ACNA needs repentance even more than TEC

Note update based on October 2013 revised ACNA liturgy.

For Lent 2, the RCL reading was Luke 13:1-9, where Jesus says “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” and then tells the parable of the fig tree. Our pastor used it to preach a blunt sermon about repentance.

Unfortunately, this was the Sunday he decided to use the “Contemporized Version: Trail Edition December 2012” of the new ACNA liturgy. I’ll save the arguments about the overall pros and cons for another time.

What was stunning — stunningly awful — was how we responded to his altar call for repentance in this new (“trial use”) corporate worship.

The Confession and Absolution of Sins
Celebrant: We pray to you also for the forgiveness of sins.
Celebrant and People:Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;
in your compassion forgive us our sins,
known and unknown, things done and left and undone;
and so uphold us by your Spirit
that we ay live and serve you in newness of life,
to the honor and glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I was not the only person to point out to our pastor that this was a notably brief and thin confession. (Even his wife said so). But, more importantly, if you look closely, it’s not a confession at all. It’s like a little boy who says “please forgive me” without first saying that “I was wrong.”

Compare this to the 1662 BCP:

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men;
We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,
Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed,
By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty,
Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation againſt us.
We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings;
The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.
Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;
For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us all that is past;
And grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life,
To the honor and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The words are the same as I recited since childhood from the 1928 (US) Book of Common Prayer, and was also preserved in Rite I (at least as the approved variant) in Rite I of the 1979 prayer book. (Except for the “Amen” and medieval spelling, the same words are also found in Cranmer’s 1549 BCP).

Most surprisingly, the proposed ACNA liturgy is even less substantial than the watered down Rite II (Confession Lite) in the 1979 prayer book:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

At least the Rite II worshipers say “we confesses that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed,” unlike what the ACNA liturgists are proposing we say.

In the Church of England’s 2000 book of alternative services, Common Worship, there are four different communion services. Order One resembles our US Rite II, whether in contemporary wording (p. 169) or traditional (p. 209). Order Two (traditional, p. 237) parallels the 1662 BCP, while the contemporary (p. 257) shows that Cranmer’s confession can be expressed in 21st century language:

Almighty God,
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
maker of all things, judge of all people,
we acknowledge and lament our many sins
and the wickedness we have committed time after time, by thought, word and deed against your divine majesty. We have provoked your righteous anger
and your indignation against us.
We earnestly repent,
and are deeply sorry for these our wrongdoings;
the memory of them weighs us down,
the burden of them is too great for us to bear.
Have mercy upon us,
have mercy upon us, most merciful Father.
For your Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that from this time forward
we may always serve and please you in newness of life, to the honor and glory of your name; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

This is essentially the same language (I haven’t compared it word for word) that Peter Toon and the Prayer Book Society used in An Anglican Prayer Book, their 2008 update of the 1662 BCP for AMiA.

As Toon noted, the trends has been away from a Book of Common Prayer to a series of books of alternative services, with local option to choose among the many variants. As such, a thin gruel for confession seems inevitable for ACNA: but there’s no reason it should be less than our TEC brethren — or that it should drop the centuries-old theology as expressed in contemporary language.

Ever since I came back to the church in my 30s, the confession has been the most powerful moment of the service, when we “acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness.” It was only later, as I studied Lutheran and Reformed theology, that I realized that this personal confession of sinfulness was (at least for some traditions) the essence of the Protestant faith.

I know that mega-church pastors don’t want to use the “s” word. But ACNA, even its evangelical wing? It’s time for the ACNA Liturgy Task Force to repent of its efforts to water down the millennia-old worship and theology that is part of our shared Christian heritage.

Update: The Texts for Common Prayer (released October 2013) correct this problem with a more theologically sound confession and even the “s” word:

The Deacon or other person appointed says the following
All who truly and earnestly repent of your sins, and seek to be reconciled with your neighbors, and intend to lead the new life, following the commandments of God, and walking in his holy ways: draw near with faith and make your humble confession to Almighty God.

Silence

The Deacon and People kneel as able and pray
Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
maker and judge of us all:
We acknowledge and repent of our many sins and offenses, which we have committed by thought, word, and deed,
against your divine majesty,
provoking most justly your righteous anger against us.
We are deeply sorry for these transgressions.
The burden of them is more than we can bear.
Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;
for your Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that we may evermore serve and please you in newness of to the honor and glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This correction renders moot (makes obsolete) the earlier criticisms of the draft ACNA liturgy.

