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The Bishop: What he is and isn’t

It’s no secret that the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is going through the wringer right now. We’ve got two bishops under disciplinary investigation or trial, one special diocesan jurisdiction that just got ripped apart in an authority crisis between multiple bishops, and controversy over how each of these cases is being handled. Even some bishops and administrators not currently under scrutiny are being called into question over their alleged or apparent complicity with how various issues and cases have been mishandled in the past. There is a lot of heartache, a lot of broken trust, and a lot of confusion.

Archbishop Wood celebrating Eucharist at his installation as Archbishop, 2024

Fixing this will take more than slapping a canonical revision to Title IV onto the Province; it will take vulnerability and transparency; hard questions must be asked and hard answered given; liars must confess; sinners must repent; the disobedient must conform and the leaders must lead rightly.

yeah I made a meme

Apologia

I’m just a parish priest with a writing habit, sitting in a quiet spot in New England, safely distanced from pretty much everyone involved in provincial matters. I have no personal stakes for or against Archbishop Wood or any of the other men filling in for him in their various capacities, and I have no insider knowledge concerning who’s done what sins and who’s covering up what secrets. So I am very far from being able to offer any solutions; my place largely is to pray for them from my safe distance and strive to live up to the expectations placed upon me and the vows that I have taken as a priest in God’s Church.

As a writer, though, and specifically as a commentator on the Prayer Book that binds us together, I do have some observations on the nature of the episcopacy and how different understandings of that great office may be coming into play in the present crises.

The Bishop’s Vows

As with deacons and priests, one of the best ways to understand the ministry and identity of a bishop is to look at the questions posed to a bishop-elect at his ordination / consecration service. The Examination questions are answered by vows: the clergyman makes promises to his superior(s) that he will live accordingly. So let’s take a look at what the Bishop vows at his consecration.

  1. Are you persuaded that you are truly called to this ministry, according to the will of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Order of this Church? I am so persuaded.
  2. Do you believe that the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ? And are you determined out of the Holy Scriptures to instruct the people committed to your charge, and to teach or maintain nothing as necessary to eternal salvation but that which may be concluded and proved by the Scriptures? I do so believe, and I am so determined, the Lord being my helper.
  3. Will you then faithfully study the Holy Scriptures, and call upon God by prayer for the true understanding of them, so that you may be able by them to teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine, and to withstand and convince those who contradict it? I will, the Lord being my helper.
  4. Are you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word, and both privately and publicly to call upon others and encourage them to do the same? I am ready, the Lord being my helper.
  5. Will you renounce all ungodliness and worldly lusts, and live a godly, righteous, and sober life in this present world, that you may show yourself in all things an example of good works for others, that the adversary may be ashamed, having nothing to say against you? I will, the Lord being my helper.
  6. Will you maintain and set forward, as much as you are able, quietness, love, and peace among all people, and diligently exercise such discipline as is, by the authority of God’s Word and by the Order of this Church, committed to you?  I will, the Lord being my helper.
  7. Will you be faithful in examining, confirming, ordaining, and sending the people of God? I will, the Lord being my helper.
  8. Will you show yourself gentle, and be merciful for Christ’s sake, to poor and needy people and to all strangers destitute of help? I will, the Lord being my helper.

These are, naturally, very similar to the questions posed to deacons and priests, but there are some important differences too. The 5th question, for example, is markedly more severe than what is asked of other clergymen. Renouncing “all ungodliness and worldly lusts… that the adversary may be ashamed, having nothing to say against you” is more than we ask of our priests and deacons. And this reflects the teaching 1 Timothy 3:7, which says an overseer, or bishop, “must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.” Note this is not just about holiness of life, but also of reputation! This suggests that even if a man is innocent but has a tarnished reputation, we should think twice before putting a miter on him and calling him Bishop.

my diocesan bishop, Andrew Williams, standing before Archbishop Beach upon his consecration, 2019

A Context of Recent Historical Confusion

Although these eight vows are the same historic questions and answers put to Anglican bishops since 1662 (and since 1549 with the exception of #7), there is one influential Prayer Book that broke from this pattern: the Episcopalian Prayer Book of 1979. And since that book was the most widely-used among American Anglicans for forty years before the ACNA’s Prayer Book was published, it is worth wrestling with the questions it asked of bishops. Here’s a comparison of the historic Anglican vows against the 1979 rewrite, lined up for comparison by subject matter:

15491662 through 19281979
1. “Are you persuaded that you be truly called…?”1. “Are you persuaded that God has called you to the office of bishop?”
2. “Will you accept this call and fulfill this trust in obedience to Christ?”
2. “Are you persuaded that the holy Scriptures contain sufficiently all doctrine required…?”3. “Will you be faithful in prayer, and in the study of Holy Scripture, that you may have the mind of Christ?”
4. “Will you boldly proclaim and interpret the Gospel of Christ, enlightening the minds and stirring up the conscience of your people?”
3. “Will you then faithfully exercise yourself in the said holy Scriptures…?”5. “As a chief priest and pastor, will you encourage and support all baptized people in their gifts and ministries, nourish them from the riches of God’s grace, pray for them without ceasing, and celebrate with them the sacraments of our redemption?”
4. “Be you ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away…?”6. “Will you guard the faith, unity and discipline of the Church?”
7. “Will you share with your fellow bishops in the government of the whole Church; will you sustain your fellow presbyters [priests] and take counsel with them; will you guide and strengthen the deacons and all others who minister in the Church?”
5. “Will you deny all ungodliness, and worldly lusts…?” 
6. “Will you maintain and set forward (as much as shall lie in you) quietness, peace, and love among all…?” 
 7. “Will you be faithful in ordaining, sending, or laying hands upon others?” 
7. “Will you shew yourself gentle, and be merciful for Christ’s sake, to poor and needy people…?”8. “Will you shew yourself gentle, and be merciful for Christ’s sake, to poor and needy people…?”8. “Will you be merciful to all, show compassion to the poor and strangers, and defend those who have no helper?”

It is worth noting that the departure in 1979 from the historic examination indicates a view of the episcopacy that is considerably more authoritarian and clericalist than what is found in the historic Anglican tradition:

  • there are two questions on his calling instead of one,
  • it spells out his sharing in collegial episcopal authority,
  • it gives him the responsibility of “interpreting the Gospel to” and supporting all baptized people as “chief priest and pastor”.

All this makes the Bishop considerably more involved in various avenues of ministry. 

A word for our leaders today

If we are to receive correctives from the classical tradition, which is restored and taught in our 2019 Prayer Book, we are inevitably pointed to a different picture. Instead of a busy bureaucratic micromanager, the Anglican Bishop is to be a man of God who renounces ungodly and worldly lusts more clearly and publicly than the priest is ever asked to do; the Bishop is to be faithful to carry out the episcopal ministry of examining, confirming, and ordaining his people; he is to be an apt teacher of the Word.

We don’t have to spend two questions dwelling on his sense of calling; his vocation has been made clear through the lengthy process of diocesan searching and examination and confirmed by the approval of the College of Bishops.

We don’t have to remind bishops that they are “chief priests and pastors” who need to sustain their priests and support their deacons; they are to be “faithful in ordaining, sending, or laying hands upon others” and be capable teachers of God’s Word for them and diligent exercisers of godly discipline.

