A Fortuitous Discovery in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer

 

This article is a spin-off of an article that I am writing on the challenges of moving liturgical forms of worship online. Traditional Anglican churches face a particular set of challenges, especially those using one of the older Prayer Books such as 1928 Book of Common Prayer or the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer in the regulations and rubrics titled “Concerning the Service of the Church” contains a provision which offers a way forward for churches that use that Book.

The Order for Holy Communion, the Order for Morning Prayer, the Order for Evening Prayer, and the Litany, as set forth in this Book, are the regular Services appointed for Public Worship in this Church. and shall be used accordingly; Provided, that in addition to these Services, the Minister, in his discretion, subject to the direction of the Ordinary, may use other devotions taken from this Book or set forth by lawful authority within this Church, or from Holy Scripture; and Provided further, that, subject to the direction of the Ordinary, in Mission Churches or Chapels, and also, when expressly authorized by the Ordinary, in Cathedral or Parish Churches or other places, such other devotions as aforesaid may be used, when the edification of the Congregation so requires, in place of the Order for Morning Prayer, or the Order for Evening Prayer.

I suspect that many Continuing Anglicans who use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer may not be aware that the 1928 Prayer Book contains such a provision. The commission that compiled the 1928 Prayer Book foresaw that the rites and services of the new Prayer Book would not in every circumstance meet the needs of Episcopal congregations, particularly those of mission churches and mission chapels. As well as making provision for the shortening of the services of Morning and Evening Prayer and Holy Communion and giving the minister much latitude in the selection and length of psalms and lessons, they added this provision to the new book. It is an expanded version of a similar provision found in the 1892 Prayer Book.

The regular services of Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Holy Communion do have their drawbacks. They are long and wordy, and they use language that is no longer in common use. Consequently, the younger generations, including my own generation—the Boomers, are apt not to experience these services as previous generations may have experienced them. They do not inflame us exactly with the love of true religion, to borrow a phrase from Percy Dearmer.

How the younger generations experience our services of public worship is not entirely the fault of the 1928 Prayer Book. Often as not it is the way that the services are conducted. Those conducting the services, both clergy and laity, are prone to add to the services with texts from other books, and to not take advantage of the rubrical permission to shorten the services. They have not learned the value of “Less is more.”

In 1904, over a century ago, in Loyalty to the Prayer Book, Percy Dearmer wrote, “Let us by all means have bright Services, if by that we mean singing in which everyone can join, if we avoid the temptation to make our Services dull and without significance, through perpetual monotoning, if we secure real brightness by clear and stirring reading of the Lessons ‘distinctly with an audible voice;--and by short and vigorous sermons, and by interesting instructions; and if we remember to make the highest Service the brightest of all. Let us, in fact, bring out the real brightness of our Services by doing them proper justice.”

His advice is relevant to the church today as it was in 1904. Later writers like Bishop Michael Marshall in Renewal in Worship (1985) and Howard Hanchey in Church Growth and the Power of Evangelism: Ideas That Work (1990) have echoed Dearmer. Marshall drew to our attention the importance of tailoring our worship to our circumstances. Hanchey emphasized using our preaching to help people see where God was at work in their lives and the lives of others. Both devoted several pages of their books to the public reading of Scripture and congregational singing.

Thom Rainer in his research into the reasons why the unchurched started to attend a church, published in Surprising Insights from the Unchurched (2001), found that it was not the style of music that was one of the reasons that the unchurched started to attend a particular church, it was the quality of the music. The message that the quality of the music conveyed to the unchurched was that the people of the church took the worship of God seriously. It was their seriousness about the worship of God which attracted the unchurched. The thing to remember it was not the church’s perceptions of its music that mattered, it was the visitor’s perceptions.

In 2004 the late Peter Toon wrote an article, “Causing Traditional Churches to Grow,” originally published as “Worship Simply, Engage in Mission Joyfully: How to Grow a Traditional Church,” in which he identified fourteen conditions which he believed would benefit traditional churches if they met these conditions. While things have changed since Dr. Toon wrote that article seventeen years ago, what he wrote is to a large extent applicable today. Traditional churches would benefit from simple, dignified services; fresh settings for psalms and canticles; the creative use of traditional music; the use of more recent translations of the Bible, more opportunities for Bible study and application, community engagement, and meeting the other conditions that Dr. Toon identified.

Dr. Toon was not optimistic that many Anglican churches would heed what he described as a swing of the pendulum in their favor, locked as they were in doing things as they had been done in the 1950s. Regrettably, the passage of time has proven Dr. Toon to be right. Churches that were established in reaction to what their founders perceived as undesirable change tend to be closed to what may be desirable change that would benefit them. They become refuges for their members from a changing world, from change itself.

Some Anglican churches, however, are more far-sighted than others. They recognize that if they are not only to survive but also to flourish, they cannot do things the way that they have always done them. They need to make changes in the way that they worship and engage with the community.

