Saturday, February 17, 2007

Liturgy

I struggle with the liturgy that we have hear at Seabury. I'm not 100% sure that we, as a community or as an institution, are 100% sure what it is supposed to be about. Is it worship? Is it formation? Is it both? How much variety should we have? To what extent should we allow variety? Who do we celebrate and why or why not?
If our liturgy is just about learning, should it be highly varied so we are exposed to many different types of worship or should it be very similar to most Episcopal churches in the U.S. so that we learn and grow into the habits of worship that we will be in charge of soon?
If our liturgy is mainly about worship, should it be varied to reach out to a wide range of students? Should it be focused on students at all? Should it be for faculty and staff (who are more permanent) or on students (who are inherently transitory)? Should the variety reflect our in-house diversity reality or our in-house diversity goal?
I'm not sure that whatever is decide really matters all that much, but I do believe that we need to decide. If feels very unstable, unsure. Communications between students and faculty (especially with respect to worship and worship planning) seems tentative and unsure. Let's decide and move forward. A wrong direction is a possible outcome, but we can always make a course correction if we need to. We can't do anything if we are just sitting still.

3 comments:

Raisin said...

Hmm. Did a particular worship experience inspire this entry, I wonder?

Rainy Rector said...

Nope, not one, but 18 months worth of services, special events, MCing worship, helping others MC services have all convinced me that there isn't much definition around the "why." It is all about the "how."

Heidi Haverkamp said...

Yeah, I think this is really true. What are we doing? What for? Who for? So many things at SWTS seem un-examined to me.