Remember the Plagues of Egypt? Well, I bet you can’t actually. Indeed, there is a reasonable chance that if you bet any mildly inebriated bunch of divinity students a pint of something nice that they cannot name all the plagues in order you will have a pleasant evening. (Next week go back and ask them to name the 12 apostles).
Anyway, one of the plagues which the Lord visited upon his people, which is often forgotten, but which affects us terribly to this day is the Plague of Bad Typography. In this aspect of our common life, I must genuflect to those many Evangelicals who have been healed of this plague and produce excellent publicity material for their church. So very many of us who are not known Evangelicals struggle in this area. As for me, I must testify before you all, that I am a born again font geek.
Indeed, it has always seemed to me that if we could only format all our documents properly once and for all and put the right font in the right place, then all would bow the knee and be welcomed at last into the Kingdom.
Of course, I am not always believed.
My frustration over these things can lead to trouble. Picture the hissy fit that erupted when I looked earlier in the week at the Scottish Episcopal Church’s website and found the Word files that had been uploaded which contain our version of Daily Prayer.
They are horrid. They do not use styles. If you don’t know what that means, then repent, even though it is not Lent and go, go now, and find out. If more of God’s people did that, then we would have fewer documents released with 17 tabs per line, bad page-breaks, inconsistent formatting and so on. You want people to come (back) to your church? Go and learn about styles in Microsoft Word. Bizarrely these things are not taught in theological colleges as they are short of time, having to teach us how to heal the sick and raise the dead.
The most important change in our mission at St Mary’s that I have introduced is putting the whole liturgy (hymns, music, notices and the whole bang shoot) into one bookie. Every part of the liturgy is in the right order too. No odd page turns. No scraps of paper. It makes a difference. And yes, I know it is not green. Neither is running churches that are empty because all the people have fled in confusion and bewilderment.
Anyway, when the hissy fit died down, I decided to see how I would format Daily Prayer.
You see the trouble is, people come along to Morning Prayer and then just get lost. They have to turn to the right page, then find the right psalm then turn back to the first bit, then turn to the Benedictus which is in three different places, then they don’t have a collect and it all ends in tears. They don’t come back. They are the Lost.
So what would save this situation? Well, here is my offering of Morning Prayer for next week.
Compare and contrast
My version, with the official version.
My version is a large file. No apologies, it needs to be. There may be some inconsistencies, and it may display differently on your computer to mine. But it uses styles, which means that you can reformat the whole thing to your satisfaction yourself. Can’t you?
Can you do better? If you can, do.
And (to leap in to the ping-pong game) I think the priest really does have more pressing things that only s/he can do – so the question of setting up an office situation arises, with someone skilled in the black arts of typography and DTP, as well as all the horrors that a photocopier can throw at one, who is prepared to see that as their ministry (and is not made to feel bad if they don’t bake cakes!)
😉
Yes, though we Gen-Xers would probably say that the final say over style and content needs to rest with the rector as the person who oversees the mission strategy of the church.
(happy for people to print, fold, and staple though! And even to delegate drafts if someone has the relevant skills and technology)
For all that booklets take a huge amount of time, the process of creating the booklet overlaps with planning the liturgy — indeed, it is often how I plan, how I anticipate the flow of things and make sure hymns, prayers, words, silence etc are balanced.
You’ve gone and stirred a train of thought, dammit. I shall perhaps consider it further chez moi.
Just as a matter of interest, what are the things that priests should find more important than preparing for worship? What are the things that only they can do?
Whether we/you like it or not, there is a sizeable number of people who want the priest to bring them the sacrament, to name but one. This, I imagine, takes a lot of time for a priest – especially one with more than one charge and a large area to cover. That’s the thing that comes into my head right now.
I know what you’re getting at, but knowing how much time layout can take if you’re a fussy soul I think that personally I’d have given up thinking about worship and be thinking about widows and orphans, typographically speaking. But I’m not a priest and don’t really know how your day pans out, so could be talking nonsense. 🙁
Sorry – back again. Your version of Morning Prayer is lovely and yes, the book drives me nuts ‘cos I don’t use it often enough to feel at home in it. But how long did that take you? Is this the end of the book as we know it, Jim?
Well, it took about three and a half hours, but most of that was designing the styles and having a hissy fit. Formatting text when you have the styles done is fairly easy and quite quick.
You do a basic template, then for each day, just change the psalm, the benedictus antiphons and the collect and Bob’s your auntie, as they say.
Perhaps I should do another week and time myself.
It might be argued within the mainstream Christian tradition, that taking the sacrament to the sick is a task more suitable for delegation to someone else than the planning and preparation of worship for the wider community.
Anyway, taking communion to the sick is changing. These days the sick are more likely to be out shopping than gagging for the sacrament at home.
I once took communion to someone who was supposed to be shut-in at home only to find that no-one would answer the door. On checking with a carer or social worker or someone that she was OK, I learned that she had gone swimming.
I think Chris is referring to the 16 or so home communicants spread out over Cowal who I simply cannot manage to visit every month (none of whom would be out swimming). Which is why I’m in the process of selecting and training lay people to help. But these things take time.
One of the perpetual challenges is choosing between serving the needs of the existing community and trying to build a future.
We have moved a long way from fonts — but it is still a question of styles and priorities.