Please stop putting money/collection plates on the altar

[Paidiske]

I've tried from time to time to talk my people out of this practice, but the emotional attachment to it is very, very strong. I have not won the argument.

My point is that a consecrated altar, like a consecrated baptismal font, should only be used for the function for which it was consecrated.

Do you admit of any other uses for the altar besides the Eucharist? For example, I have wedding couples sign their papers on the altar. I figure it gives the action a particular solemnity and impresses upon them the sacredness of what they're doing. (And mimics the action of monastics who sign their vows on the altar, also). But I know some clergy feel this is a misuse of the table and they should sign on another piece of furniture.

 

[Aussie Pete]

Apparently not, since in this thread we have two examples of low church Protestants who do not put the collection plates on the altar.

Also, you do realize I am a Congregationalist minister? I list myself as a generic Orthodox Christian because of my commitment to the faith of the early Church, the Nicene Creed, the sacred liturgy, and the doctrines of the Ecumenical Councils. In this respect I am following in the high church, evangelical Catholic footsteps of the King’s Weigh House in London, which was, prior to the population shift away from the Square Mile of the City of London in the wake of the Blitz*, the largest Congregational church in Great Britain.



That still doesn’t mean we should put it on the altar. Seriously, the altar is for Holy Communion, just as the Font is for Baptism. There are plenty of other places in even the smallest churches where the minister

*The City of London, which is roughly speaking the square mile around St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the oldest part of greater London, historically the walled Roman city of Londinium, is now nearly all commercial, with a mere 9,500 or so residents, compared to over 250,000 in the adjacent City of Westminster. The City, as it is called, has an unusual government largely independent from the Greater London Council, and is the only place I know of where businesses are enfranchised (receiving a number of votes proportionate to how many workers they employ in the City). The City also has its own police force separate from the Met (the Metropolitan Police, also known as Scotland Yard), identifiable by a different crest on the traditional British police helmet, bronze buttons instead of the usual silver, a red and white checkered pattern vs the black and white of the Met, or the blue and white of the British Transport Police. who patrol the many railway stations in greater London, and whose uniforms look much more like those of the Met.

The City is also home to a collection of several of the world’s most beautiful churches. In addition to St. Paul’s, it features various exquisite gothic and neo-classical churches, many by Christopher Wren, including St. Stephen Walbrook, St. Botolph’s, St. Magnus the Martyr, St. Sepulcher, St. Mary Le Bow, and the Temple Church, among many others; due to the population shift, many of these churches are underutilized and survive by providing short weekday services for office workers and hosting tourists and concerts. The churches in the Square Mile of the City of London represent, in my opinion, the finest collection of Anglican churches in the world, and they are on a par with the collections of churches in Rome, Munich, Sienna, Moscow, Kiev, Old Cairo, Mount Athos, and certain smaller islands in Sweden and Denmark, where there are some stunning medieval churches with beautiful frescoes.

All very nice, but I have zero interest in tradition myself. I also am part of a small group that is non denominational. Offerings are placed on the mantle piece over a simulated wood fire. We do not have an altar and we partake of the communion around the dining room table. It's nicely set up for the purpose, but the dining room table is not an altar. We don't have sacred furniture. I am no less blessed than I am if I partake in a traditional church setting.

My exposure to church as a preteen and teenager put me off. Even after I was born again, I would not set foot in an Anglican church for some years. My travels in the military took me to many places and I was not fussy about where I went for fellowship. Weeks at sea made me much less particular. My overriding impression was that the things that unite Christians are much greater than the things that divide. I even went to an Anglican meeting. It was a comparatively evangelical church and nothing like what I endured as a youth.

By the way, I was born and raised in England until I was almost 13. My grandparents lived in Chelsea and I visited them often. That was 57 years ago. You raise a good point. Buildings do not make a church. It's the people. Without the people, they are beautiful museum pieces, reminders of a time when England could accurately be called a Christian country.