At least one small part of our present troubles taking place at the provincial level of the ACNA can be accounted for due to these 1979-style conceptions of the episcopacy carrying over into a system that charitably assumes classically-Anglican bishops. The Bishop’s chief posture is not to be huddled up “with your fellow bishops in the government of the whole Church”, but instead to be ministering God’s Word to his people. I have seen a couple different articles popping up in recent weeks arguing for a reform of ACNA governing polity that takes the College of Bishops down a notch. At first I was indifferent to the idea, but having reviewed the Ordinal as I have presented it above I now see the wisdom in those proposals. Bishops are not meant to be bureaucrats, governors, or senators leading from an office building; the College of Bishops is not meant to be a College of Cardinals meeting in secret. The Anglican ideal, rather, is choosing a Bishop who evidently lives a holy life and has a reliable gift of teaching. If he doesn’t have great administration skills, that’s fine; that’s what the synods, canons to the ordinary, and other assemblies are for.

I don’t write this to condemn any Bishop or leader in particular – like I said before, I don’t know any of the provincial leaders personally. I write this to warn against false perceptions of the episcopacy that have permeated (and perhaps poisoned!) our Church. We mustn’t look to the clericalist authoritarianism of Rome; we mustn’t look to the business-success models of the megachurch movement; we mustn’t look to the cults of personality that surround many men of charisma. Rather, as Anglicans, we should be looking among our priests for the quiet, meek, holy, and faithful teachers whose lives and words proclaim the Gospel with equal measure and integrity.

This is, by the way, why many of our greatest bishops and archbishops throughout history were monks – not because of the early-medieval favoritism often given to the monastic life, but because that is where the men most devoted to a holy life and the Word of God were most often found. Many of the great leaders of the Church had no episcopal aspirations whatsoever – John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Anselm, and many others much preferred the monk’s habit to the episcopal miter. If we are to rebuild a healthy provincial leadership paradigm, these are the sorts of men we need to be seeking, electing, and consecrating as our diocesan bishops.

No more bureaucrats and mega-pastors! Give me that old time religion! Give me a man who is above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. These are the bishops whose discipline and authority will not only be respected by their flocks, but loved.

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Michaelmas throughout the Scriptures

September 29th is the feast of Holy Michael the Archangel, and most calendars today extend this feast to the celebration of All Angels alongside him. As I’ve done a few times before here, I’d like to reverse-engineer this holy day by walking through several texts of Scripture that have been used over the years to celebrate this great feast.

Prologue: Daniel 10 & Revelation 5

We begin with a pair of great visions, one by the Prophet Daniel and one by Saint John. Daniel ch. 10 is the vision in which an angel comes to speak to Daniel, and he is terrified, as is the usual response to angel visitations. But the angel strengthens him with a touch on the mouth and words of his own, particularly mentioning two different times that the Archangel Michael helped him fight against the “prince of” (read: demon behind) Persia so that he could get to Daniel to deliver this message. Michael is further described as “your prince”, that is, a guardian angel in defense of all God’s people. In Christian religious language, that’d be rendered as Michael being the Patron of the Church. This is of great comfort to Daniel, and it should also be of great comfort to us – that we have such a terrifyingly powerful being fighting on our behalf against the spiritual powers behind or within this dark world of sin.

The vision in Revelation 5 takes this even further up the heavenly ladder: there is a scroll that nobody in heaven seems worthy to open: not even these mighty angels! But there is one who is worthy: the seven-horned lamb standing on a throne as if slain. That’s a terrifying appearance too, perhaps even more than the angel who visited Daniel. Yet we know that this lamb is actually a depiction of the Lord Jesus, who is exalted above all heavenly beings, being God himself. So we enter into this holy day celebrating the angelic hosts and their great Captain, Michael, with a reminder both of their mighty power and of their Lord and ours: Jesus the Son of God.

In the Morning: Psalm 82, Daniel 12, and Revelation 8

Us modern and post-modern folks have a frequently-recurring problem with the supernatural. We tend either toward denial or dualism: denial being that atheistic or de-mythologizing tendency to ignore the existence of spiritual things (or at least downplay their reality), and dualism being the attitude that matter and spirit are utterly separate, and the human soul’s ultimate goal is to escape this mortal flesh and become pure spirit like God. This Psalm and these two lessons smash these false teachings to bits like they’re nothing, and rightly so!

In Psalm 82 God addresses “you princes” and “you gods”. From other examples of Old Testament language (like Daniel 10, above), a prince can refer not only to a powerful human ruler but also to a powerful spirit – a high-ranking angel or a demon. As God sits in judgment in and over the council of princes we hear his calling to defend the poor, deliver the outcast, save the weak from the hand of the ungodly. He acknowledges that these “princes” are “gods” but that they shall die like mortals. Whether it’s an angel or a human, both alike stand before God as subjects. All nations – earthly and heavenly – shall be taken by God as his own inheritance.

This is further promised in Daniel 12, where the angel tells Daniel that Michael the Archangel will arise and commence a great deliverance of God’s people in their time of greatest need. Daniel doesn’t fully understand, but is assured that God has a timetable, the days of suffering are numbered (not endless), and that Daniel himself will have his place to stand (that is, to be vindicated in judgment) on the Last Day.

Revelation 8 also depicts that time of judgement: the Lamb has opened the last seal of the scroll mentioned earlier (in chapter 5, above) and this unleashes a round of judgment upon the earth. And, just like how Psalm 82 blurs the distinction between angelic princes and human princes, Revelation 8 details the offering of the “prayers of the saints” as incense from the hand of an angel: in short, heavenly worship and earthly worship, angelic worship and human worship, is all one, intertwined and inseparable. Thus when we celebrate Holy Michael and All Angels, we do celebrate an order of beings that is quite distinct from us, yet we do so acknowledging that they are also a sort of kin to us; we are one with the angels in service to Christ!

At the modern Eucharist:
Genesis 28:10-17, Psalm 103, Revelation 12:7-12, and John 1:47-51

At the principle worship service of the day, we hear a smattering of texts that further depict this link between earth and heaven. Genesis 28 contains the story of Jacob’s Ladder, in which that ancient patriarch has a dream and sees angels climbing up and down a ladder between heaven and earth. This has forever since served as one of the primary images of the Christian life: aided upwards by angels and discouraged downwards by demons, we are ascending from one world to another. The reading from John 1 is the main New Testament acknowledgement of this image: Jesus tells Nathaniel (Bartholomew) that he will see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. Thus Jesus makes himself out to be Jacob’s Ladder, the very Way to heaven!

Psalm 103 contributes a separate word of connection between earth and heaven. In the same vein as Revelation 8 (above) we here call upon the angels and heavenly hosts to bless the Lord along with us.

And in Revelation 12 we read of the epic battle between Michael (the Archangel) and the dragon (Satan), which represents a cosmic or supernatural or spiritual perspective of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Whether you look at “the war in heaven” or at the Cross of Christ, you see the same result: “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come“.

At a traditional Eucharist: Isaiah 14:12-17, Psalm 148:1-3, Matthew 18:1-10

Instead of (or in addition to) those readings, a traditional eucharistic service might also present us with readings such as these.

Isaiah 14 contains the great contrast to Holy Michael by addressing the dragon, his opponent, the false “Day Star”, Satan. This was once a great and holy being but he chose to “ascend to heaven above the stars of God” without climbing the ladder that is Christ. He sought to make himself “like the Most High” but instead is brought down to Sheol, the place of the dead.

Psalm 148 begins like Psalm 103 ends: with a call to the angels to praise the Lord alongside us and all creation. Again, this emphasizes the unity of heaven and earth, of angel and human, giving us a common identity and calling in the unending worship of God.

And Matthew 18, finally, returns us to the concept of a guardian angel (cf. Daniel 10, above). Here, Jesus warns us not cause “little ones” (that is, children either in age or in spiritual maturity) to sin, for “their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” In other words, there are angelic beings watching over the weak, and if we mistreat or mislead them, we shall be held accountable. Thus the angels remain very much attentive to human affairs.

