Gathering?
Gathering used to be what happened on a Sunday morning when the Church gathered for worship.
It happened on other days too, Saint's Days, Festivals, sometimes Confirmations and certainly, Ordinations.
There is something uplifting and enriching about being part of a large gathering sharing in Liturgy, hearing the great words of Scripture read and joining with others in singing the words of the Hymns.
To be a part of a congregation of hundreds, or as on one Easter Day I particularly remember, thousands is an uplifting, fulfilling and spiritually nurturing experience.
The Easter Day in particular was in 1985 at Holy Trinity Church in Boston, Mass. I was visiting Harvard on a Fellowship Programme and had been hired by Holy Trinity as an assistant priest to administer the Eucharist, on that Easter Sunday there were two Masses and at each Mass a congregation of a thousand people, after the first Mass, Brinks the bullion couriers arrived in the vestry to receive the collection which was taken directly to the Bank.
But as I have remarked in previous blogs the experience of being part of a huge congregation, being uplifted by the emotional and creative energy of other worshippers is less and less available.
I was Ordained Deacon forty six years ago in Sheffield Cathedral, the congregation filled the space and amongst the worshippers were members of my own family who even now forty five years later comment on the experience, the emotional power, of simply of being a part of that congregation made up of the friends and families of the ordinands and the new congregations which they would join, the service they recall had drama in spades, emotional highs and what is especially remembered joining with others in singing the hymns as Charles Wesley captured it: 'O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.
I guess that Ordinations still have that power although I haven't attended one in since leaving the Staff of Bradford Cathedral in 2000.
As congregations decline and the church deals in the 'two or three' gathered together, the experience of worship becomes thinner and less satisfying and so the two or three find it harder and harder to turn up and, if a new book on multi-congregation ministry is right, the 'ministry' they exercise will be lost.
One response to my previous blog was a comment that what I was describing was particularly true in the countryside but was beginning to be seen in urban areas as well.
It is of course true. Having served as a Parish Priest in both urban and rural settings I can see that what I describe is possibly more true of the rural church.
After a time spent in Birmingham working for the Home Office in a Drugs Project I moved to small village in Rural Cumbria where the congregation was normally counted in single figures, the largest congregation attended a Midnight Mass one Christmas Eve when the village was snow bound and the Methodist's could not attend Chapel so we had both an Organist and a Choir and a congregation in double figures and suddenly we heard echoes of how it used to be and, because the pub stayed open and the police were literally 'snowed out' the Parish 'Breakfast' consisted of mince pies and brandy coffee at 2 00 am!
I always sensed that the village had the possibility of doing something special, it was a special kind of place and now it has and what it has done I somehow sense might be an indicator of where the Church should be looking or maybe it will simply become the substitute with which people find what they are seeking.
The Village has a Festival, Music on the Marr, (Marr I understand being old Cumbrian for a village green or open space) sitting in a Marquee with hundreds of others listening to music becomes a communal and community experience, it offers much the same as might have been experienced when the church was the Church, it is a secular celebration, but it celebrates poetry, and in the power of the words and the music and the experience, the pub on the village green and the hog roast, it becomes a spiritual experience too and the Church is part of that experience in so far as it is both a venue and a quiet space for reflection.
This idea of where the modern 'Gathering' is to be found has been at the heart of a number of reflections on the 'Glastonbury' experience, commenting in The Guardian (29th June 2015) both John Harris reflecting on the political debates and Micheal Hann and Harriet Gibsone on the music each reflected that an essential element of the power of Glastonbury was the sense of 'Gathering' of being part of a larger whole whether debating the political issues of the day or a thousand tongues singing along with Lionel Richie.
Communality morphed into community morphed into a kind of secular spirituality morphed into a shared humanity.
A fragmented church, now broken and scattered into two or three, here and there, whilst aping the worship offered in a Cathedral a hundred years ago, (or Holy Trinity Boston 30 years ago) cannot compete nor should it.
It is time for a radical re-imaging of what the Church is and who it seeks to serve.
