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There is nobody who would want to buy most of our church buildings, and even if they did a shopfront costs money. There's no vast untapped reserve of money sitting in those buildings.Technology? What technology?
How about we use 21st century version of the Bible? How about we have teachings rather than preachings? (Do we still need to be told that is naughty to use your neighbour's lawnmower without asking?) How about we introduce Sunday Schoolers to the real story of Jesus and not fantasy? How about we develop a liturgy that means something to today's culture and not to a society some two thousand years ago? How about we give our creaking churches to the local National Trust and go 'shopfront'? How about we use the proceeds to do something really useful like sending on the of youth to study theology at university?
Relying on coloured lights, overheads screens, piped music, video cameras are symbols of the lost. Christianity is not packed entertainment.
A screen is only intrusive if you expect the church to look like something from a previous century; it's not really any more intrusive than having everybody's head buried in a selection of books they have to flick through.
Liturgy is made to be in the memory? I've never heard that. Plus our prayer book has 4 forms for the Eucharist and 6 for prayers of the people so that would be hard to memorize.
I agree that people are not really meant to have their heads in books constantly.
Hence my comment about having the liturgy by memory.
The number of options in many modern prayer books is really quite a recent thing, and it relates to having easy access to relatively inexpensive books and a very literate society.
Part of the purpose of common prayer in the old model is that we are free to continue to deepen our experience of prayer when we worship and pray; that we can really think about participating with others; we can recall the parts of the liturgy in our daily life when it is comforting; that it teaches us the beliefs of our faith. None of this really works well if we are flipping around in our book or do not have a substantially similar liturgy from week to week.
It also makes it possible for the congregation to sing the liturgy.
It was one of the great triumphs of the English Reformation that this aspect of liturgy became possible again because it was in the vernacular.
That's not remotely an option in our situation, or really any situation that is seriously missionary in 21st century western culture. And i dont think I've ever experienced a church where the words to the hymns weren't needed to be read from something.I agree that people are not really meant to have their heads in books constantly.
Hence my comment about having the liturgy by memory.
There is nobody who would want to buy most of our church buildings, and even if they did a shopfront costs money. There's no vast untapped reserve of money sitting in those buildings.
If your sermons are at the level of naughty lawnmower stealing maybe you need to have words with your rector - and maybe offer to do some preaching for him.
That's really interesting stuff. Have you experienced any of this or is this what you would like to see? The shopfront thing, a local nondenominational does that. How would a teaching differ from a preaching?
Exactly - so why do we hang on to them - apart from sentimentality? Keeping a shopfront would be far cheaper than maintaining run down buildings however nice the stonework might look.
My point was to demonstrate the difference between preaching and teaching.
That's not remotely an option in our situation, or really any situation that is seriously missionary in 21st century western culture. And i dont think I've ever experienced a church where the words to the hymns weren't needed to be read from something.
Having stability in the liturgy is good so that with time many experienced members of the congregation know much of the words by heart is a good thing, but it's pretty much irrelevant to whether the word are on screen or in a book. The preference for a book is a preference for 16th century technology over 21st, nothing more.
The enormous cost of maintaining 19th century building is now prohibitive and the money could be used for more beneficial purposes.
Preaching is telling how we need to change of our lives. Most of us know this stuff off by heart. What we need to hear is how the gospel is relevant to the 21st century.
Well, not really. Building properties are on the books as an asset. And in most cases we are legally obligated to maintain them to some standard. Where will the money come for the shop-front? No one will buy the building. If we demolish it (which may not even be allowed) we have no funds. If we abandon it we are still paying for it.
And a policy of putting our churches in nasty little buildings to save funds is one which indicates a nasty little heart. If we have no building we go where we can, but there is actually spiritual and psychological impact to giving our best and most beautiful creations to God. Since people first had religion they have set aside their best efforts to create holy things, not their worst.
Why would you want to look at an altar?Which means they are not on, for example, the altar.
I find a screen distracting in a way a book isn't .
Why would you want to look at an altar?
We have a big calico bag over ours so not possible to see it. In fact, it just merges with the background. We would have removed it but the Georgian preservationists wouldn't let us. We even managed to secure a faculty, but the secularists won out.
Golden lamb, anyone?
I think he means wherever the Eucharistic action is happening, not an unused high altar.
I'm not sure what that is. Ours is just a big marble block, about table height. I'm sure a local butcher would have been happy to have it, but alas, we are stuck with it.
When you have communion you presumably use a table of some sort. All he is saying is that during the liturgy of the sacrament - the Eucharistic prayer and so forth- it is better for people to be looking towards what is happening rather than a text. He's not suggesting that staring at a table of any form is especially pious.
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