From the Magazine ...
Dear Friends,

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the place of music in our worship. You can read elsewhere in the magazine about St Bartholomew’s organ fund appeal but I did just want to share with you the way God worked as I prepared the sermon for the appeal’s launch service. Pondering the splendour and variety of organ music and its unique power to express the wonder and majesty of creation, I was amazed to discover that the New Testament reading set for that Sunday was the Revelation passage from which the verse on the cover is taken. I can’t imagine a better evocation of organ music than the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder peals. I really felt that God was showing me what to preach that Sunday.

Music of all kinds is such an important part of our worshipping life, from the majestic settings of Bach and the great Victorian composers to the much loved hymns many of us grew up with, and on to the many new songs and hymns which express our love and praise and longings in a more modern idiom. We all have our own preferences and favourites amongst and within each kind of music, but our worship can be enriched and deepened if it includes a varied diet of composers, styles and moods, some of which may challenge us initially but may speak in the end to our hearts and minds. I believe that what is true of music in worship is also true of our liturgy, a term which embraces both the words and the rituals we use in church. It comes from a Greek word meaning “the public work of the people”, and it links us to Christians through the ages – the “communion of the saints” – whether through the magnificent language of the Book of Common Prayer or the rich variety of possibilities available in Common Worship, about which I want to say a little more.

The eight volumes of Common Worship, introduced between 2000 and 2008 to replace the “temporary” Alternative Service Book, draw together the rich inheritance of the past and some of the best contemporary forms of worship, with more similarities to the liturgy of the early church than any English prayer book before it of any denomination. Informed by recently discovered documents, by renewed relationships with the churches in the east and by a deeper understanding of our shared Jewish heritage, Common Worship was produced by ministers who are also liturgists, historians and theologians. Every part of it was extensively trialled in parishes across the whole spectrum of Anglican traditions and churchmanship, and finally authorised by General Synod for use in our churches.

I hope that this detail about the way Common Worship has evolved will help us understand where the material in the new series of service booklets, one for each liturgical season, has come from. In particular Times and Seasons, one of the eight volumes, contains whole services as well as additional and supplementary prayers and other material for each season of the year so that within the set structure of, for example, a communion service, a particular Confession, Creed or Affirmation of Faith, Peace and Eucharistic Prayer can be chosen to help the congregation explore the distinctive themes and spirituality of that season. Next month we will begin the season of Lent, and the service order we use will draw on Common Worship for material which helps us to prepare for Passiontide and Easter by focusing on self-examination, penitence and self-denial.

I hope that this quick overview of where our contemporary liturgy comes from – recognising of course that many of our services are from the Book of Common Prayer – will be helpful to anyone who has been surprised or taken aback by some of the unfamiliar prayers and other texts. If anyone would like to know more or to share their thoughts about it please do contact me – I’d be really pleased to hear your views and ideas as we work out together what it means to be the people of God here in Haslemere.

With the assurance of my prayers,

Mary