Advent Layout

I've been talking a lot about the Advent layout. Here's some pics to give a better sense:





It may be hard to make out in these photos, but it's a U-shape with the Presider's chair and the ambo at the bottom, the altar in the middle, and a table at the top of the U with the tabernacle and menorah. A small Credence table is just in front of the ambo, which is flanked by a pair of candlesticks. The choir sits on either side of the top of the U, with the piano offset to one side. We're thinking this Sunday we are going to have the choir all on one side.

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Church of the Resurrection in Newfoundland

Does this look familiar? Doug C. calls my attention to the Church of the Resurrection in Newfoundland. Collegiate-style (aka Choir-style) seating across a central axis that begins with font and pascal candle, continues through the ambo, and ends in the altar.

On the left we see that a warm, welcoming, and essentially domestic greeting space opens generously onto the principle worship axis beginning with the font and leading the ambo.

A nice looking Ambo that illustrates the concept well--note the teaching Christ icon and the Bema-style solidity of it. This is no mere lectern!

A large square altar with President's chair behind. The square shape helps reinforce the equality of participation while the chair preserves apostolic presidency.

Another view showing how the altar relates to the rest of the space. Although it's not elevated as it is in some places, the path between the two poles of Word and Table is a powerful negative space that draws out attention.

From the church's website:

Because we recognize that the “Church” is the people, we want to avoid calling our building or any part of it the “church.” The place where we gather for prayer is called the “Oratory”, which is Latin for “place of prayer.”

The Oratory is designed with the principles of equality of celebration, participation verses spectation, and flexibility of liturgical space.

The altar table and the ambo (table of the Word) are placed at opposite ends of the oratory to enable liturgical action to take place in the whole of the oratory. Sitting in the “round,” with the use of chairs, also enables the gathered community not only to be drawn into the liturgy, but to face one another and to acknowledge Christ’s presence in the other. The use of chairs, instead of pews, also allows us to be more flexible in the liturgical use of our space. (source)

I'm looking forward to returning to a configuration like this for Advent this year. We learned a few things from previous experiments that will help in the next iteration.

-t

Ikea

Today I spent some time moving the chairs in the church around into their Lent configuration. After that I went to Ikea to buy a coffee table for my office. Ikea is just this side of a cult, IMHO. Someone should do a paper on the theology of Ikea. You just know everything there must have been designed on Macs.

I'll post something longer tomorrow. Right now I'm a bit tired. This morning when I decided to sleep in, I realized that I have been under a tremendous amount of stress at work and that I need to dial my engagement back a smidgen--God knows there already enough dysfunctional/codependent priests out there.

BTW, I just saw the movie "Breach." There is a nice long shot the interior of Church of the Redeemer (COTM's mother parish). It only took me about two seconds to recognize it, despite the set dressing!

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Architecture

Last week I had a friend of mine who is also an architect come by to give me an informal consult about the church. The further along I go with developing plans for replacing the chairs and repainting the interior, etc., the more aware I become that I'm a bit out of my depth when it comes to things like choosing chairs or picking color schemes.

Looking at the space, she said that she could see what the architects who did the 1976 reconstruction (after the fire) were trying to accomplish and also how their plans didn't always work. She said that the challenge was to go with less, not more. Looking around, it's hard to easily identify the elements that could be removed. For example, the vertical columns near the storage closets don't "work" from an aesthetic point of view, but were obviously necessary to support the weight of the daycare above.

So she's going away to think about it some more and come back to me the outline of a proposal. Once I have that in hand I can begin to bundle the pieces together to make a physical plant renewal plan and start raising money.

Speaking of church architecture, I've decided to go back to the collegiate-style (aka choir style) seating arrangement for Lent. It simply does the work of liturgy (worship and transformation) better than the common layout usually used here.

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Random Notes from Today

It's only 3:30 and I'm already feeling exhausted. Lots going on today--but it felt productive and that's good. One needs to feel productive in their work, sometimes.