 

[The Liturgist]

I've tried from time to time to talk my people out of this practice, but the emotional attachment to it is very, very strong. I have not won the argument.

Indeed, my experience with that phenomenon people get a sense that their offering is a sacrifice and they want to make that sacrifice. By the way, as you are doubtless aware, but some readers might not be, there is actually a rubric in most editions of the Book of Common Prayer directing that the collection plates be placed on the altar, and then curiously combining the modern sense of offertory with the traditional sense by directing that the bread and wine then be carried to the altar for consecration. This rubric is in the 1662 BCP and the more recent Scottish, American and Canadian books, and perhaps there is something similiar in A Prayerbook for Australia? Or even if there is not, it could be a misguided sense of Anglican traditionalism? That traditionalism combined with the desire to give to the Lord for cathartic relief could be a powerful force.*

Do you admit of any other uses for the altar besides the Eucharist?

Absolutely! If we look at the traditional churches of the East and West, where you know I am bound to look, there we find that absolutely anything sacramental except for baptism occurs in the altar and tends to involve the holy table. Eastern Orthodox and deacons are consecrated resting their heads on the altar, firstfruits are blessed on the altar at Paschal Vigils and on the feast of Transfiguration, candles are blessed there on Candlemas in the Roman church, and I believe this is where the holy chrism is kept when not in use in some liturgies, and in the Byzantine Rite and certain other rites, the oil of healing for holy unction is consecrated therein. Also, during Crowning (the second part of Holy Matrimony, when the couple, wearing crowns supplied by the parish, commemorating the martyrdom, that is to say, the self-sacrifice required of those making the admirable commitment to Holy Matrimony, ascend the steps from the Ambo to the Holy Gates, which are opened, and there, kneeling at the entrance to the altar, they share a cup of consecrated, albeit non-Eucharistic, wine. The altar seems the ideal place for any kind of consecration of holy objects (by holy, in this case I mean it literally, as in, set aside) and holy, that is to say, set-aside people, like the bride and groom who have set themselves aside for marriage, and the ordinands, who have been set aside for ordination.**

For example, I have wedding couples sign their papers on the altar. I figure it gives the action a particular solemnity and impresses upon them the sacredness of what they're doing. (And mimics the action of monastics who sign their vows on the altar, also).

That sounds absolutely beautiful! I love that, and I think I might consider doing that, or a variation.

But I know some clergy feel this is a misuse of the table and they should sign on another piece of furniture.

Well, this is a classic example of the very real danger of wearing a clerical collar of insufficient diameter.

(on a serious note, some churches have rubrics or canons restricting who can enter a consecrated altar or touch the Holy Table; I believe in the Byzantine Rite churches only subdeacons or deacons, and ordinands, can actually touch the Holy Table, but there is no such rule in Anglicanism, and also, Anglican altars usually lack relics and a tabernacle containing the presanctified Eucharist, so I can think of no reasonable objection to your doing this.

*I would argue the primary liturgical-psychological function of passing the plate, at present, has less to do with raising funds for the church, and more with providing a means of enabling almsgiving and catharsis since there are other ways of doing that, and since in the US anyway it is often the case that a very large portion of the income of a parish comes from tithing or other financial support arrangements from a smaller number of wealthy families, and financially stable middle-upper middle class families highly committed to the parish, and on the occasion of their repose, their estates. And this is fine; I just really don’t want to see the collection trays on the Holy Table or in the altar area.

** which is not to say such persons are necessarily holy in a spiritual sense, although we can hope and pray that may be the case. St. Silouan the Athonite once said something interesting on this point, that there are two thoughts every Christian should fear to think, and thus make every effort to avoid thinking, the first being that they are individually in any respect holy, and secondly, that God cannot save them. So, conversely, we should, following St. Silouan’s thinking, deny our holiness and admit readily that we are terrible sinners, while at the same time firmly believing and confessing our hope in God, who can always save us, and thus, we avoid pride and spiritual delusion on the one hand, and despair over our salvation on the other, both of which are regarded in the consensus patrum as self-destructive patterns of thoughts.