In the Evening: Genesis 32 & Acts 12:1-11

The celebration of this holy day wraps up with two last images: Jacob’s wrestling with the Angel of the Lord, and Peter’s angelic breakout from prison. In the former case, the “Angel of the Lord” is so closely associated with God himself that this angel is often understood to be Jesus, before he was incarnate (or made man). This is evidenced in the Angel’s refusal to tell Jacob his name (as a couple other angels were happy to disclose their names to people); for the holy name of Jesus was not yet given. Meanwhile in Acts 12, an angel breaks St. Peter out of prison and leads him to safety.

In both of these cases, the spiritual realms are interposed upon the material world, the heavenly invades the earthly. The Angel of the Lord comes to strengthen and bless Jacob in his night of anguish and fear, and an angel comes to rescue Peter from a possible death sentence before his time. After all those cosmic, large-scale pictures of the union of heaven of earth and the cooperation of angels and men, it helps to conclude with these two, more personal stories. For it sends us away from this holiday thinking not just about the grand idea of angels, but also of specific tangible personal examples of angelic assistance. It’s one thing to say “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2), but it’s all the more real to us when we are reminded of these one-on-one encounters.

May Holy Michael and the angelic hosts of the Lord Jesus be not only an inspiration to you, but a true and powerful help in times of trouble.

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Balancing Stability and Variety in the Eucharistic Rite

This can be a touchy subject. Some people are very passionate about their liturgical sensibilities; some people literally couldn’t care less. Some people insist that variety is the spice of life and the worship service must be constantly changing lest it become stale and mindlessly regimented. Others insist that variety is vanity and stability in the liturgy is superior, providing consistent discipleship and formative value that would be undermined by constant changes. And of course there are ways that others still attempt to balance these conflicting poles of thought.

On the whole I am largely in the “stability” camp, and I don’t want a given church to be constantly reinventing its liturgy. I do believe that repetition is essential to growth – this is how we exercise for physical fitness, this is how artists get better at their art, this is how students learn things. Inconsistent worship breeds an inconsistent approach to theology, as worship is really the front line of theology – how we approach and interact with God in prayer is the first step of articulating actual doctrine and teaching. Thus I am very much a Prayer Book loyalist: stick to the text, and keep variation to a minimum.

But therein lies an awkward question: stick to which text?

I’ve heard it joke that the Joy of Anglicanism is getting to argue about worship for the rest of your life. And the potentiality is certainly there: every province has its own version of the Book of Common Prayer, and some are more different than others. And besides the Prayer Book there have been many edits, supplements, occasional services, missals, and alternative lectionaries, such that 100 congregations could each have a different eucharistic service order. Not to say that this is a unique feature: there are multiple versions of the Roman Rite, both historically and in the present day; the Lutherans have long since branched out from Luther’s original German Mass; Presbyterians rarely offer more than “guidelines” for structuring a worship service, and the rest of the Protestant world is largely in do-whatever-you-want mode, which usually means the congregation is at the mercy of their pastor’s private sensibilities.

So if I want a stable, formative, orthodox, and coherent Anglican Prayer Book service every Sunday morning, where do I turn? How do I decide what is best?

STEP ONE: Conformity

“Conformity” is such a bad word in modern American culture, but in terms of church worship it’s very much a value. It is good for churches to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ and to be on the same page as one another. If we are indeed one body then we really ought to be growing together in roughly the same ways. Conformity in my case means using the edition of the Prayer Book that my province of the church (the Anglican Church in North America) has promulgated, the Prayer Book of 2019. 

STEP TWO: Utilizing the Basic Options

In that book there are two Communion rites (the Anglican Standard and the ‘Renewed Ancient’), and of that book there are two version (contemporary language and traditional liturgical English). Therefore there are four choices for Holy Communion. Here’s how I treat them:

To explain, the Anglican Standard Text is the first Communion Rite in the book, and should be understood to be our standard (hence the name), so I give it pride of place. The second rite, somewhat anachronistically called the Renewed Ancient Text, is a consolidation of the liturgical experimentation of the 1960’s and 70’s which became regnant in the Episcopal church, so its place in the Anglican tradition is widespread yet still very recent. I currently only use it on the Sundays from Christmas through Epiphanytide, largely on account of the fact that the eucharistic prayers mention the Virgin Mary, and that’s the time of year most suited to emphasizing the incarnation of our Lord. I also have it down for holy days commemorating relatives of Jesus (Joseph, Mary, her parents, John the Baptist, and his parents).

STEP THREE: Tastefully Dipping into our History

There’s another feature in our Prayer Book which is easily missed, but of great significance: older orders of service are permitted, using the material in the 2019 Prayer Book. The order of events in the Anglican Communion service got revamped quite a bit in the 1970’s: the Creed and Sermon switched places, the Fraction (or breaking of the bread) was given its own place between the Communion prayers and the distribution, the Gloria in excelsis Deo moved from being an anthem at the end to a hymn of praise near the beginning (as in the Roman Rite), the Offertory moved after the Prayers and Confession. And so, in deference to the majority of our history, the 2019 Prayer Brook allows us to re-order the Anglican Standard Text to match the order of a previous authorized Prayer Book. This gives a few major options:

  1. The order of the first prayer book (1549)
  2. The standard English prayer book (1662)
  3. The first & second American prayer books (1789 & 1892)
  4. The third American prayer book (1928)

There are a few other historical options from England and Canada and Scotland, but they are almost identical to others already listed here.

Would I ever want to make use of this permission? And if so, what would be the justification for such meddling? The downsides are obvious:

  • People get tripped up easily when familiar material gets rearranged
  • I, the celebrant, am much more prone to making mistakes when I do something different from the norm
  • Parents trying to manage small children during the service have a harder time keeping up when their full attention isn’t able to be on the order of service

So if we choose to utilize these other options, it needs to be for a very good reason. After all, the rubrics permitting this change exists primarily to service those parishes that are already used to a different order and want to keep it, despite switching over to the 2019 Prayer Book.

I have two main reasons for wanting to make occasional use of the historic orders.

  1. INSTRUCTION: Both in terms of personal awareness as well as historical honesty, I think it’s good for ordinary worshipers to be exposed to samples of “the way things were” on occasion. It’s good to know that the Modern Way is not the Only Way, and to appreciate at least some of the differences that have arisen in the details of our patterns of worship over the centuries.
  2. FORMATION: Despite my preference for stability over variety, there is a value to “shaking things up” a little bit from time to time. Re-arranging a little bit of the worship service according to an historic pattern forces people to pay attention in a way that they normally may not. Hearing and saying familiar prayers in a different sequence than usual can help bring out different emphases that would be missed otherwise.

To implement the inclusion of these alternative orders, though, it struck me as too arbitrary to assign certain orders to certain Sundays of the year. So instead I assigned them to certain groups of minor feast days:

  1. The 1662 Order is for British Saints
  2. The 1549 Order is for other Western Saints
  3. The 1789/1892 Order is for Eastern Saints
  4. The 1928 Order is for Angels, Eve of All Saints, the Faithful Departed

The general logic behind this is that the 1662 order is the most uniquely English liturgy, so it befits the British Saints, the 1549 Eucharistic Rite is more generically Western, the early American Prayer Books (influenced by the Scottish order) has a slight Eastern element to it, and the 1928 prayers give a little more attention to the departed than its predecessors. Plus, by tying these alternative arrangements of the service order to minor saints days, we get a special way of acknowledging these commemorations when they happen to land on a Sunday without actually directly observing them and interrupting the calendar year.

So for example earlier this year August 20th was on a Sunday, and that was the commemoration of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. So on that day we used the 1549 order of service to denote his commemoration, though the Scripture lessons and sermon remained in the regular Sunday sequence (I was preaching through Romans at the time). The next time this’ll happen for my church is on January 28th, on which day we’ll again use the 1549 order this time to celebrate St. Thomas Aquinas, a giant of Western Medieval theology. And then in March we’ll use this method to denote St. Patrick’s Day as well!

