What is in Kelvin's Head?

Our own little Anglican Communion

08/04/2013

We had a great day yesterday at St Mary’s with the Very Rev Peter Elliott visiting from Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver. The way that the rotas resolved themselves meant that we had a preacher from the Anglican Church of Canada, a celebrant (me) from the Scottish Episcopal Church, a deacon, Chucks from the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) and the Scottish Episcopal Church and a subdeacon (Akma) from the US based Episcopal Church. Fluttering delicately around all of that were servers who bring skills and experience from the Church in Wales via the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, the Methodist Church in the USA and the Roman Catholic Church in England. And that isn’t to start on where the congregation came from.

We are at St Mary’s sometimes our own little Anglican Communion and it is lovely.

Peter Elliott and his congregation in Vancouver showed me great kindness when I was travelling in North America on my sabbatical last year and it was a delight to have him here in Glasgow.

Peter and his husband Thomas were travelling to Iona in the company of other North American clergy who are heading off for a time of refreshment and renewal with one another and a few of them were around in St Mary’s on Sunday too.

The world of deans and rectors of larger churches is quite different in North America to the world of Provosts here in Scotland. Generally speaking, their world has far greater financial resources to draw on and it can be quite seductive. Not a few people have asked me since I returned, “ooh, aren’t you tempted?”

However, it is not simply a case of the grass being greener. Having travelled over there I know that quite well. Those who have roles equivalent to mine in ecclesiastical terms do some things the same and other things quite differently. Many, for example, on the other side of the Atlantic need to spend their time on fund raising in a way that would be unimaginable here. (Scheduling several fund-raising visits or lunches a week is not that unusual). I’ve learned that those jobs are very different to my own. Here in Scotland we tend to do things much more on the cheap. It is a very different fund-raising culture. That isn’t to say there are not important lessons to be learned from those on the other side of the pond on this topic, but things are very different.

Here in the UK though we have differently developed key skills. Not least, clergy here in larger places need to be very skilled at building a community where people want to serve and want to offer something. Helping people to offer their gifts is a core skill and not always one which we think about enough. If we have any expertise, it is in gathering a congregation that is so focussed on a vision of life-enhancing and world-renewing worship that they want to join in and collaborate in bringing that vision of the kingdom in.

It has its own excitement and yesterday at St Mary’s was one of those days where that excitement was tangible.

Anglican Church of Canada, fundraising, money, Peter Elliott, Scottish Episcopal Church

23 responses to “What if this is the end of the Eucharist?”

Thomas Scott

06/05/2020

Just noticing here that DGD (of happy memory) seems to have left out of his catalogue of joyous, sad, perilous, and solemn occasions any instance of celebrating during a plague or pestilence. I’m not worried about the mass. The eucharist need not be celebrated as though it were a car battery, as if not offering it now would somehow allow the power to run down. It is not at risk, we are, which I think is your point. The questions asked are worth asking, of course.

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Mo Nicholson

06/05/2020

Mo Nicholson. This is an intriguing discussion and what I would like to add to it is the observation that I have had to learn the hard way that participation in the Eucharist being made impossible in no way diminishes an individual’s ability to worship God or be in fellowship with other believers. I am barred from receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church because allergies make this impossible for me. The pain induced by this has little to do with feeling separation from God, in fact nothing at all as I do not feel that. It comes from feeling excluded from the community, different sections if which regard it as desirable or tolerable that a member of the community should be excluded in this way. This experience has made me understand as never before that if we place prime value on liturgical celebrations, ir indeed anything else, above charity, compassion, welcome and inclusivity, in other words love, then we have become the sounding gong which St Paul warned against. If we truly believe that God is love, as I do, then it is obvious that it is love for one another which makes us true children of God our Father, and in light of this we could begin to look at these present challenging circumstances as simply an opportunity to love more, to reach out to one another in whatever way possible in the knowledge that this is what actually matters and always did. Only perhaps we were tempted to almost make a fetish of our rituals, sacraments and so on. And perhaps this can show us a better way more adapted to the world we are supposed to serve.

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Lynsay Downs

06/05/2020

You and your conversation with Dave Roberts prompted me to write this. Does it resonate for you?

https://astonishing.community/2020/05/06/conversations-in-coronatide/

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1. Kelvin
  
  06/05/2020
  
  Thanks Lynsay – yes, it does resonate with me very much.
  
  I’ve shared it on facebook. I think it is really helpful.
  
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Fr Keith

06/05/2020

Thanks again for such a thoughtful piece. With the Eucharist central to much of, at least Anglican/Episcopalian, worship in recent generations, we perhaps forget that the Church in these islands was, between the Reformation and the liturgical revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained by Mattins and Evensong as the regular diet of worship on Sundays. I’m not advocating a return to such times, but there is, as you suggest, work to be done on non-Eucharistic worship (though not defining it as a negative). Thanks again.

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Fenland Boy

07/05/2020

For the record, I’m not in favour of lay presidency at the Eucharist. I believe, for better or worse, in an ordered church.

Why are you concerned about lay Presidency?

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Chuck

08/05/2020

May I say respectfully, lighten up. Many Anglicans/Episcopalians lived on the edges of civilization in the nascent U.S. and various elements of the British Empire. Priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and to baptize were seldom seen, at most twice a year in many areas. (Bishops, only every several years.) The Church carried on in this manner decade after decade. If circumstances require, the Church will carry on again despite our profound sense of loss.

I should add, to those who grew up under threat or reality of war, persecution, oppression, famine, other disease, etc, the present difficulty is not unfamiliar in many respects.

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Miriam MacCarthy

08/05/2020

Thank you! It is wonderful to read these serious, personal thoughts about the Eucharist. My feeling is that it has become celebrated to the point of boredom. Church, and what we do in it, is in danger of becoming simply a habit. It could just as well be crackerjack for a fast-asleep congregation. My heresy is that the direction Jesus gave is to “do this in remembrance of me”, and that means everything we eat at any time, whether alone or with others, in thanksgiving. If that is seriously done, it has vastly more meaning. It really gets ones attention and requires preparation. Would not become popular or usual, I predict!

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