Ancient Penitence

For the first time in many years, I began Ash Wednesday with a service and the imposition of ashes. (In previous years, the only service I could attend was at night but this year it was the other way 'round).

One advantage of doing it early is that it makes fasting until service pretty easy. (Just to avoid this loophole, I had bread for lunch and held off on a real meal until dinner). Another (dis)advantage is facing the world with a smudge on my forehead.

To prepare for any conversations, I tried to do a little research on the practice. In my Oxford History of Christian Worship, it mentions Ash Wednesday only twice. In one, it speculates that a penitential Lent began in the late 4th century and the 46 days (pushing it back to Wednesday) was common “before the late fifth century.” (P. 118) It also mentions Ash Wednesday as a time of penitence, established by the late 4th century in the Gelasian Sacramentary. This oldest extant Roman missal mentions scheduling Ash Wednesday (p. lxxiv in the 1894 English edition) but not ashes.

Fortunately, I was also watching my favorite podcast, Issues Etc., and their Monday show included a discussion of the topic. The third segment was entitled “Does the Season of Lent Have Pagan Origins?” and was a 25 minute interview with Pastor Joseph Abrahamson of Clearwater Lutheran Parish, a group of LCMS churches in Minnesota. (Highly recommended for anyone contemplating the meaning of Lent).

The gist of the interview was to summarize his research for the article “Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies — Ash Wednesday and Lent,” published earlier this month online on the Steadfast Lutherans website. Pastor Abrahamson had much better information than the learned scholars from my liturgical library.

Here’s the money quote:

St. Athanasius, who led at the Council of Nicea to defeat Arianism—a denial of Christ being truly God and man in one person—was a bishop in Alexandria, Egypt. He wrote annual Festival letters to the Church as they prepared to celebrate Easter. In the year 331 he wrote in order to encourage his congregations in Egypt to keep the Lenten fast for 40 days. Athanasius directs the readers to many Scriptural examples and exhortations to moderation, self-control, and fasting for repentance, Athanasius gives several Bible examples of the 40 day fast, especially of Christ’s 40 day fast...

He continues

That this was practiced in Rome and elsewhere is seen in St. Athanasius’ letter from the year 340 A.D. when he returns from a meeting of pastors/bishops from all around the world, and he encourages his own congregations to continue in the same practice of the 40 day Lenten fast as does “the rest of the whole world.”

So for my Christian (particularly low church) friends, I’d say that Lent was practices at least as early as 331, as old as the Council of Nicaea (325) and older than the final Nicene Creed itself (381). For my non-Christian (or unknown) friends, I’d give a simple punchy statement: “Ash Wednesday was already the norm by 340 A.D.”

Abrahamson is not very helpful on the ash question itself: the name is known, but the imposition of ashes is not explicitly mentioned. He recites various examples of why ashes were a common form of penitence in the Old Testament, but no smoking gun.

Thus armed, I walked out to a variety of meetings at work today, dreading the awkwardness but reminding myself that we need to live our beliefs (and not leave our light under a basket). Among my coworkers, one Christian said she wished she could go to service today but probably couldn’t; another talked about his dilemma as a moderate Presbyterian as the PCUSA splits into its traditionalist and loony left contingents. Several others recognized the significance but didn’t otherwise comment. Only two people said “you have something on your forehead,” one of whom was corrected by another person in the same meeting: “It’s Ash Wednesday.”

Perhaps the most interesting discussion was with a Jewish woman in her 30s who (to the later distress of her mother) had ashes imposed in her parochial school kindergarten: it’s her oldest religious memory. We talked briefly about penitence: it was a rare chance at work to highlight Judeo-Christian commonalities in an increasingly secular culture.