Highlights include arranging the space into it's Advent configuration. I got most of it done by myself in 35 minutes. The final touches (moving the altar off the raised Chancel area) only took another 10 or 15 minutes with the help of another guy. It looks great. Predictably, it gets faster each time I do it.

Susy Bleasby stopped by with the first sketches of our proposed mural project for the kid's room upstairs. It looks very good, and we had one of those fun conversations about what the kingdom of heaven might look like. I'm looking forward to the next round of drawings.

I noticed this article in the New York Times about a movement among Jews in the 20's and 30's. It sounds a lot like the Emerging Church movement in Christian Faith. I think these movements are really critical to understanding the future of religion and spirituality in North America.

The kitten, BTW, is doing brilliantly. It's amazing to actually watch him learn how to do the most basic cat things. He's still missing some jumps, for example, and falling off of stuff when he gets to carried away. And it was wonderful comfort to have them around after some of the bad days we've been having lately.

I had a very intense prayer experience this morning. Sometimes it is really nice to surrender to the liturgy and let it do what it do. zone of the nice things about belonging to a tradition that likes to take prayers from books (BCP/BAS/etc) is that we can surrender the burden of being o-so-clever with God. Why make it up fresh everytime when others have done in better in the past? So even when I'm being liturgically "creative" (as with this Sunday upcoming) I'm still basing everything on ancient and well-used rites. This Sunday we are doing aspergance, the Great Litany, and then a pretty standard modern language Eucharist after that. I'm thrilled.

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Power Point Sermon from Sunday

Here's the powerpoint I used on Sunday for my sermon. Yes, I have the license to use Dave Walker's Cartoons...

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Episcopal Election

This is The Very Rev'd Dr Linda Nicholls, now Bishop-elect. She was chosen to succeed Bishop Michael Bedford-Jones who is set to retire. The Synod was held at St. Paul's and turned out to be a great chance to catch up with old friends. I was pleased with the results and really thrive at these things, but was glad to be leaving when I did.

My Uncle Cliff arrived last night without incident. I put him to work (along with Betsy) to put the church back into its normal configuration, then we went out to dinner at the Pour House. After a pleasant talk over tea in our living room, I got a couple hours of sleep and then came early to church to finish my powerpoint sermon for today. It turned out pretty well, I think, but the proof will be in the pudding.

I'm doing okay right now, but I'm going to be utterly useless tomorrow. I'll be watching DVR'd football and vegging, I think.

-t

A Rolling Moss Gathers No Stone

Back when I was studying Karate with great intensity (High School) one of my teachers would say "A Rolling Moss Gathers No Stone." He was encouraging me to move decisively and with speed--I think he would appreciate my current application of that principle. Even if I wanted to linger on the theft I wouldn't have time.

Much of my day today will be consumed by a Synod meeting to take care of some Diocesan business--including the election of a new bishop. Since I've been in this Diocese for a little more than 2 years, I've participated in two of these elections already! Lucky for me, this Synod is taking place at a church within walking distance of COTM. Unlucky for me, my attendance is nearly compulsory and once we enter we are virtually sequestered. That's too bad, as otherwise I would be preparing for tomorrow.

My Uncle Cliff is coming tonight. He'll come to church in the morning and then leaves to continue his trip west to see his kids on Monday. It's a short trip, but a meaningful one.

His coming on a big church day. I'm giving a powerpoint sermon on church architecture and liturgy to introduce the Advent seating arrangement. I spent a few hours on Friday arranging the space and taking some pictures to show the congregation. Here are two of them...


Now this is just going to be an experimental arrangement for Advent and possibly the Christmas season--and for the next two Sundays we will continue with the "normal" arrangement. But I have to say that it is going to break my heart to put things back the way they were this afternoon. I've got lots of good liturgical and historical and theological and even pastoral arguments for the choir-style seating arrangement, however what I find even more compelling the gut feeling this place has when arranged like that. I'm sorely tempted to leave the chairs like this for Sunday, but I realize that I'll be pushing the envelope of how much change I can get away with.

