Copyright: © 2004 Paul F. Bosch.
This document may be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes with credit to the author and mention of the Lift Up Your Hearts web site http://www.worship.ca/ as the source.

I attended a church conference recently where a group of us worship freaks had the chance to get together and swap stories and prejudices. When we asked ourselves the question What makes vital worship, we came up with a notebook full of answers.

You want to improve your parish worship? Here are some things to think about:

Some of these suggestions below will be easier to implement than others. NOT, for the most part, because they will cost money, or because they'll be impossible to apply in your physical setting, but rather because of the people's and/or leader's resistance to the idea. Almost all of these suggestions can be accomplished without spending a cent. What's needed is not money, or a new building, but the simple will to launch out into the deep.

The first three are the MOST important, and they'll take some considerable consciousness-raising.

1. The first suggestion is the most difficult. It's about piety and assumptions. It suggests that you consider a move FROM dualistic assumptions about "we-they" in worship TO an inclusive piety that focuses on "us". A "we-they" piety thinks and acts in terms of two ranks of worshippers: "we" in the nave, "they" in the chancel. Worship will never be vital until that duality is overcome. And we begin instead to think inclusively, in terms of "us", clergy and people all together.

   The best space for worship to accommodate this principle: a one-room interior, not two rooms (with nave here, chancel there. See Essays 5, 32, 33, 39 and 40, above.) You say you're stuck in a Neo- Gothic building with elongated nave and elevated chancel? Then accommodating this First and Most Important Principle will be a challenge, but not un-doable. You don't want to, or can't, spend money? How about this: Spend only some sweat and some muscle, and a long weekend, to re-configure that old Neo-Gothic interior.

   First, ignore the old elevated chancel. Better yet, leave it as is, and designate it --dedicate it!-- as a small chapel for weddings or intimate gatherings. Or else remove the removable furnishings, such as divided choir pews, and place chairs and kneelers in the old chancel space, and designate it a Reconciliation Room, for counseling and confessional rites. Or use the old chancel for the choir, with pews or chairs, this time facing west, with backs to the east-wall altar!

   Next, unbolt from the deck all those stationery pews in the nave, turn them all ninety degrees, in banks or sections, so as to face each other across a wide centre aisle, and place a handsome library table in the middle of the aisle to serve as your new altar- table. If the Table can be located at the "crossing", where east-west nave and north- south transepts intersect, so much the better.

   Depending on your interior arrangements, A) use the old wall-mounted pulpit as the new/old place of the Word, for preaching AND reading the scriptures, and store away the old lectern in a closet, or donate it to another parish. Or if possible B) move the old pulpit or lectern to the centre of the top step in the chancel and flank it with processional torches. And call it an ambo (Latin: a "raised space") Or C) move the old pulpit or lectern to nave level, at the head of the central aisle, in the east. And call it an ambo. If it's movable, move the old font out of the old chancel area, and locate it at the west end of that wide central aisle.

   And there you have it: A collegiate-style space. Without having spent a penny! All liturgical action on the people's level --no more architectural "we-they". All three major architectural "signs" (font, altar, ambo) on the central axis of the old Neo-Gothic space. You only need now to find a space for the sedilia, the seats for the worship leaders. And, importantly, you haven't disrespected those whose heart and soul and treasure went into the building of this building. You've honoured them!

   Item: I've recently stumbled upon a perfect example of a congregation's movement AWAY from "we-they" piety TOWARD "us", in evidence of what I'll bet was a three-step process in consciousness-raising. Present parishioners inherited a handsome Neo-Gothic building like the one described above. Their worship in that space, with elevated chancel, divided choir, east-wall altar --the whole nine yards!-- I'll call Step One.

   Step Two began with an appropriation of the values and principles of the Second Vatican Council, with its preference for the priest facing the people across a free-standing altar located closer to them. So they build a new platform west of the nave, on the same level as the chancel, and connected to it, protruding into the crossing, where they position a new free-standing altar. They're following Vatican 2, eh? With the priest facing the people, and closer to them, right?

   Step Three is where they are now, with consciousness raised even higher. Now they sense a dissatisfaction with this post-Vatican 2 arrangement, a disenchantment with the "we-they" implied in the difference in elevation between the priests' space for worship and their own. So they ignore the new platform, move the old pews (Still the old pews! No money spent!) into a three-sided "thrust" arrangement on nave level, import a huge handsome old oriental rug to fill the central space, and place their table-altar on that. Magnificent! (Their ambo is less happily disposed, on nave level, unfortunately not on the building's central axis, but instead off-centre to the north. Hey, nobody's perfect!)

2. Suggestion Two for vital worship: Use laypeople every Sunday, at every Eucharist, and every time the congregation gathers for worship: as Assisting Minister, as Lector, as Cantor, as Acolyte. Especially in Eucharist as AM. We preach about the Priesthood of All Believers; Let's see it in action on Sunday. Maybe then we'll even begin to see it in action during the week!

3. "Catholic" variety in music styles. Your parish's hymn choices aren't truly catholic (small "c") unless they include at least some selections from each of the following: not only so-called contemporary "praise choruses" (what a friend calls "happy clappy" songs), but ALSO plainsong, PLUS 17th Century German chorales, PLUS 18th Century English psalms and hymns, PLUS Scandinavian hymns, PLUS early American "shaped-note" hymns and songs, PLUS African-American spirituals, PLUS 19th Century "Gospel" hymns, PLUS those marvelous African and Asian and Hispanic hymns and songs you can find these days in resources such as the ELCA's Renewing Worship Songbook. There's an exhilarating selection of options in hymns and songs for worship these days. You're living in a Golden Age of hymnody!

4. ONE Eucharist on Sunday, not two or more. Why? Multiple Services signal a consumerist view of worship, the church as a franchise, owned and operated by clergy. See the "One flock-One shepherd" principle (Essay 20.)

5. Continued training in hospitality and welcome for all worshippers. The first time in the door for some may be the last time, unless there's welcome...

6. ONE ambo, not pulpit and lectern. Only one place of the Word is necessary, for reading AND preaching. See the paragraphs above at 1). See also Essays 5 and 40.

7. A central and visible baptismal font, WITHOUT a lid, WITH fresh water in it. Maybe even honoured in a separate and spacious baptistery. Maybe even large enough and deep enough for immersion. What does it say of our view of baptism when the font can't be found, in many of our churches? And when you finally find it, off in a dusty corner, it's covered with a lid? Or it consists of an aluminum ash-tray, with a dead fly in the bottom? Essay 38.

8. A SUNG psalm each week. See Essay 71.

9. CHAIRS, not pews, especially not boxed pews. We're not even conscious, most of the time, of how seriously pews constrict worship. Wouldn't it be great to have movable chairs, especially in a building where the choir is located in a rear gallery, and you could actually re-configure the space for a recital or concert so as to face the singers? And actually hear and see the choir's offering? Where you could actually re-configure the space depending on the season or occasion?