We (Jew, Christian, Muslim, atheist) are all imperfect, sinful beings following down the millennia-old path of our spirtual forebears, Adam and Eve. As the priest quoted Genesis this morning as he imposed the ashes: “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Let us be merry, our saviour is borne

Writing on the Catholic blog First Things, Matthew Schmitz remarks on why in English we say Merry (and not Happy) Christmas:

Christmas is conspicuously the only time of year when the word “merry” receives heavy use. The greeting “Merry Christmas” dates back to at least 1565, in which year the author of the Hereford Municipal Manuscript wrote “And thus I comytt you to god, who send you a merry Christmas & many.” Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, pushed it forward, as did industrialization: The first commercially sold Christmas card (also printed in 1843) contained the salutation “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.”
…

Queen Elizabeth, a woman of serious low-church piety, is said to prefer “happy” to “merry” because she dislikes “merry’s” connotation of boisterousness, even slight intoxication. …

This moral suspicion of “Merry Christmas” dates back to the Methodist churchmen of the Victorian era who sought to promote sobriety among the English working class. Merrymaking of the ancient, alcoholic sort was frowned on year-round, perhaps never more so than during the celebration of the Savior’s birth. …

We may no longer associate “merry” with spirits alcoholic as well as high, but the meaning was once familiar. “Merry” appeared in both the Wyclife and King James bibles in reference to intoxication, where it describes an evening in the life of the rich man Nabal: “He held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken.” (To wish someone a holiday feast like Nabal’s was to wish him a very good Christmas indeed.)

This of course brings us back to the central tension ever since the creation of the Church of England — between the Reformed (low church, Puritan, Methodist) and Anglo-Catholic (high church, Oxford Movement, Catholic without the Pope) branches of the CoE and Anglicanism.

Meanwhile, the meaning of “Merry” brought to mind the refrain of an English folk carol

A Virgin unspotted the Prophet foretold,
Should bring forth a Saviour which now we behold,
To be our Redeemer from Death, Hell and Sin,
Which Adam's transgression involved us in.

Then let us be merry,
Cast sorrow away.
Our Saviour Christ Jesus
Is born on this day.

The words officially date to a 1750 text, and although there are many tunes, the one I know is Judea by William Billings (1746-1800).

Wikisource calls it “an English Marian folk carol of medieval origin.” Although not the most reliable of sources, the text is undeniably Mary-centric and with Billing’s tune has an Elizabethan (i.e. 16th century) feel to it.

So if savouring the news of our Saviour is catholic, high church or Marian, I’m all for it.

Merry Christmas!

Church marketing in the 21st century

As part of my efforts to help my church improve its WWW presence, I went looking at what some other parishes in our diocese do. (A bit off-topic for this blog, but hopefully of interest to readers).

Looking at the content of pages I found some obvious suspects — Drupal, WordPress, even LightCMS. And then I found a company, Clover, that has its own content management system and specializes in church websites, and a couple of competitors who bought Google AdWords for anyone interested in that company.

Here is how they compare:

• CloverSites.com, $1000 up front, $20/month with its own content management system
• BridgeElement.com, $500 up front, $20/month also with its own content management system
• FaithConnector.com, $250 up front, $54 (or more)/month

The first two have very fair, all-inclusive pricing. I even found an article in ChurchMag (and a follow up) comparing Clover and Bridge Element. Alas, the review lists both as "Flash-based" — so 2000s and by now obsolete in this world of iPhones and other portable devices.

Interesting, in doing another google search, FaithConnector bought another ad that says: “Flash no longer on mobile devices? No problem for us. We're HTML5.” That's convincing for me, but not enough to pay twice as much every month.

Another google search brought two more candidates

• ekklesia360.com, $995 up front, $45+/month, but then they nickel and dime you for other features (such as "mobile site"). However, it seems to include other features like an integrated email newsletter and event management modules which seem like they would be important for many churches.
• iministries.org, $700 up front, $39+/month

It sees like the tools have come a long way since I set my (ECUSA) church's first website in 1998. I've also learned a lot about websites in the past decade, so I would look for

• easy content update: this is essential, as websites are run by volunteers (or even the rector) with limited amounts of time
• non-technical interface: this is probably the only website this volunteer does, unlike an ISP or company where the maintainer can come up to speed on Drupal, Joomla, Plone
• easy changes to layout: some CMS seem to force you to have a particular layout, but maybe you need to tweak your layout to put a larger sidebar logo or header picture
• automatic publishing/rolloff: I don't know how many times I’ve looked at a site in January that still lists the Christmas service times — because taking down the old content is not the most important thing we have to do on Dec. 26.
• automatic support for mobile devices — which don’t have a mouse for navigating complex menus, may have a small screen (as small as 320x480) and certainly don’t want to mess with flash (even if it’s installed)
• good hosting and support options

I think the latter is the strength and weakness of these dedicated church hosting companies. The strength is that they do everything; the weakness is that you can’t migrate your hosting to another ISP. But frankly, the latter seems unlikely — instead, you're just going to create a new site from scratch, as every organization seems to do every 3-6 years.

