What is in Kelvin's Head?

Cathedral as Emergent Community

24/10/2012

Cathedrals are doing quite well.

Now, as with all generalisations and stereotypes, this is both sometimes true and sometimes not. However, it is something that quite a lot of people are talking about.

The recent Grubb Institute report had some astonishing statistics suggesting that large portions of the adult population in England had entered a cathedral within the last year. Futhermore, people seemed to think of cathedrals as places which projected spiritual values and were places where the life of the spirit could be nourished and blessed.

I’m always interested in reports like this. The danger of them is that they make cathedral people smug and non-cathedral folk cross and jealous. However, it is important to try to listen to what is behind these reports of success in order to see whether there is something in the life of cathedral congregations that can be shared in other contexts. I happen to think that there is.

I was very struck recently by a conversation with someone in St Mary’s. We were talking about the emergent/emerging church phenomenon. There’s lots more to be said about that, but for now, we’ll just live with the idea that it means new, non-traditional ways of being a Christian community – pub church, late night church, fresh expressions of church and all the ballyhoo.

(I was entertained recently by the idea that I might get a grant for something to do with our regular Sunday morning liturgy by branding it as Mass Church – a Fresh Expressions Experience).

Anyway, back to the conversation. I was saying to someone that I sometimes wonder whether there might be space for an emergent expression of faith within St Mary’s. Some places have done this quite well, maintaining a fairly trad service in the morning, for example alongside an alternative community late on a Sunday evening. Maybe we are doing this already a bit with the Open Silence (an hour of shared silence on a Sunday evening) that takes place once a month.

I was musing that I was surprised that we had not got a more confident, weekly Fresh Expression going in St Mary’s and also noting that Scotland does not seem to be particularly fertile ground for it. As with Alpha, Fresh Expressions sometimes seem to be more of a thing south of the border than north of it.

The person I was talking to said, “Hmm, yes, but you’ve got to remember that you’re allowing the cathedral congregation to be a fresh expression…”

It was one of the moments where all the lights seem to turn on at once.

“Yes,” he said, “you’re allowing the congregation to grow using the themes that the fresh expressions people use. Remember that many of us here never expected to find that our faith could be sustained in a traditional church. Many of us thought that we had moved beyond all that. We’re all surprised to find ourselves here.”

What an interesting thing to think about.

Here are some of the themes that I think are sometimes floating around the emerging/emergent experience which I think we are playfully engaging with in and around St Mary’s:

art mattering
visual stuff being important
online being integral
networks of smaller groups making up something bigger
ability to live with apparent contradictions
freedom to experiment
radical hospitality and welcome
LGBT/Straight inclusive
embracing tradition without being hidebound
influence of monastic patterns, rhythms and themes
not being embarrassed by joy

Ring any bells with you?

cathedrals, emergent, emerging, growth, mission

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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