This approach gives you maybe three or four Sundays per year with historic orders, which is rare enough that it’s not destabilizing the congregation’s ability to follow the regular liturgy, but often enough that they kinda-sorta remember “I think we’ve done this before”. That way it’s a little jarring (“oh right, I have to pay careful attention to follow this”) but not overwhelming and having-to-start-from-scratch each time.

SUMMARY THOUGHT

So that’s generally how I go about trying to balance variety and stability. I’m not saying this is a perfect system that everyone should try to emulate, but I think these are sound ideas that provide just enough variation without throwing people off too much. It really matters to me that people get to know our liturgy, grow to cherish its prayers, and make them their own – and sometimes you need both familiar repetition as well as fresh encounters to make that happen.

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Days of Special Private Devotion

One of the great strengths of the liturgical tradition which I don’t often write about here is the fact that we can draw from common worship – from the shared practices of the Church – in our own private prayers and devotions.

It may be that you want to study, read, or otherwise spend time with the Scriptures beyond the 4ish chapters of readings per day supplied by Morning and Evening Prayer. You could spend extra time on your own reading more of the Bible, perhaps drawing from other lectionaries or from the resources for a holy day. It may be that you want to keep praying more psalms besides the Office’s allotment, perhaps engaging in a weekly plan for praying the Psalms or at some other pace.

An idea that I wanted to describe today is the idea of observing special days for private devotion. The Church makes a big deal of Easter, Christmas, of the Epiphany and Pentecost, and a host of other holy days not to mention the Lord’s Day in general. You may well have family celebrations for some of these days too. But there may be other occasions that are relative minor in the Church’s grand scheme of things which are special or significant to you, and on your own (apart from the formal liturgy) you may want to spend a little extra time in worship.

For example, in my own private devotions there are a handful of commemorations that are significant to me for various reasons, and there are a couple devotional practices that are of special importance to me, so I like to put these together and match them up a bit.

First of all, there’s the praying of the psalms. I have come to cherish this ancient practice, and sometimes I just sit down with a psalter and read, pray, or even sing some psalms apart from the liturgy. So I figured why not, in the course of picking out a handful of days of special personal devotion, assign the Psalter across those occasions?

I also love reading the Bible in general have a particular affinity for the Old Testament. So how about grabbing some parts of the Bible to read on some of these special occasions too?

Now, for identifying some of those days for myself.

  1. King Charles the Martyr (30 January) is a significant figure both in my study of history as well as my appreciation for the Anglican identity. His martyrdom was commemorated in the 1662 Prayer Book, so there’s already precedent for such a holy day. How about around that day I pray the first seventh the psalter (1-25) and read a book like Lamentations or Ecclesiastes?
  2. Augustine of Canterbury (27 May) was the first Archbishop of Canterbury and one of the key renewers of Christianity in Britain. For that commemoration, I might want to go through the next seventh of the psalter (26-41) and read the pastoral epistles (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus) to reflect on my own ministry.
  3. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (20 August) is an important figure to a group of priests I’m in fellowship with. That’s a good opportunity to pray some psalms of desire (42-72) and read the Song of Songs, a book that was immensely special to Bernard. He also wrote a long hymn in love to Jesus which I might attempt to sing through.
  4. The Nativity of Mary (8 September) is my ordination anniversary, so I have a fondness for that commemoration. That’s a good time to read the fourth seventh of the psalms (73-89) and read a book of the Bible that’s reflective of both Mary’s love and Mary’s knowledge of Jesus, like 1 John.
  5. The Consecration of Samuel Seabury (14 November) and
  6. Saint Aelfric (16 November) are right on each other’s doorsteps, so that’s a good opportunity to take a longer book and split it in half between them, such as The Wisdom of Solomon, chapters 1-9 for one day and 10-19 for the other. Psalms 90-106 and 107-119 would also be good matchups for those days, respectively.
  7. Finally, the season of Advent one of my favorite times of year, including the subtle lead-up to it in the month of November. As the first Sunday in Advent finally arrives, that’s a good time to finish both the Psalter and the Bible, symbolically speaking, with psalms 120-150 and the book of Revelation.

There are other practices you might want to consider for highlighting your own special days of devotion. Times of silence, songs to sing, places to go, people to visit, even giving alms, showing hospitality, or providing service and aid to another… there are many ways that we can mark special days. Perhaps the anniversary of the death of a loved one will see you visiting his or her grave, or reaching out to a surviving relative. Perhaps for your baptismal birthday you may want to go to a weekday worship service at church. Perhaps you want to take up a special Lent devotional book or a pious Advent calendar to highlight a special time of the year. Perhaps on a day of sorrowful memory you might give yourself to fasting.

Sometimes it’s particularly meaningful to an individual to make personal days of memory, interest, or inspiration. Explore with possibilities – this is where we can make our own traditions!

Posted on by Fr. Brench

Beyond Sunday Communion part 4: Morning Prayer & Litany & Communion

The Prayer Book tradition of worship is rich and robust, providing not only rites and rituals for individual worship services but indeed for an entire life of Christian worship. As a part of this ambitious large-scale schema, it should come as no surprise that there’s more to worship than simply going to Holy Communion every Sunday morning. There are the daily rounds of prayer, punctuated by the [Great] Litany a couple times per week, various pastoral offices for key stages in the natural and spiritual lives of a congregation and family, and pointers toward the development of private devotions to enable the individual worshiper to flesh out his or her own life of worship apart from the gathered Church.

What is often missed in today’s church culture, however, is that the original Prayer Book pattern for worship on Sunday morning was actually a three-part affair: Morning Prayer, The [Great] Litany, and the Holy Communion. Until relatively recent times, all three of these were appointed to be said in every church every Sunday and Holy Day. Granted, this was often shortened in actual practice, and by the late 19th century it was probably more common for people to attend just one service rather than all three in a row. Yet the full pattern of worship is still present even in our modern Prayer Books, and the typical malnourished Christian of today could benefit greatly from a retrieval of the spiritual rigor of our forebears. To that end, we’ve been looking at different combinations of worship services that you could carry out on Sunday mornings in your church.

Morning Prayer & The Litany & Holy Communion

We’re wrapping up this sequence of articles by going for the gold: how might you run a 100% Authentic Anglican (TM) Sunday Morning Worship Service? I’m going to present three ideas on how to execute this trilogy of Prayer Book services: the start-and-stop approach, the compound marathon, and the finessed liturgy.

The Start-and-Stop Approach

I would consider this the ideal for Sunday morning worship, personally. You start with Morning Prayer by the book, with a little bit of music. Then there’s a little break for study, discussion, catechesis, whatever’s going on. Then you return to the pews and kneel for the Great Litany. But rather than concluding the Litany outright, you open it up for spontaneous prayer. Or if the congregation is charismatic-influenced, open it up for prayer and praise! After the reading and studying of the Word in Morning Prayer and the long detailed prayer coverage of the Litany, and with the climax of the Eucharist ahead, this is also a perfect opportunity for the Rites of Healing: offering sacramental confession and the anointing of the sick. Then, after another breather, it’s time for the full Communion service.

While this would be quite a full morning for all involved, there are mitigating factors worth considering. First of all, the priest doesn’t have to lead everything! He should be present to pronounce absolution in Morning Prayer, available for ministry after the Litany, and only then must he take up the mantle to officiant Holy Communion. As for the congregation, not everyone necessarily comes to all three services. Prospective members and “seekers” will receive the instruction and prayer they need in the first two services; Holy Communion isn’t for them yet. Lots of people would probably still show up only for the Communion portion and skip the first two. But imagine the robust spirituality that would be fostered in those who did show up for all three! What a blessing that could be to the church and the community.

