my nieces would adopt a friendly church member with whom they would sit. My nieces would receive the sacrament of Baptism on a chilly Easter morning at the conclusion of the Great Vigil, each girl answering for herself, and would become communicants of the church.

How different were the services of the new Prayer Book. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer had been adopted by General Convention barely four years before the time I returned to the Episcopal Church. The congregation had a much greater part in the services and the services were shorter. The language of the services was much easier to understand and so was the language of the Bible translation used in the services for the readings. There were no more lengthy unrelieved texts. The Eucharistic Prayers were the longest prayers in the book. They were short in comparison to the 1928 Prayer of Consecration. They were also relieved by congregational responses. While I would come to question certain doctrine and practices in the new book, I still think that it is in many ways an improvement over the 1928 book. One of the reasons that I object to the 2019 proposed ACNA Prayer Book is that its compilers have learned only in part from the positive features of the 1979 book. They have incorporated into the proposed book a number of the less desirable features of the 1928 book, for example, lengthy unrelieved texts.

This past Sunday not only was the service long but so was the sermon. The priest could have omitted the better part of the sermon. He spent the larger part of the sermon talking about John the Evangelist and the smaller part of the sermon talking about what there is in the text and how it applies to the congregation. A member of the congregation dozed off during the sermon as he is apt to do. He would also doze off during the Prayer of Consecration, attracting the attention of the rest of the congregation with his loud snoring. He is also apt to doze off during the Collects and Occasional Prayers of Morning Prayer.

When a member of the congregation falls asleep during a service, it is an indication of how tedious the service is. The service is so boring that the congregant is unable to keep awake. It does not hold the congregant’s attention but lulls him to sleep.

The 1929 Scottish Prayer of Consecration which is longer than the 1928 Consecration Prayer was notorious for putting congregations to sleep. It incorporates the Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church as did the 1549 Canon. It forms one very long unrelieved text.

Liturgists may love long, wordy Eucharistic Prayers but such prayers are no more effective in setting apart bread and wine for sacramental use than a short, succinct one. A long-winded prayer that reduces the congregation to a comatose state is not going to edify the congregation more than a brief prayer. It is also not going to glorify God more than a short one. As Jesus drew to his disciples’ attention, God is not impressed by wordiness.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “When ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matthew 6:7, KJV). The word vain means “empty” or “useless”; so Jesus is warning us that repeating worthless phrases in our prayers will not help them be heard by God. Our Heavenly Father is not concerned with word count, flowery expressions, or mantras; He desires “truth in the inward being” (Psalm 51:6, ESV).

“Use not vain repetitions” is the King James translation of Matthew 6:7. Other translations say, “Do not use meaningless repetition” (NASB), “Do not heap up empty phrases” (ESV), or “Do not keep on babbling” (NIV). As Jesus points out, the use of repetitious words or formulaic phrases is a “heathen” or “pagan” practice and should not be part of Christian prayer. Our prayers should be more like the short, simple prayer of Elijah on Mt. Carmel and less like the prolonged, repetitious prayers of the prophets of Baal (see 1 Kings 18:25–39). Got Questions – “What does it mean to use vain repetitions in prayer?”

While the Puritans used Matthew 6:7 to justify their replacement of the Collects and Occasional Prayer and the Great Litany with long prayers, to which the only congregational response was “amen,” their own lengthy prayers suffered from “too much speaking.”

This past Sunday I thought to myself, how much simpler and shorter the service would have been if the priest had used the 1662 Prayer of Consecration and the 1662 Communion Rite. Old men like the member of the congregation that I mentioned earlier would not need to struggle to stay awake, anesthetized by the drone of the priest’s voice, and old men like myself would not need to struggle to stay upright, having knelt too long. The service would have been even better if he had used the Prayer of Consecration and the Communion Rite from The Lord's Supper Form 1 from Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Shaped Gatherings.

Adding more elements to a service does not make the service more reverent or God-honoring. In fact the opposite is true. This verity is summed up in the liturgical principle “less is more.” By reducing the number of elements, we can actually improve the quality of our church services. A related principle is that it is better to do a few elements well than many elements poorly.

