I’m going to meet with a liturgy honours class this week to discuss yesterday’s 1030 service, which most of them were at. Inevitably, I find myself thinking a bit about what it is I’m hoping to do when I give birth to a liturgical service.

Primarily, I think, my aim is evangelical. I do subscribe to the view that the liturgy of the church is fundamentally a tool for mission. What I’m aspiring to do is to put on services that very directly bring people who feel that God is far from them to a place where they feel God’s love deep in their souls. That is a high aspiration.

The liturgy is the cradle (or perhaps the manger) of the numinous. It is a place where God is born.

Secondly, but scarcely less importantly, I’m hoping to put on something which forms and informs faith. This idea of spiritual formation is one of the things that we are learning about in the Scottish Episcopal Church. The liturgy teaches, moulds, builds character, engenders love.

Holy things for unholy people.

Hmm