The Compound Marathon

Like the first approach, the Compound Marathon is a walk-through of the Morning Office, Litany, and Communion in full, one after another, with no breaks in between. You could omit the closing sentences from Morning Prayer, just so it doesn’t feel too much like you’re sending everyone away 1/3 of the way through, but otherwise this is literally three worship services in a row.

This is the least attractive idea to my sensibilities. With no transitions between each service, people will be very aware of an awkward “we’re done, but we’re not done” sense and the overall impression will probably be very foreign to everyone involved.

But it is the simplest way to bring the three services together. The less verbal guidance required to help the congregation through the liturgy, the better, so finishing out each service before moving on to the next is going to be the path of least confusion. This is also the most instructive approach: those who’ve never experienced Morning Prayer or the Litany before will get to experience them both in full without anything clipped out! In that light we find where this strange idea might actually make sense: the church could make a special occasion of “exploring the fulness of our tradition of worship” and do Morning Prayer, Litany, and Communion all together as a one-off special event.

The Finessed Liturgy

But if you want to use all three liturgies together on a regular basis, and/or the congregation is already at least somewhat familiar with them, then you’re best off following the actual rubrics when it comes to moving from one service to the next.

Morning Prayer starts off on page 11 and runs until (but not including) the Prayer for Mission on page 24. Then the Litany begins (page 91) and runs through the Kyrie on page 96. At that point, the Communion service begins with the Collect of the Day on page 107/125.

Additionally, some other factors could be considered:

  • The Confession & Creed may be omitted from the Office.
  • The Psalms and Lessons in Morning Prayer may be able to be shortened.
  • Reading the Canticles is much quicker than singing them.
  • The Great Litany can be lengthened or shortened at the officiant’s preference, so abbreviating its intercessions is a legitimate move, as long as the congregation is able to follow you.
  • A hymn (or the Gloria) might sit nicely between the Litany and the Eucharist’s Collect of the Day.
  • The Prayers of the People in the Communion liturgy technically aren’t supposed to be skipped, but in light of all the prayer that has come before you’d be well within your rights to shorten them drastically.

This sounds super long, yes. But don’t be intimidated! The two biggest time-sinks in a worship are the sermon and the singing. And remember that the great majority of the Prayer Book liturgy is about reading and praying the Word of God (Scriptures) to the Word of God (Jesus), so there’s no such thing as time wasted there.

Personal note in conclusion

Of all the combinations, this is the one I’ve never tried before in my church, I must admit. On paper, I was set to try it out a couple times, but I always chickened out. Someday I probably will muster up my resolve and give it a go, and when I do I will almost certainly use the Finessed Liturgy approach, as well as clearly identify the Sunday ahead of time with a special reason for observing the full tradition of Prayer Book worship. It may be a special holy day, or a historically-minded occasion. And I will make it clear that it’s a once-time event so as not to scare my flock with an unasked-for spiritual workout in overdrive. If I were to make the observance of all three services a regular part of parish life, I’d separate them out (as in the first approach) to provide space for particular ministerial and practical needs in between.

Posted on by Fr. Brench

Beyond Sunday Communion part 3: Morning Prayer & Holy Communion

The Prayer Book tradition of worship is rich and robust, providing not only rites and rituals for individual worship services but indeed for an entire life of Christian worship. As a part of this ambitious large-scale schema, it should come as no surprise that there’s more to worship than simply going to Holy Communion every Sunday morning. There are the daily rounds of prayer, punctuated by the [Great] Litany a couple times per week, various pastoral offices for key stages in the natural and spiritual lives of a congregation and family, and pointers toward the development of private devotions to enable the individual worshiper to flesh out his or her own life of worship apart from the gathered Church.

What is often missed in today’s church culture, however, is that the original Prayer Book pattern for worship on Sunday morning was actually a three-part affair: Morning Prayer, The [Great] Litany, and the Holy Communion. Until relatively recent times, all three of these were appointed to be said in every church every Sunday and Holy Day. Granted, this was often shortened in actual practice, and by the late 19th century it was probably more common for people to attend just one service rather than all three in a row. Yet the full pattern of worship is still present even in our modern Prayer Books, and the typical malnourished Christian of today could benefit greatly from a retrieval of the spiritual rigor of our forebears. To that end, we’ll be looking at different combinations of worship services that you could carry out on Sunday mornings in your church.

Morning Prayer & Holy Communion

The most complicated pairing of traditional Prayer Book services is that of Morning Prayer and Holy Communion. The American Prayer Book of 1928 hints of the concept of running the two services together but provides no rubrics on how this is meant to be done. The 1979 Prayer Book finally followed that up with a set of instructions: cut the Morning Prayer service off after the collects and before the Prayer for Mission, and then start the Offertory of the Communion liturgy (1979 BCP page 142). Additional Prayers might be expected in between, however, to ensure the requirements for the Prayers of the People be fulfilled. The practical result of this schema is that the Daily Office serves as the “Liturgy of the Word” within the Communion service.

However, the framers of the 2019 Prayer Book consciously and intentionally did not repeat that rubric. They asserted that the integrity of the Daily and Communion offices should be maintained, and there was nothing to be gained by blending them together like that. So now we have an interesting situation, because on pages 24 and 50 of our Prayer Book we still have the same rubric as in 1979: “Unless the… Eucharist is to follow, one of the following prayers for mission is added.” So if you want to combine Morning Prayer and Holy Communion into one worship service, the Office ends at the same place as it does for switching to the Litany, which is the same place the original Office ended, which is the same place as the 1979 Book to move on to the Offertory in Holy Communion. Except in our case, the “Liturgy of the Word” in Holy Communion can’t be overwritten. This leaves us with a curious range of options.

First, literally start at the very beginning of the Communion service. You could smooth the transition a little by singing a hymn to be the hinge: functioning both as the Anthem near the end of the Office and the Opening Hymn of the Eucharist. Needless to say this is the longest option in terms of the worship service’s duration. Though the other options aren’t going to be all that much shorter.

Second, skip everything you’re allowed to skip. If you want to remain obedient to the rubrics, but try your hardest to shorten this combined service, here are the things you can skip:

  • The Confession in Morning Prayer
  • The Apostles’ Creed in Morning Prayer
  • The Gloria in Excelsis Deo in the Communion service
  • The Comfortable Words and certain other marked prayers during the celebration of Communion

This is often overlooked by liturgy planners, but the real key to “saving time” when you’re concerned about a worship service lasting too long is not about breezing through the Prayers and skipping sections of the liturgy. The biggest time-user is music. This is especially true in the modern charismatic-influenced evangelical tradition – those songs can go on much longer even than the old hymns! So if you’re the sort who’s concerned about attention span and a set “finish time”, look at how you can reel in the music, rather than cut corners with the actual canonical liturgy.

That said, there is something to be said for the spirit of the rubrics rather than just the letter. Along those lines, here are some other things to consider to smooth the transition from Morning Prayer to Holy Communion and make it feel a bit more unified and a bit less repetitive.

  • Use the Confession in Morning Prayer instead of the Communion (that way you can skip a bunch of the follow-up material, including that oft-time-consuming Peace!)
  • Trim the Prayers of the People (after all Morning Prayer does have some basic intercessions built in already)
  • Alternatively, chop off all the prayers from Morning Prayer (concluding it with the second lesson & canticle, and then moving on to the Communion. This way you get the benefit of the extra Scripture readings and none of the prayers thereafter which will get duplicated.)