Pruning the number of elements also reduces the language barrier that they might present to visitors for whom English is not their native language or who have had negligible exposure to seventeen century Jacobean English. With the exception of English majors and drama students, few students at the local university show any interest in learning the intricacies of seventeenth century Jacobean English. To most students it is a dead language like Latin and they do not see any point in learning it. Foreign exchange students who taking courses in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature particularly have a hard time with the language. The one exception may be Spanish-speaking students. Spanish has a second person familiar pronoun tu which is the equivalent of the Jacobean English thou.

Reducing the number of elements enables a church to focus its attention upon the quality of the remaining elements, thereby conveying to visitors that it takes the worship of God seriously. The impression that a church is serious about worshiping God can influence a visitor’s decision to return for a second or third visit and even to regularly attend the services of the church. Today’s young people set a high value on authenticity.

With less elements in the service, a church can give more attention to praying these elements in a more worshipful manner instead of galloping through the service like a horseback rider in a steeplechase. It is also easier to pray a short prayer from the heart than a long, drawn-out one. Lengthy prayers are apt to be said in a perfunctory manner.

A prayer spoken from the heart will have a greater impact upon the congregation. It will stir up their devotion and build up their faith. It is also more edifying. It will catch the attention of the congregation.

An Anglican Prayer Book uses set forms as an aid to prayer. They are meant to provide words for the prayer of our heart. They are not magic formulae that we recite to influence God. When we pray these forms from the heart, we glorify God far more than we do if we simply mouth them, our hearts untouched by their words. Praying these forms from the heart can transform a service.

When we clutter a service with too many prayers and use excessively lengthy prayers, we discourage heart-felt prayer. We turn praying into a burden, an onerous task that we must undertake out of a sense of duty and complete as speedily as possible. There is little incentive to pray from the heart. The result is ritualism. We go through the motions of worship but our hearts are not in it. We are doing what custom dictates that we should be doing on a Sunday morning. The prayers are empty formulas that we recite because they have become a part of our Sunday routine and we have a vague idea that in reciting them, we may be pleasing God.

When ritualism replaces heart-felt prayer, our worship becomes an obligation that we must fulfill, not a joyful encounter with the living God, filled with expectancy and hope. Our faith is not invigorated and strengthened. Our lives are not transformed. Our church services can become wearisome, even oppressive. Rather than stirring us to greater devotion, they leave us discouraged and depressed. We may stop attending them altogether.

Simplifying a service on the other hand creates opportunities for heart-felt prayer. It reduces a service to those elements that make it a more prayerful experience. It makes a service shorter and more understandable and eliminates redundant elements. It encourages greater congregational participation. Simplicity should, however, not be confused with casualness or carelessness.

The resulting service should be characterized by dignity and orderliness. By dignity I mean that the service embodies the seriousness that befits the worship of God. Each element of the service is selected in accordance with the guiding principle that whatever is used in the service should genuinely glorify God, edify the congregation, and invigorate and strengthen their faith. Its inclusion is not based upon the dictates of custom. While the service may be simple, it has a nobility about it. Dignity should, however, not be confused with formality or stiffness. A service can be both relaxed and reverent.

By orderliness I mean that the elements are selected to fit smoothly together. Each element flows out of the preceding element and all the elements form an integrated whole. They are not thrown together willy-nilly and with little or no thought. The service is also balanced. Minor parts of the service are not given more prominence than the more important parts of the service.

A simple, prayerful service which is not weighed down with needless clutter, in which the hymns and other worship songs are sung with enthusiasm, the lessons are read clearly and with feeling, and the prayers are offered expectantly and from the heart,  in which the sermon breaks open God’s Word for the congregation and applies it to their lives; and in which the symbols of bread and wine are used generously in the Lord’s Supper, enabling them to speak to those present, I believe, can touch not only hearts of church members and regular attendees but also guests visiting for the first or second time. Most importantly I believe that it can refresh and reinvigorates believers for the task of spreading the Gospel and reaching and engaging the spiritually lost. We minister to God in our church services, offering him our praise and thanksgiving. God also ministers to us through word and sign He communicates his love and goodwill to us that we may communicate it to others.

Yes, it is time to simplify