Presumably most of these will do Google Analytics or similar for website tracking. Some probably integrate directly (as do WordPress or Joomla) while for others you need to be able to add HTML to the header or template.

One key question is whether the website includes things like email marketing, or whether the parish wants to integrate with a separate church management system — e.g. to do an email blast to all the members. I imagine this decision will be made already by most parishes, but I suppose (as at our current church) there are churches where the existing tools are weak and ready to be replaced.

I also need to investigate integration with social media: Facebook, Twitter, RSS — and perhaps LinkedIn or Google+. I tried to search the respective websites, but only one of the companies seemed to provide such integration — ekklesia360.com — although Clover seems to provide an RSS feed for many of their hosted sites. Since Facebook killed direct RSS feeds, I’ll have to explore some of the other options to see how this works.

I am guessing that where we’ll end up is have a committee make a list of requirements, sift through the various generic and church-specific packages and then take one out for a test spin. (Possibly including setting up a fake church page to prove that it will feed correctly).

60s greatest hit

A music director or priest has to make many liturgical decisions every week: sometimes their choices are inexplicable, sometimes they miss a great opportunity, and sometimes the lectionary and hymn guides make it nearly impossible to get it wrong.

Yet other times, everything comes together as if the Kapellmeister of Leipzig, JS Bach himself, had planned it out. That’s what happened Sunday when we attended a “blended” service at a Hymnal 1982 ACNA parish.

The readings didn’t follow the RCL assignment for Year B Proper 19 nor that in the 1979 “prayer book”. The first reading, Deuteronomy 8:1-10, described manna from heaven. The last reading, the Gospel, made explicit the linkage between the Hebrews in the Sinai and Holy Communion:

37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.
39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.
…
43 Jesus answered them, …
44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—
46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.
47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
48 I am the bread of life.
49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6:37-51)

For communion, after an Amy Grant CCM song, the bulletin provided the words for Hymn #335 from Hymnal 1982:

I am the bread of life; they who come to me shall not hunger; they who believe in me shall not thirst. No one can come to me unless the Father draw them.

Refrain: And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up, and I will raise them up on the last day.

The bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world; and they who eat of this bread, they shall live forever, they shall live forever. Refrain.

I am the resurrection, I am the life. They who believe in me, even if they die, they shall live forever. Refrain.

Yes, Lord we believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who has come into the world. Refrain.

Unfamiliar with the tune, my eldest asked if this was from Hymnal 1982. She recognized that if I could sing the harmony of the refrain from memory, that it held a special place in my heart. (She also asked if “Amazing Grace” was in H40, thus recognizing the only other significant improvement provided by H82 over H40).

As I wrote three years ago:

[W]ithin Hymnal 1982 are a few new hymns that I am convinced will survive to the 22nd century, including my all-time favorite, the 1966 “I Am the Bread of Life” by Sister Suzanne Toolan.

Toolan’s text works as a direct restatement of John’s gospel — a linkage I never heard before this week. (It appears that H82 uses a PC “inclusive” version of the text, but I don’t have access to the original online.)

But, sappy as it is, her music also seems to work in a timeless way. The verses (where the congregation usually has more trouble singing) have a very simple voice leading, even if the melisma is not very intuitive and inconsistent between verses. The refrain has a more dramatic leading, but after five verses, just about anyone could learn it. And — my own particular joy — the bass part is very easy, with V-I-V-I' at the root of the chord progression in the first phrase, and nearly as simple for the remainder of the refrain. Hence my ability to sing the refrain — from memory — as we waited and walked up to the communion rail.

I have not read Toolan’s story, so I don’t know how long it took her to write and compose this hymn. Still, after suffering through the fingernails on chalkboard of so many Celebration and other CCM hymns of the past 40 years, the inspiration of this one success suggests that it might be possible to compose my own text (or tune) someday.