In my early years as a priest, I tried out all three of those last ideas (possibly all at once). I did this on a couple festive Sundays of the year – Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, All Saints’ Sunday – for the benefit of getting two different collects of the day (in most of those cases) and extra Scripture lessons. I thought it’d be a good way to heighten the celebration of the high holy days in a way that was both Bible-centered and Prayer Book -honoring, analogous to how the especially penitential Sundays would be punctuated by the Great Litany.

Unlike my appointing of the Litany, however, the Morning Prayer + Holy Communion combo pack did not last. It’s significantly longer, it’s clunkier, and on the days that I appointed this there was usually a lot of wonderful music that we wanted to sing as well. It may be that the Office & Eucharist combination would work better in a low-music setting. It may be that this combination may better be achieved as two separated worship services with a time for Bible Study or Sunday School or Catechesis in between.

Or, hey, maybe you actually do want to plan a worship that’s 1½-2 hours long, and then a full Morning Office with a full Eucharist back-to-back is a perfectly Anglican way to achieve that!

Posted on by Fr. Brench

Beyond Sunday Communion part 2: Morning Prayer & Litany

The Prayer Book tradition of worship is rich and robust, providing not only rites and rituals for individual worship services but indeed for an entire life of Christian worship. As a part of this ambitious large-scale schema, it should come as no surprise that there’s more to worship than simply going to Holy Communion every Sunday morning. There are the daily rounds of prayer, punctuated by the [Great] Litany a couple times per week, various pastoral offices for key stages in the natural and spiritual lives of a congregation and family, and pointers toward the development of private devotions to enable the individual worshiper to flesh out his or her own life of worship apart from the gathered Church.

What is often missed in today’s church culture, however, is that the original Prayer Book pattern for worship on Sunday morning was actually a three-part affair: Morning Prayer, The [Great] Litany, and the Holy Communion. Until relatively recent times, all three of these were appointed to be said in every church every Sunday and Holy Day. Granted, this was often shortened in actual practice, and by the late 19th century it was probably more common for people to attend just one service rather than all three in a row. Yet the full pattern of worship is still present even in our modern Prayer Books, and the typical malnourished Christian of today could benefit greatly from a retrieval of the spiritual rigor of our forebears. To that end, we’ll be looking at different combinations of worship services that you could carry out on Sunday mornings in your church.

Morning Prayer & The Litany

Let’s say the priest is on vacation. You could get a supply priest from elsewhere in the diocese to fill in for him, sure, but there are plenty of homegrown options available as well. How about save the parish a little money, time, and effort, and instead whole Prayer Book services that don’t require a priest? Take advantage of the situation as an opportunity, and make use of the other two Anglican services traditionally expected on Sunday morning: the Morning Office and the Great Litany!

Of all the possible combinations of services, this is the easiest one to work out. You proceed through Morning Prayer normally, and when you get to the rubric on page 24 (right before the Prayer for Mission) you skip over to page 91 and start the Litany. Simple!

There are really only two questions to ask yourself in the course of such a plan.

First: do we want to pause between the collects and the start of the Litany? In the original Prayer Book, the Daily Office ends with those collects, so anything else that followed it was extra. Singing an anthem at that point would have been perfectly natural, and indeed has remained a staple of Choral Evensong and Sung Mattins to this day. This is also the traditional point at which to include a sermon. The sequence could therefore be:

  1. Morning Prayer through the collects
  2. Hymn or anthem
  3. Sermon or Homily or Bible Study
  4. The Great Litany

The other question is: how do we want to conclude the Litany? Ever since 1928, the final section of the Litany has been cordoned off under a subheading (“The Supplication”) and rendered optional. As you prepare a Sunday service composed of the Office and Litany, you have to decide whether to include the Supplication or not. The rubrics in the center of page 97 explain where the Supplication supplants the shorter ending. The simplest explanation is that the top half of page 97 is the shorter ending, and the bottom of half of page 97 (leading to page 98) comprise the longer ending.

Because the Supplication is particularly “gloomy” – praying for aid against danger, and deliverance from unnamed afflictions, I recommend including it throughout Advent, Lent, and any other penitential occasion. In my own practice, I always include the Supplication whenever I pray the Litany on a Friday, and always skip it on Wednesdays. Again, find a pattern that works for you and your congregation, remembering that what is normal and familiar is sometimes best, and sometimes familiar normality needs to be challenged.

Posted on by Fr. Brench

Beyond Sunday Communion part 1: The Litany & Communion

The Prayer Book tradition of worship is rich and robust, providing not only rites and rituals for individual worship services but indeed for an entire life of Christian worship. As a part of this ambitious large-scale schema, it should come as no surprise that there’s more to worship than simply going to Holy Communion every Sunday morning. There are the daily rounds of prayer, punctuated by the [Great] Litany a couple times per week, various pastoral offices for key stages in the natural and spiritual lives of a congregation and family, and pointers toward the development of private devotions to enable the individual worshiper to flesh out his or her own life of worship apart from the gathered Church.

What is often missed in today’s church culture, however, is that the original Prayer Book pattern for worship on Sunday morning was actually a three-part affair: Morning Prayer, The [Great] Litany, and the Holy Communion. Until relatively recent times, all three of these were appointed to be said in every church every Sunday and Holy Day. Granted, this was often shortened in actual practice, and by the late 19th century it was probably more common for people to attend just one service rather than all three in a row. Yet the full pattern of worship is still present even in our modern Prayer Books, and the typical malnourished Christian of today could benefit greatly from a retrieval of the spiritual rigor of our forebears. To that end, we’ll be looking at different combinations of worship services that you could carry out on Sunday mornings in your church.

The Litany & Holy Communion

Perhaps the simplest combination of Anglican traditional rites is the use of the Great Litany with the Communion service. The Litany is a longish prayer list with full congregational participation throughout. It’s repetitive to the modern sensibility, but instructively thorough and succinct – a real balm for the “Father God we just—” prayers that often ramble on too long in current popular evangelical practice. There are three main ways that the Litany may be appended to the Communion service.

The first and probably least desirable method of including the Litany in the Communion liturgy is to replace the Prayers of the People with the Great Litany – starting at its beginning (page 91) and ending it just before the Kyrie on page 96. This is not how the Litany was or is meant to be used, and this has no historical precedence. I mention this only because it is permitted by the Communion rubrics to replace the Prayers of the People with something else that meets certain standards, the Litany easily fulfills those standards, and a congregation who has never seen the Litany before in their entire lives might be most easily introduced to it in a familiar spot in the known Communion liturgy.

The second and third ways to bring the Litany into Sunday worship, connected to the Communion service, is by starting with the Litany itself and switching over to the Communion at a certain point.

One way to do this is to treat the Great Litany as if it were a “hymn, psalm, or anthem” at the start of the worship service. You go through as much of the Litany as you want, using whichever ending you prefer to choose (the rubrics on page 97 note what these two endings are), and after that begin the Communion service at the Acclamation. This has the benefit of simplicity and breadth of coverage: the congregation experiences the Litany in its full, nothing of the regular service is omitted, and (as a handy bonus) they’ll experience the two worship services most closely to how the historic Prayer Books intended for them to be observed. The downside, of course, is the length of all this. Plus the stop-and-start where Litany ends and Communion starts may be a jarring experience for a congregation unused to the larger breadth of Prayer Book worship.

Lastly, the other approach is to utilize the rubric on page 96, which direct that the Litany be terminated there at the Kyrie and the Communion liturgy picked up at the salutation leading into the Collect of the Day. This is the “combo-pack” invented for the 1979 Prayer Book, and honestly makes for a smooth transition from one service to the other, thanks especially to the Kyrie being a familiar component to both orders functioning as a hinge linking them together. The 1979 Prayer Book further allowed the Prayers of the People to be skipped when the Litany is used like this, though our 2019 Book has not retained that particular allowance.