Gathering used to be what happened on a Sunday morning when the Church gathered for worship.
It happened on other days too, Saint's Days, Festivals, sometimes Confirmations and certainly, Ordinations.
There is something uplifting and enriching about being part of a large gathering sharing in Liturgy, hearing the great words of Scripture read and joining with others in singing the words of the Hymns.
To be a part of a congregation of hundreds, or as on one Easter Day I particularly remember, thousands is an uplifting, fulfilling and spiritually nurturing experience.
The Easter Day in particular was in 1985 at Holy Trinity Church in Boston, Mass. I was visiting Harvard on a Fellowship Programme and had been hired by Holy Trinity as an assistant priest to administer the Eucharist, on that Easter Sunday there were two Masses and at each Mass a congregation of a thousand people, after the first Mass, Brinks the bullion couriers arrived in the vestry to receive the collection which was taken directly to the Bank.
But as I have remarked in previous blogs the experience of being part of a huge congregation, being uplifted by the emotional and creative energy of other worshippers is less and less available.
I was Ordained Deacon forty six years ago in Sheffield Cathedral, the congregation filled the space and amongst the worshippers were members of my own family who even now forty five years later comment on the experience, the emotional power, of simply of being a part of that congregation made up of the friends and families of the ordinands and the new congregations which they would join, the service they recall had drama in spades, emotional highs and what is especially remembered joining with others in singing the hymns as Charles Wesley captured it: 'O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.
I guess that Ordinations still have that power although I haven't attended one in since leaving the Staff of Bradford Cathedral in 2000.
As congregations decline and the church deals in the 'two or three' gathered together, the experience of worship becomes thinner and less satisfying and so the two or three find it harder and harder to turn up and, if a new book on multi-congregation ministry is right, the 'ministry' they exercise will be lost.
One response to my previous blog was a comment that what I was describing was particularly true in the countryside but was beginning to be seen in urban areas as well.
It is of course true. Having served as a Parish Priest in both urban and rural settings I can see that what I describe is possibly more true of the rural church.
After a time spent in Birmingham working for the Home Office in a Drugs Project I moved to small village in Rural Cumbria where the congregation was normally counted in single figures, the largest congregation attended a Midnight Mass one Christmas Eve when the village was snow bound and the Methodist's could not attend Chapel so we had both an Organist and a Choir and a congregation in double figures and suddenly we heard echoes of how it used to be and, because the pub stayed open and the police were literally 'snowed out' the Parish 'Breakfast' consisted of mince pies and brandy coffee at 2 00 am!
I always sensed that the village had the possibility of doing something special, it was a special kind of place and now it has and what it has done I somehow sense might be an indicator of where the Church should be looking or maybe it will simply become the substitute with which people find what they are seeking.
The Village has a Festival, Music on the Marr, (Marr I understand being old Cumbrian for a village green or open space) sitting in a Marquee with hundreds of others listening to music becomes a communal and community experience, it offers much the same as might have been experienced when the church was the Church, it is a secular celebration, but it celebrates poetry, and in the power of the words and the music and the experience, the pub on the village green and the hog roast, it becomes a spiritual experience too and the Church is part of that experience in so far as it is both a venue and a quiet space for reflection.
This idea of where the modern 'Gathering' is to be found has been at the heart of a number of reflections on the 'Glastonbury' experience, commenting in The Guardian (29th June 2015) both John Harris reflecting on the political debates and Micheal Hann and Harriet Gibsone on the music each reflected that an essential element of the power of Glastonbury was the sense of 'Gathering' of being part of a larger whole whether debating the political issues of the day or a thousand tongues singing along with Lionel Richie.
Communality morphed into community morphed into a kind of secular spirituality morphed into a shared humanity.
A fragmented church, now broken and scattered into two or three, here and there, whilst aping the worship offered in a Cathedral a hundred years ago, (or Holy Trinity Boston 30 years ago) cannot compete nor should it.
It is time for a radical re-imaging of what the Church is and who it seeks to serve.
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