 

[GreekOrthodox]

We stopped taking offerings during the service once we returned from Covid. Personally, I do everything online now, so that makes things easy

 

[Tigger45]

I visit a few different churches/denominations and saw how the pandemic stopped the ‘passing of the plate’. The Offertory’ is relegated to its purist form in Western liturgies to ‘The procession of Gifts’. Resulting in the celebrant mentioning the ‘plates’ are located in the back of the sanctuary where you came in.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Does that mean it would be better to make reference to a 'table' rather than an 'altar' ?

That'd be a very Lutheran thing to do. Though we do talk about the Altar, Luther and the other Lutheran fathers preferred Table. This was more a matter of emphasis, that the Eucharist is the Lord's Supper, and thus Christ's Table of Fellowship in which He distributes His body and blood to us in, with, and under the bread and the wine. The Eucharist is not a sacrifice presented before God the Father on an altar; but Christ presenting Himself to us on a table, in, with, under bread and wine.

The Eucharist does communicate and does present us with Christ's once and perfectly finished sacrifice, just as the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 10 that those who partake of the sacrifices of the altar partake of the sacrifice itself. And therefore when we come to Christ's Table we receive the one sacrifice of Christ; but the Table is itself not the sacrifice, but the Communion with Christ's sacrifice, through the Self-offering of Christ's own body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

They don't do that at my church. They keep the offering plates at the back.

This is preferable.

I also consider it preferable to have a collections box affixed to the back. Though I do understand why passing collections plates makes a certain kind of sense.

The taking of collections should be a simple and undramatic thing. We all understanding that our donations help keep the lights on, church staff fed, and help with community outreach projects. And it really shouldn't be a bigger deal than that.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Carl Emerson]

I like table because He communed with the ordinary at their table.

I have shared bread and wine with friends for decades at my ordinary table.

 

[The Liturgist]

That'd be a very Lutheran thing to do. Though we do talk about the Altar, Luther and the other Lutheran fathers preferred Table. This was more a matter of emphasis, that the Eucharist is the Lord's Supper, and thus Christ's Table of Fellowship in which He distributes His body and blood to us in, with, and under the bread and the wine. The Eucharist is not a sacrifice presented before God the Father on an altar; but Christ presenting Himself to us on a table, in, with, under bread and wine.

The Eucharist does communicate and does present us with Christ's once and perfectly finished sacrifice, just as the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 10 that those who partake of the sacrifices of the altar partake of the sacrifice itself. And therefore when we come to Christ's Table we receive the one sacrifice of Christ; but the Table is itself not the sacrifice, but the Communion with Christ's sacrifice, through the Self-offering of Christ's own body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine.

-CryptoLutheran

I myself like the EO/OO/Assyrian Eucharistic theology, where it is God’s sacrifice to us, described in the liturgy as a bloodless and rational sacrifice, with the priest in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom passionately intoning “Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all, and for all.”*

The idea being, there is a sacrifice, which was made by Christ, and we in turn engage in the liturgy, a rational and bloodless sacrifice in which His supreme sacrifice is recapitulated, a liturgy described in one of the many beautiful and invariant hymns** as “A mercy of peace, a sacrifice of praise.”

* Eastern Orthodox members like my friends @prodromos @GreekOrthodox @dóxatotheó and @All4Christ might agree with me that this really does not sound as good in modern English translations of the Divine Liturgy; “Your own of your own we offer to you” etc really just doesn’t cut the mustard for me.

