Last night I dreamt that I was about to preside at a funeral service for my grandmother (who died when I was in College several years ago). It was in unfamiliar but large church with a full congregation. I was supposed to preach, but hadn't prepared much and couldn't even recall what the lessons would be. Anyway, I survived the dream.
I also survived today's services. Each Sunday seems to be smoother and smoother as I fit into the grooves of the place. Megan and I have worked out a good system for doing announcements at the beginning of the service. We've also come to a nice place with regards to our "altar craft" (there is still some room for improvement here). Today I tried using the brass desk rather than the pillow to support the Altar Missal. It was a good idea, the "desk" works much better, though I appreciate what the pillow is trying to accomplish. The Chancel Guild is now putting the corporal in the burse--which is what I prefer.
One of the decisions you have make in liturgical planning is whether you imagine that you are doing a rite in a place that is already pre-sanctified, or whether you are coming into the place as for the first time. The difference is that in the latter model you spend a lot more energy marking off holy space and defining it as such. So the procession follows the cross and you deliberately put down the corporal as a beat of the liturgy, etc. If you imagine the space to be already sacred, you don't have to do as much sanctifying. Both modes are good and suitable to Sunday worship, it just tends to bias things in one direction or another depending on what affect you are trying to achieve. The only problem comes when you confuse the two approaches. Anyway, we are working on it.
As we recessing down the aisle after the service, a woman from Egypt reached out and touched the processional cross and kissed her hand. I recognized the gesture immediately, and I'd love to implement a similar devotional practice around the gospel book or the processional cross more regularly. They do this at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. This Sunday's devotional kiss was not a deliberate reference to St. Greg's but there are number of other practices at COTM that were, indeed, inspired by the liturgically innovative parish in San Fran. I understand that St. Greg's does liturgical workshops regularly--it's tempting to put that on my list of continuing ed events. But I think the conferences at St. Bart's in NY in June and the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek in August of next year are higher priorities at the moment. Hopefully I can get a COTM contingent together for one or both.
Speaking of ministry, we have a gift of $10,000 to spend towards a new piano. That's about a 1/3 of what we ultimately may need, but it is enough that we may be able to get a fantastic "concert grade" instrument if we can find a dealer willing to give us a deep discount. Or we might simply have to raise a bit more money--but having the seed of $10k makes a HUGE difference to the likelihood that we'll get what we're looking for. I'm very excited.
Megan did a good job with today's sermon. A couple visiting from SMM told me that it was the best sermon they had heard on the subject of money. It is a hard thing to preach about and she did an excellent job of teasing out the implications of the Scripture's sayings on the topic.
That reminds me, I need to fix the sound system. Not sure how premium I should go with that. I think I would probably do well with about $3k worth of equipment. It will be much easier to repair and upgrade than the SMM system. Besides swapping out the ancient amplifier and wireless mics and adding an EQ and a mini-mixer, I'm also thinking about getting a TASCAM HD P2. These are really designed for field recording, but the flexibility it offers would be nice for recording any kind of concerts that might happen here. I could simply put it where I need it, attach to microphones and we are good to go!
But even before I get to that point I need to make more progress on reading the parish histories, develop the website, rebuild my computer, edit and post sermon videos, get the Rectory rented, meet with Merv, pray, pray, and pray. sigh.
Right now I'm going to go watch some football.
-t
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