One of the things that I learned in planting and pioneering new churches since the mid-1980s is that, if it is done with a light hand, traditional language texts like the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed can be used effectively in the worship of new church plants. It is the long, unrelieved texts in an unfamiliar and at time incomprehensible language that cause the younger generations to lose interest or enthusiasm. They are also put off by kneeling for extended periods of time and priests reciting prayers and performing ceremonies with their backs to the congregation. What may have been viewed as congregational and participatory forms of service in the late 1920s are no longer seen that way almost a hundred years later. People who are attracted to liturgical forms of service nowadays want to take an active part in the liturgy. They are not interested in hearing a priest drone on and on.

Among the implications for Anglican churches in the twenty-first century is that they need to make lighter use of traditional language, to shorten texts, to stand to pray, to insists priests face the people, and to adopt more congregational and participatory forms of prayer and forms of service. They need to make their weekly liturgy more engaging for the younger generations.

A recent LifeWay research found that the lion’s share of the people that they surveyed planned to return to church as soon as they felt that it was safe enough to do so. One writer went as far as to assert that Lifeway research was claiming that churches would experience a post-pandemic attendance boom, a claim which the researchers did not make.

What people say that they plan to do and what they actually do are two different matters, a fact that researchers recognize. The LifeWay research study did not claim that church attendance would reach, much less exceed pre-pandemic levels.

The same writer claimed that the study also downplayed the importance of livestreaming services online. This was not a conclusion that the researchers drew from the study. It is also not a conclusion that well-informed observers of developments affecting the twenty-first century church like Thom Rainer, Carey Nieuwhof, Phil Cooke, and others are drawing. They conclude that online church must be an integral part of a church’s strategy if it hopes to reach and engage the unchurched population in its community and elsewhere and to grow strong and healthy in the twenty-first century.

A vigorous online presence is critical for Anglican churches on the North American mission field, which encompasses the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific islands as well as Canada, Mexico, and the United States, including Puerto Rico. Anglican churches that have not moved online need to do so. They may have an advantage as latecomers. They can benefit from what other churches that have gone online have learned.

While the COVID-19 pandemic may force some Anglican churches to permanently close their doors, for others the pandemic could prove to be a swing of the pendulum favorable to them. It may prove a steppingstone to becoming a more vibrant church.

Ideally a church should embody our Lord’s two Great Commandments—to love God with every atom of our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Obedience to one commandment goes hand in hand with obedience to the other. We cannot claim to unreservedly love God if we are hesitant in being a neighbor to the people of the locality where God has placed his church—ourselves. What we may think of as our church is not really ours. It is God’s. We may have invested time, talent, and treasure in the church, but God was the one who gave us the time, talent, and treasure in the first place. God did not plant the church in a particular locality to be a refuge from a changing world. He planted the church in that locality to be salt, light, and witnesses to the Lord Jesus Christ, to be King Jesus’ ambassadors to the locality, to show and share his love.

I am inclined to believe that it was more than human foresight that accounts for the provision for alternative forms of service in Concerning the Service of the Church in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. I am inclined to believe that it was the work of the Holy Spirit. God sees further than we can. Time is nothing to God. God lives in our past, our present, and our future. They are one to God.

It is a growing consensus that, whether they may realize it, with the COVID-19 pandemic most churches have become new church plants again. They have become what Concerning the Service of the Church calls “missionary churches and missionary chapels.” They are confronted with the same challenges that new church plants face. At the same time, they have been given fresh opportunities to reach and engage the unchurched population of not only their communities but also other communities.

For churches that use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer Concerning the Service of the Church makes provision for the development of new tools to take advantage of these opportunities. One of these tools is a more streamlined, more participatory Service of the Word, a Service of the Word that can be used both in person and online. In a separate article I will be offering a model for such a service.

No order of service, however, can compensate for a lack of spiritual vitality in a congregation. A congregation’s spiritual vitality—its spiritual liveliness and energy—is tied to its members’ openness to God’s presence and power working in their lives. This openness may be cultivated and nurtured by the use of the means of grace—by gathering with other believing Christians in person and online, by encouraging and exhorting each other, by hearing the proclamation and exposition of God’s Word, by the reading and study of Scripture, by meditation upon God’s Word, by the singing of “hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs,” by prayer, by acts of mercy, by the reception of the sacraments, and by living our lives to God’s glory, honoring him in everything that we do and say.

Our times of common prayer should be infused with same devotion as our times of private prayer. Each word should be dipped and soaked in the prayer of our hearts. Our services of public worship should be more than a familiar ritual. They should be a life-transforming encounter with the living God. Those who encountered God in the Bible did not go away unchanged from that encounter. If we take part in a service with the expectation that we will meet God there, I do not believe that we will be disappointed.