By Robin G. Jordan
During the last 50 odd years a wealth of liturgical material has been produced in the provinces of the Anglican Communion, In crafting A Service of Holy Communion for the North American Mission Field I have drawn upon this material, particularly from An Australian Prayer Book (1978), A Prayer for Australia (1995), and Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Shaped Gatherings (2012) but also from the Church of Ireland’s Alternative Prayer Book 1984 and The Book of Common Prayer (2004) and the Anglican Church of Kenya’s Our Modern Services (2002, 2003).
My aim was to produce a service of Holy Communion that was flexible enough to be used in a variety of settings, ranging from a living room to a former factory to a school commons room to a church sanctuary (or worship center). I have provided a number of variable options which permit worship planners to tailor the service to the occasion, the season, and the particular circumstances of the congregation such as ministry target group, size, worship setting, availability of clergy, musical resources, and the like. Some of these options are found in the service itself. Others are found in the notes and appendices at the end of the service. This was done in recognition that service leaders, clergy and lay, have a tendency to use all the variable options that are found in a service, making the service too long. It is also predicated on the belief that on most occasions worship planners will want to keep the service fairly simple.
For major feast days and other special occasions, they may want to add the “Glory to God in the highest” or another hymn of praise before the Prayer of the Day. During the penitential season they may want to omit the opening songs or hymns of praise and thanksgiving, the greeting, and the sentence of scripture and substitute a period of silence at the beginning of the service, during which the ministers quietly take their places and which concludes with the singing of the Trisagion, followed by the Prayer of the Day. Later on in the service the reading of the Ten Commandments might be added before the Confession, followed by a period of silence leading into the Confession.
Worship planners for a small congregation might want to plan a simpler service, one that is more in keeping with the size of the congregation and the setting in which it is worshiping.
The service follows the structure that the 1958 Lambeth Conference’s Sub-Committee on the Holy Communion Service recommended for services of Holy Communion but also reflects more recent liturgical scholarship. This structure has become widely used in the Anglican Communion. It is the structure of the Holy Eucharist used in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the 1985 Book of Alternative Services. It is the structure with which Canadian and US Anglicans are familiar.
I opted for this structure over the 1662 structure because of its wide spread use and familiarity. When shorn of its extraneous elements, it is also the simpler of the two structures.
The service also doubles as a service of the Word. There is a need for forms of the service of the Word for use in new works in which the minister in pastoral charge of the new work is a deacon, licensed catechist, or licensed lay reader. The antecedents of the services of Morning and Evening Prayer, even in their popular or cathedral form, were not intended as a platform for evangelizing the unchurched. Their primary function was devotional, not evangelistic. On the other hand, the purpose of synaxis which became the liturgy of the Word in the Holy Eucharist was to proclaim the gospel to unbelievers as well as to instruct new converts and believers. In its primitive form the synaxis consisted of a greeting, Scripture readings, and one or more sermons. It was a service of the Word.
When reduced to its essential elements, the first half of this service can also serve the same purpose. These elements are a confession, a declaration of God’s forgiveness, the Prayer of the Day, Bible readings, a sermon, an affirmation of faith, the Prayers of the People, and the Lord’s Prayer. When these elements are used as a separate service, the service might conclude with the Grace, the Aaronic Blessing, or some other suitable ending.
Congregations that do not have a priest of their own and celebrate the Holy Communion only once or twice a month would not be forced to switch back and forth between two different orders of service and two different sets of prayers. This can be very disconcerting and confusing to guests returning for a second or third visit. Frequent switching between two different services or two different rites or weekly changes in the variable options of the service can create disequilibrium in a congregation and can cause members of the congregation to leave. Variable options are best changed seasonally or in the longer seasons, after specific number of consecutive Sundays.
Whether or not there is communion, a congregation would have the benefit of using the same service from Sunday to Sunday. The more a congregation uses a service, the more the prayer of the service becomes the prayer of the congregation. Ideally a congregation should come to know the prayers so well that they can pray them without their noses buried in a prayer book or glued to a projection screen. This is liturgy at its best—a prayer known by heart prayed from the heart. Unencumbered by prayer book or projection screen, the members of the congregation can wholeheartedly enter into the worship of God.
The service was designed with congregational singing in mind. It is not wed to any particular style of music. Traditional, contemporary, and global music would work equally as well with the service. The service embodies the principle that sung texts in the form of hymns, songs, and service music are the best way to enrich a service as opposed to spoken texts. The Eucharistic prayer was written to take advantage of existing settings of the Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation, and the Great Amen. Hymns and songs may be sung during the communion procession as the people go forward to share the bread and wine. After the communion the service should come to a swift conclusion. The service makes no provision for a hymn or song after the final blessing or dismissal. The ministers may simply leave their places, mingle with the congregation, and greet guests and newcomers.
The service also illustrates the direction that I had hoped that the Anglican Church in North America’s service book would take. With so many different Anglican provinces extending their recognition to the province, I thought that the Prayer Book and Liturgy Task Force would look outside of North America for inspiration. Instead the task force did not look any further than the Episcopal Church’s Prayer Books and the Anglican Missal. Where it did look outside North America, it was not to the other Anglican provinces but to the Roman Catholic Church. Its approach to prayer book revision has been disappointingly parochial.
Both the initial notes and order of service and the additional notes and the appendices are now online. I would appreciate feedback from readers who give the service a trial use.
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