You see, there is a fundamental difference between change that is experienced as continuous vs. discontinuous is huge. In other words, gradual change where one thing flows into another is much easier for a community to handle than radical and surprising shifts. As a leader you often can't determine where a change will fall on that spectrum, but I can in this case, so I should choose to make it a change that has high-continuity with the flow of events. That means introducing it gradually and giving plenty of notice. That's why we are doing three sermons on liturgy and assuring everyone that this will be a temporary and seasonal thing.

Nonetheless, I'm hopeful that people will like it so much they will want to retain it. Several of my predecessors have done similar things with the space here, or wanted to, so I'm in good company. I'm deeply thankful that I have a congregation unafraid to experiment in this way.

Another thing happening on Sunday is a meeting of the Advent Liturgy Committee. This has continuity with the group that used to gather to decorate for Christmas--only this time they are dressing the space for Advent as a separate beat from the Christmas decorating. And that "dressing" of the space will be done with an eye towards liturgy. I expect that many of the traditional elements will be maintained (garlands here, wreaths there) but others will be completely new. My hope is that when we meet after church on Sunday there will be a lot of enthusiasm and energy generating that will propel our efforts forward and even get some new people involved in the project.

Oh, and the Christmas Pageant group is getting together to do more planning. I promised to make more progress on the script! Ahhggg!

So as I get ready to walk down to St. Paul's, Bloor St., for the Synod, I'll be thinking about the feasibility of pulling an all-nighter tonight to get all done. Caffeine is my friend.

-t

Chairs vs. Pews

Doug C. draws my attention to a project at St. Paul's Chapel (Manhattan). They took out the pews and put in chairs. There's a great slide show discussing the project here. Looks like we are not the only ones looking for a more dynamic and liturgically rich layout. It's important that we get back to that liturgical edge...

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"Low-Hanging Fruit"

The other day I ran into Dave Robinson, the lead Diocesan consultant for congregations. He had a great phrase when he said that I should "pick some low-hanging fruit," but not get side tracked from strategic initiatives that develop congregational vision and identity. In other words, while the early successes of new pianos, chairs, and paint jobs are important to build momentum and energy, it's really things like a parish-wide workshop on our history that are going to be transformative in the long run. So I'm looking to do something like in November, stay tuned.

I went to the Principal's Dinner at Wycliffe last night. Wycliffe College is one of the two Anglican seminaries at the University of Toronto. We had a little Church of the Messiah table going with two of my Wardens (Virginia and Brendan) plus Megan and her husband Chris and Betsy and myself. It was a valuable chance for me to make contacts with some valuable players in the Toronto church scene, including the Principal, George Sumner. I'm hoping to re-establish the close connection that once existed between Wycliffe and COTM, and that means having good relationships with the current leaders and players.

I'm still processing some of the great conversations from Momentum. At one point I found myself talking about the need to find a well of spiritual good stuff closer to where I live and work than where I have gone in the past (I'm speaking of both geographic and other kinds of distances). Sister Anitra suggested that I come to the convent for worship, but I noted that finding the water there, even if it's close to the surface, will still require a certain amount of digging. That is, establishing relationships and a pattern of attendance and so forth. She looked at me in that Jedi-Christian way of spiritual directors and waved her hand as she said, "Come expecting nothing." And I knew that she was right. The Force is strong in that one.

Speaking of St. John's Convent, here's a picture of their chapel for those that have never been...


Note the progression from Font to Ambo to Altar. Also note the chairs facing each other across that axis. It's simply the best arrangement for a worshiping community of that size that I've seen around: which is why all the cool kids are doing it.

I came across this interesting blog by Edward Murray today. He's a church musician in Los Angeles. Any blog that quotes Mary Oliver, Rumi, and the like deserves some attention, IMHO!

-t