Can liturgy be missional?
by Ian Paul, Psephizo:
One of the current debates happening in the Church of England is about the relation between liturgical forms of worship and the task of mission. Put simply, some would claim that a highly structured and ‘liturgical’ service—in the sense of being shaped by formal liturgy—creates barriers to outsiders and is therefore an obstacle to mission and growth. So there is an association claimed between churches that are growing and those that have informal cultures of collective worship.
But it is not quite so simple! In the last few years we have also seen growth in the numbers attending places with more formal cultures of collective worship, including cathedrals and Oxbridge colleges (those these latter are rather sui generis). And we need to avoid the exaggerated polarity between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ for other reasons as well. On the one hand, Anglican clergy take a vow that they will ‘only use the forms of service authorised by canon law’, and so any Church of England service ought to be recognisable as Anglican in some way or another. (In fact, it is very easy to make a quite informal service conform to the shape and style of ‘A Service of the Word’.) On the other hand, churches I have been to where the collective worship is ‘informal’ often follow a quite strict and predictable pattern, and can make lots of assumptions about who does what and when, which, left unexplained, could be baffling and off-putting to visitors.
So can liturgy be missional? Can churches that use ‘liturgical worship’ draw new people in, see them coming to faith, and grow? This is what I will be exploring at an online training morning with Transforming Worship (South) on Thursday 12th October from 10.30 to 1 pm. You can book by completing the form here.
We will be considering a range of issues around Church of England liturgy, in particular the content and shape of the Communion service, which lend themselves to missional engagement.
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