In my own experience, I have used (parts of) the Litany in place of the Prayers of the People once or twice, but most often I go with the third, rubrical, choice. With occasional exception, I appoint the Litany seven times a year: Advent 1, Epiphany 3, Lent 1, Lent 5, Easter 6 (Rogation), Proper 10, and Proper 20. This way, my flock develops at least a little familiarity with the Litany without feeling overburdened by a lengthy devotion that “nobody else has to do!” You may find another pattern of use may suit your context better. The Additional Directions on page 99 provide a few suggestions to this end, also.

Posted on by Fr. Brench

Encountering the Scriptures in Anglican Worship

One of the modern tag-lines used to describe the Book of Common Prayer is that it is “The Bible arranged for worship.” Much can and has been said about the sheer bulk of its pages being that of Scriptures, verbatim or referenced, most particularly the full Psalter. What I thought I’d describe today is the range of ways in which this descriptor is proven true. We Anglicans boast, quite rightly I daresay, that ours is the most biblical of liturgies the Church has ever had – let’s take a moment here to defend that claim and explore the major ways in which this is so.

In brief, the Scriptures are (1) heard spoken aloud, (2) they are preached, and (3) they are paraphrased or synthesized in prayer.

The Scriptures are heard spoken aloud.

There are three primary ways in which the Scriptures are encountered audibly in our worship: there are lessons, sentences, and prayers.

The LESSONS are distinct times of Bible-reading during a worship service. All churches that retain a liturgical tradition have Bible readings, though many in the “free church” tradition have sadly lost this crucial staple of worship, relegating the reading of a sermon text to within the sermon. Modern Anglican liturgies most typically have three lessons at Holy Communion: an Old Testament text, an Epistle text, and a Gospel text. The classical Prayer Book tradition typically had two: an Epistle and a Gospel. The Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer also have two: typically one Old Testament and one New Testament. Exceptions to these patterns exist, but at a typical worship service that is what you can expect. In almost every case, though, these lessons are introduced with a citation of which book of the Bible they come from, and frequently which chapter, and even verses.

Sometimes simply one SENTENCE of Scripture is read, and it may or may not be introduced with a citation. This may be an “opening sentence” at the start of Morning or Evening Prayer, an Offertory Sentence before the collection, a Communion Sentence right after everyone has received the consecrated bread and wine, or a sort of mini-lesson in Midday Prayer or Compline. These are moments of devotional impact, not typically to be expounded further or given additional context or explanation. These are simply moments that are ornamented with the Word of God for beauty, for gravity, and for meaning.

And, of course, there are many ways in which we experience the Scriptures as PRAYERS. When we hear part of a Psalm at the Communion service – be it a traditional introit or gradual, or a responsory psalm after the Old Testament Lesson – we are praying that text. In the Daily Offices, often multiple Psalms are prayed in full! These are readings, but not lessons; we don’t sit back and listen, but we sit up (or even stand) and make those words our own in prayer. There are many traditions of chanting or singing the Psalms, also emphasizing this posture of prayer rather than only listening. Besides the Psalms there are other psalm-like texts which are also prayed. These are usually called Canticles, and various forms of the liturgical tradition call for different specific examples. There are a few from Isaiah and Exodus, and a couple from Revelation, but the three most significant canticles are from the Gospel of Luke: the Song of Zechariah, the Song of Mary, and the Song of Simeon.

The Scriptures are preached.

This is hardly unique to the Anglican tradition; all Christian churches include preaching in some manner in their worship services. But something that is relatively unique to the Prayer Book tradition is its collection of “exhortations” found in various liturgies. The famous “Dearly beloved…” speech at the start of the marriage ceremony is perhaps the most well-known example, which references several parts of Scripture and sets out a summary of the biblical doctrine of marriage – it is basically a two-minute sermon! There are a handful of such exhortations in the Prayer Book: some calling people to participate in Holy Communion, some shorter ones calling people to confess their sins before God, some outlining the duties of a bishop, or priest, or deacon at a service of Ordination. These are brief moments in which the minister is speaking to the congregation and expounding the Scriptures on one topic or another, providing biblical teaching to help them participate in the worship that is to follow.

The Scriptures are paraphrased or synthesized in prayer.

Like the several Exhortations in the Prayer Book, our tradition also bears a great many prayers that bring together biblical material to celebrate or proclaim various truths from the Word of God.

One of the greatest examples of this is the wealth of COLLECTS in the Prayer Book. Although not unique to the Anglican tradition, our liturgies do emphasize the use of these stylized prayers more than most other churches do. A collect is made up of an address to God which usually identifies something about his character or works, a petition which we ask, and a purpose undergirding that petition, often tying it back to the relevant thing about God’s character or works. Many of these collects quote or paraphrase Scripture, and all of them reflect on some biblical truth.

Besides the collects, many other prayers in the Book of Common Prayer contain biblical quotes, references, paraphrases, and allusions that together express a coherent theology built upon the Bible. The Prayers of the People make reference to some New Testament teachings on how the church should pray, and draw from biblical language in so doing. The Communion prayers include the Words of Institution (the words of Christ at the Last Supper) amidst a host of other biblical references. Other prayers at baptism, marriage, funerals, for the penitent, for the sick, prayers of thanksgiving, also bring together biblical material.

This is a double benefit.

For evangelicals who grew up with a heavy emphasis on Bible Study, discovering the traditional liturgy can be a great joy as they find a truly endless stream of biblical material in the prayers of the Church. This is a part of my own story. And it works the other way, too: those who grow up hearing the Prayer Book liturgy but received less instruction in the Bible find great joy in discovering the language of the liturgy in the Scriptures. As a priest and pastor I have seen folks in both positions experiencing the same joy of connecting biblical familiarity and liturgical familiarity. It is a joy and passion of mine to help people connect those dots.

I call this a double benefit because, rightly used, the Bible and the Liturgy reinforce one another in the lives of the worshipers. As we read the Bible and learn its words and teachings, and as we participate in the liturgy and learn from its content as well, we find that they reinforce one another. When the Church’s worship (or liturgy) is truly biblical, then it can be celebrated and enjoyed with confidence and joy, knowing that knowledge and study of the Bible will confirm its value. It also reminds us that worship and prayer are not arbitrary, disconnected from theology and Bible study. Rather, the doctrine and discipline of the Church is intertwined, synthesized, a coherent and unified whole. There should not be any competition or strife between the two, they are ultimately one and the same: the proclamation of the God who makes us, loves us, redeems us.

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Seven Weeks of Advent?

Something that I and other preachers often observe throughout the month of November is how the Sunday Communion lectionary transitions so smoothly into Advent from the end of the Trinitytide season. Whether it’s the traditional calendar or the modern, the readings naturally anticipate many of the major Advent themes: eternity, Christ’s judgement & reign, the Kingdom of God, our glorification in Christ. In both cases Advent does not come out of nowhere, but is a natural “next step” in the calendar’s cyclical presentation of the whole Gospel of Christ throughout the year.

But Advent has some pretty tough opponents these days. It normally begins on the coattails of Thanksgiving in the USA, and the commercialization of Christmas tends to drown out the distinction of Advent from Christmas. The hustle and bustle of culture, school, and general “holiday prep” makes it all too easy for the Christian today to miss the season of Advent completely. What can be a beautiful, quiet, and deeply spiritual experience is frequently truncated to a cardboard box with 24 numbers on it and chocolates inside.

I know what we need, MORE ADVENT!

Some eleven years ago now, a group of Episcopalians and Methodists came up with the idea of extending Advent from four weeks to seven, and thus The Advent Project was born. Nothing much came of it, and it never left the confines of liberal Protestantism. Unlike most liturgical innovations from that crowd, however, this idea was based on some rather sound principles: (1) Advent was a 40-week fast in the Early Church, (2) the secularization of Advent & Christmas needs to be combated, and (3) this could be accomplished without substantially changing the lectionary as it stands.