** As I am sure you are aware @ViaCrucis but which most members might not be aware, the hymns of the Eucharistic liturgies of the Eastern churches are largely invariant, changing only occasionally in specific liturgical seasons, such as Christmastide, as well as certain hymns which we could say “anchor” the Divine Office, like the Vesperal hymn Phos Hilarion (O Gladsome Light or O Gracious Light, which has been set in English many times, and is in many hymnals) which in one of the best decisions made by the compilers of the 1979 Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer***, was added to Rite I Evening Prayer (used for traditional Choral Evensong) in a position that corresponded with Venite, exultemus Domino (Psalms 95) which had always been the first song in Morning Prayer. The variable hymns specific to the day in the church calendar are chiefly found in the Divine Office, especially Matins in the Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) Rite, and Psalmody at Vespers (sunset), Nocturns (midnight) and Matins (dawn) in the Coptic (Egyptian) Rite. I think I need to make a series of posts explaining traditional church music of the East and West to members whose only experience of church music thus far has been what I regard as gravely inadequate praise and worship music.

*** Unfortunately, the 1979 BCP still did not fix the preces, which remain inexplicably different from both the Scottish and English preces; one would think that given the Scottish Non-Juring Episcopalian influence on the Protestant Episcopal Church, now the ECUSA, the Divine Office would follow the Scottish pattern, or the English pattern which Americans were used to from the 1662 BCP which had previously been in use, when the 13 colonies were under the British crown and the ecclesiastical administration of Lambeth Palace.

 

[The Liturgist]

I like table because He communed with the ordinary at their table.

I have shared bread and wine with friends for decades at my ordinary table.

The idea of the altar is to commemorate the sacrifice Christ made, and also, the early church celebrated Holy Communion on the graves of martyrs, whose sacrifice followed the example of Christ, like St. Stephen the Protomartyr, St. James the son of Zebedee, Saints Peter and Paul, and later martyrs like St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp, St. Justin Martyr, St. Peter of Alexandria, St. Lucy, St. Cecillia, St. Mina, St. Abanoub the Child Martyr, and St. Moses the Strong. And it was decreed in due course that the Eucharist could only be celebrated on the graves of martyrs or on altars containing the relics of martyrs, confessors and other saints (in most of the Eastern churches, there is either a wooden tablet or a cloth on which the Eucharist is celebrated; the Eastern Orthodox tradition has a cloth called the Antimension into which is hand-embroidered an icon of Jesus Christ, and into which are sewn relics, and this cloth can be used to celebrate the Eucharist at non-Orthodox churches, in hospital rooms, and on any ordinary tables outside of a consecrated altar).

 

[Paidiske]

By the way, as you are doubtless aware, but some readers might not be, there is actually a rubric in most editions of the Book of Common Prayer directing that the collection plates be placed on the altar, and then curiously combining the modern sense of offertory with the traditional sense by directing that the bread and wine then be carried to the altar for consecration. This rubric is in the 1662 BCP and the more recent Scottish, American and Canadian books, and perhaps there is something similiar in A Prayerbook for Australia?

Sorry it's taken me a while to reply, I've been busy with other things. (As an aside, I always find it hilarious when people ask me if I'm taking holidays over Christmas...)

As you may be aware, A Prayer Book for Australia (APBA) has several "orders" for holy communion. The first, more conservative order, has a rubric as follows: "The alms and other offerings of the people are collected and brought to the priest who reverently presents and places them on the Holy Table." There is a clear indication in the rubrics that this does not include the bread and wine, which are placed on the table in a separate action.

The second (and by far the most commonly used) order says, "The gifts of the people are brought to the Lord's Table. They may be presented in silence or a suitable prayer... may be used." Interestingly it does not say that the gifts are placed on the table, and again, this is rubrically clearly a separate action to placing the bread and the wine on the table, although in my experience that separation is often not observed in practice (ie. the usual thing is to place the offerings on the table and set it with the bread and wine, and then to use a "suitable" prayer over all of them).

The third order simply says, "The gifts of the people are brought to the Lord's table." Again this is rubrically separate to placing the bread and wine on the table.

*I would argue the primary liturgical-psychological function of passing the plate, at present, has less to do with raising funds for the church, and more with providing a means of enabling almsgiving and catharsis since there are other ways of doing that, and since in the US anyway it is often the case that a very large portion of the income of a parish comes from tithing or other financial support arrangements from a smaller number of wealthy families, and financially stable middle-upper middle class families highly committed to the parish, and on the occasion of their repose, their estates. And this is fine; I just really don’t want to see the collection trays on the Holy Table or in the altar area.

Interestingly, one change we made with Covid was to stop literally passing the plate. A bowl was left by the entrance for people to put their offering into, and that was then brought to the altar at the appropriate moment. I liked this very much and considered it a step in the right direction, and I'm hoping it's one Covid-induced practice we can retain as we rediscover "normal."

My thinking on these issues was greatly helped by a piece titled "The End of the Offertory," by Bishop Colin Buchanan. I have it in a book of his works titled "An Evangelical Among the Anglican Liturgists," which I think, if you can find a copy, you would find very interesting, but I believe it was originally published as a Grove Liturgical Study.

As a further aside, if you've never come across the Alcuin Club, I cannot recommend them highly enough as a source of such helpful liturgical works!

 

[The Liturgist]

Sorry it's taken me a while to reply, I've been busy with other things. (As an aside, I always find it hilarious when people ask me if I'm taking holidays over Christmas...)

As you may be aware, A Prayer Book for Australia (APBA) has several "orders" for holy communion. The first, more conservative order, has a rubric as follows: "The alms and other offerings of the people are collected and brought to the priest who reverently presents and places them on the Holy Table." There is a clear indication in the rubrics that this does not include the bread and wine, which are placed on the table in a separate action.

The second (and by far the most commonly used) order says, "The gifts of the people are brought to the Lord's Table. They may be presented in silence or a suitable prayer... may be used." Interestingly it does not say that the gifts are placed on the table, and again, this is rubrically clearly a separate action to placing the bread and the wine on the table, although in my experience that separation is often not observed in practice (ie. the usual thing is to place the offerings on the table and set it with the bread and wine, and then to use a "suitable" prayer over all of them).

The third order simply says, "The gifts of the people are brought to the Lord's table." Again this is rubrically separate to placing the bread and wine on the table.

Incredibly I still have not bothered to purchase a copy. Of late I have been spending more on works of liturgiology than liturgy itself, but obviously one cannot hold out hope for ever that justus.anglican.org/bcp will get permission to upload your prayerbook (they have everyone else’s, except Sydney’s, which I am not a fan of, having wasted good money on it on Kindle; I would say its a bad thing when your BCP bears an uncanny resemblance to the Franklin-Dashwood proposed Abridged BCP).

Interestingly, one change we made with Covid was to stop literally passing the plate. A bowl was left by the entrance for people to put their offering into, and that was then brought to the altar at the appropriate moment. I liked this very much and considered it a step in the right direction, and I'm hoping it's one Covid-induced practice we can retain as we rediscover "normal."

My thinking on these issues was greatly helped by a piece titled "The End of the Offertory," by Bishop Colin Buchanan. I have it in a book of his works titled "An Evangelical Among the Anglican Liturgists," which I think, if you can find a copy, you would find very interesting, but I believe it was originally published as a Grove Liturgical Study.

As a further aside, if you've never come across the Alcuin Club, I cannot recommend them highly enough as a source of such helpful liturgical works!

I tend to do uncharitable things with my credit card when I encounter the Alcuin Club.

 

[The Liturgist]

By the way, speaking of Covid, if you did used sealed boxes, and if your parish has a few tens of millions dollars sitting in its bank account, like lets say you’re a prosperty gospel megachurch (of which I am not a huge fan), you could have contact-free vaults into which people in procession could drop their money while popular Christian rock plays, and then, invest in an irradition plant that exposes the offering to a dose of ionizing radiation, of the sort used to kill bacteria so as to hyper-pasteurize foods and medicines and extend shelf lifes). The irradiation facility could also be used for these conventional purposes, so when you combine the irradiated donations with the revenue from irradiating foodstuffs, it could well be a profitable investment. And the 1965 Methodist Book of Worship does have a beautifully written collect for blessing a nuclear plant!