It’s also worth noting that the modern calendar authorized in the Church of England actually sets forth a sequence of “Sundays before Advent” (sometimes nicknamed Kingdomtide) which deliberately explores some pre-Advent themes. The liturgical color of red is put forth there as an alternative to the more traditional green.

The Advent Project’s 7-week plan, however, makes a lot of sense. When the popular secular and church cultures alike have made a mess of something like the season of Advent, why not turn to the Early Church for help? And if we can do that without yet another change to the lectionary, doesn’t that sound like the perfect solution?

Actually this is a silly idea.

But every good idea has its downsides. If you extend Advent to seven weeks in length, that means it begins on the Sunday within November 6th through 12th, meaning that roughly two years out of seven there is going to be a conflict between All Saints Sunday and the First Sunday of Extended Advent. Celebrating All Saints’ on the first Sunday of November is actually a 20th-century innovation, but the sort of congregation that is likely to adopt the 7-week Advent is probably also the sort that observes All Saints’ on the first Sunday of November, and thus there will be this conundrum to face on a regular basis.

Furthermore, the idea that Advent is so special that it needs its own pre-season reveals a telling bias. The traditional calendar has three weeks of Pre-Lent, smoothing the transition beautifully from Epiphanytide to Lent; but the modern calendar has thrown them out, resulting in a jarring shift of gears from Epiphany/Ordinary Time to Lent with only one Sunday (unique to Anglicans and Episcopalians I think) to bridge the gap between them. (That Sunday does, admittedly, use the Transfiguration as a brilliant hinge to make that shift from Epiphany to Lent, but it’s still just one little day with Ash Wednesday following too soon for anyone to prepare themselves spiritually.) The fact that there is interest in restoring dignity to Advent while neglecting Lent indicates what might be considered an imbalanced set of spiritual and theological priorities.

Also, let’s be real, what are the odds that a proposal like this, which has been dead in the water since 2011, will ever catch on?

Let’s see how it works!

Having played devil’s advocate, I want to turn now to providing some positive suggestions on how the spirit of the extended Advent idea can be used fruitfully, particularly in my context, using the authorized 2019 Prayer Book of the Anglican Church in North America.

The Advent Project had a clever idea: take the seven O Antiphons and appoint each of them as the theme or motif for each of the seven Sundays of Extended Advent. If you present them in their traditional order (with just one pair switched) they line up with the modern lectionary quite nicely. The collects in the 2019 BCP are different from those in the 1979 BCP, so many of the original idea-matches from the Advent Project are not applicable. But there are different ways that the same idea can work. Let’s walk through them:

Proper 27 / Third Sunday before Advent / Superadvent I: O Sapientia

SUNG VERSE: O come, thou wisdom from on high, who ord’rest all things mightily…

COLLECT: As the song prays that we might follow in the ways of Wisdom, so too does the collect pray that we purify ourselves as Christ (our wisdom) is pure so that we will be like him upon his second advent.

GOSPELS: Matthew 25:1-13 Parable of the WISE and foolish virgins
Mark 12:38-44 The learned scribes are unwise in their conduct, the poor widow is wise in her generosity
Luke 20:27-38 God is God of the living, not the dead; the Sadducees were not wise to understand this

Proper 28 / Second Sunday before Advent / Superadvent II: O Adonai

SUNG VERSE: O come, thou Lord of might, who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height…

COLLECT: As the song remembers the giving the Law, the collect prays for an abundance of good works (which the Law directed but was powerless itself to bring about).

GOSPELS: Matthew 25:14-30 Parable of the talents, in which one servant fails to invest his talent
Mark 13:14-23 & Luke 21:5-19 Do not be deceived by false Lords (adonai’s)

Proper 29 (Christ the King) / Last Sunday before Advent / Superadvent III: O Rex gentium

SUNG VERSE: O come, Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind…

COLLECT: The song and the collect both pray for the end of human division under the unifying reign of Christ the King.

GOSPELS: Matthew 25:31-46 The King will judge the sheep from the goats for his kingdom
John 18:33-37 Jesus admits to Pilate that he is a king
Luke 23:35-43 This is the King of the Jews

Advent I / Superadvent IV: O radix Jesse

SUNG VERSE: O come, thou Rod of Jesse’s stem, from ev’ry foe deliver them…

COLLECT: The song prays for deliverance and victory, matched in the collect’s reference to putting on the armor of light.

GOSPELS: Matthew 24:29-44 & Mark 13:24-37 At the coming of the Son of Man, his elect will be delivered
Luke 21:25-33 Keep watch and pray that you will escape all these things at the end of the age

Advent II / Superadvent V: O clavis David

SUNG VERSE: O come, thou Key of David, come, and open wide our heav’nly home…

COLLECT: The song prays for the path to misery be shut and the heavenly way opened, and the collect sets forth the Scriptures as a vehicle for blessed hope.

GOSPELS: Matthew 3:1-12 & Mark 1:1-8 & Luke 3:1-6 John the Baptist’s preaching points the way/highway/path to Christ

Advent III / Superadvent VI: O Oriens

SUNG VERSE O come, thou Day-spring from on high, and cheer us by thy drawing nigh…

COLLECT: The song’s language of dispelling darkness and night is matched in the collect’s prayer for repentance and cleansing upon hearing the prophets’ preaching.

GOSPELS: Matthew 11:2-19 Jesus affirms to John’s disciples that he is dispelling the darkness as promised
John 1:19-28 & Luke 3:7-20 John the Baptist proclaims that the Christ is drawing nigh

Advent IV / Superadvent VII: O Emmanuel

SUNG VERSE: O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…

COLLECT: The song bids us await the appearance of the Son of God, and the collect also prays for him to come among us.

GOSPELS: Matthew 1:18-25 They shall call his name Emmanuel
Luke 1:26-38 He will be called the Son of the Most High
Luke 1:39-56 Fetal John the Baptist recognizes the newly-conceived Jesus

A final personal note of recommendation.

Surely if you dig through the Epistles and Old Testament lessons of the modern lectionary you will find further connections to these themes. But it should be emphasizes that this schema is not how the lectionary was designed to be interpreted. Using these seven O Antiphons in this manner only gives coincidental lines of interpretation. They’re not bad lines of interpretation, but they don’t account for everything, nor do they even begin to exhaust the potential of these Sundays’ themes and lessons.

I have used this Extended Advent concept once, a few years ago, and plan to use it again in 2023. I did not, and will not, rename the Sundays before Advent as if to make an official Pre-Advent season; rather, I treated it like a sermon series, preaching on Jesus in the Old Testament images that those seven antiphons/verses portray. We also sang the corresponding verse of the hymn each week, needless to say. I do recommend other priests and pastors give this a try sometime, too. 2023 is a good opportunity for it because All Saints’ Sunday won’t conflict with the first day of this sequence!

That having been said, there are plenty of other ways to anticipate Advent in the final Sundays of the church year. As early as “Proper 24” (Oct. 16-22) the Collects of the Day give themes that summarize the course of Christian life and discipleship and anticipate eternity – bondage from sin (24), live among things that are passing away (26), and so on – not to mention the lectionary’s meanderings into the later Prophets, and 1 & 2 Thessalonians around the same time. (I suppose Year B is the weak one of the three, when it comes to explicit anticipation of Advent.) The seven-week Advent idea is a nifty one, and can be used gently to draw upon the wisdom and resources of the Early Church without having to tinker with the liturgy we’ve received by authority in our own day. But it’s one approach of many, and I pray that you and yours will be enriched with the blessed hope of eternal life that this time of year directs us toward!