Crafting Common Worship

A Practical, Creative Guide to What's Possible

Peter Moger

• Publisher: Church House Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780715142011
• eBook ISBN: 9780715146422
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

The definitive guide to making the most of Common Worship! Offers extensive guidance on how to create engaging and mission-focused worship using the Common Worship liturgy, whatever your context.

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Common Worship: A new way of doing liturgy?

Diversity in worship today

If we were able to walk into an English parish church at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning in 1959 – most of us would get something of a shock. For one thing, the service would probably have been non-eucharistic (at least if the church was of ‘low’ or ‘central’ tradition): Matins from The Book of Common Prayer. Holy Communion would have been celebrated earlier, at 8 a.m. There would have been hymns (but not worship songs), and the psalms and canticles would have been sung by choir and congregation to Anglican chant. The language, with the exception of the sermon, would have been that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The service would have been led, almost exclusively, by the (male) priest. The congregation would have sat to listen, stood to sing and knelt to pray, but always within the confines of their pews.

A lot has changed in the last 50 years, so moving the clock forward to a present-day service, we are struck by the host of differences between the two acts of worship. The most significant difference, though, is that if one turns up at a parish church at random, it is hard to predict exactly what will be on the liturgical menu. There is a strong probability that the main service on a Sunday morning will be eucharistic (whatever the tradition of the church) and that the service will be in contemporary language, but other than that the possibilities of variety are considerable. It may be an all-age service, or it may involve the use of projected images and movement around the building. It’s quite likely that the music will encompass a range of styles and could be led by an informal group of singers and instrumentalists, or by a robed choir, or there might even not be any music at all. Those involved in leading parts of the worship may be lay or ordained, male or female.

We now have immense variety in our worship, both between one church and the next and also within churches. And so it’s not so unusual to find a church where the Sunday diet might look something like this:

8.00	Holy Communion (BCP)
9.30	Parish Eucharist (Common Worship Order 1)
11.15	Parish Praise
6.00	Evening Prayer (Common Worship) / Evensong (BCP) / Taizé worship / Healing service – depending on the Sunday of the month
8.00	(monthly) ‘The late service’

And of course all kinds of other things might happen during the week, on- or off-site, as a ‘fresh expression’.

We’ve travelled a vast distance during the past 50 years, and the rate of change has been increasing all the time. In terms of our worship, we are becoming a self-consciously ‘mixed-economy’ church. As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has written, ‘there’s no one kind of church life that captures everything, that does every kind of job.’2 One of the most encouraging developments within the Church of England in recent years (across all traditions) is the increasing focus on mission, and a growing realization that there is a vital link between mission and worship. It’s a link that works two ways. On the one hand we need forms of worship which are sufficiently accessible to the de-churched and unchurched. On the other, we need engaging, transformative worship which holds, nurtures and challenges those who are growing in their faith.

We have realized that, where worship is concerned, ‘one size will not fit all’ and that to serve up a uniform diet is to fail to provide for people at different stages of their faith journey and with differing personality types and learning styles. While BCP Evensong is increasing in popularity, especially in cathedrals, it is now true that Matins is no longer the default setting for Anglican morning worship. Within a broad and diverse church such as ours we need variety.

So in this opening chapter we will begin to lift the lid on Common Worship which, together with The Book of Common Prayer, provides the liturgical texts for Church of England worship. We shall cover briefly the background to Common Worship – the period leading up to its creation – and then move to an overview of its contents, before asking the important question ‘What’s different about Common Worship?’ Finally we shall look at the place that liturgical structure occupies within it.

The background to Common Worship: A time of revision

The 50 years between 1959 and 2009 saw an immense amount of activity in the field of liturgical revision, both within the Church of England and ecumenically. From a situation in 1959 where The Book of Common Prayer was the only authorized text for Church of England worship, we have moved through successive waves of revised and new texts.

The 1960s and 1970s brought us Alternative Services: Series 1, 2 and 3.3 While the services of Series 1 moved little beyond the changes of the proposed Prayer Book of 1928, those in Series 2 and 3 broke significant new ground. Services began to mirror developments in structure and text taking place in other Christian churches and (in Series 3) for the first time, contemporary language broke onto the liturgical scene: God, hitherto addressed as ‘thou’ became ‘you’.

The Alternative Services led to the Alternative Service Book 1980, authorized initially for ten years and subsequently for a further ten. They drew together the revisions of the previous two decades. Hard on the heels of the ASB came a book of pastoral resources, Ministry to the Sick (1983) and two seasonal books, Lent, Holy Week, Easter (1986) and The Promise of His Glory (1991) which introduced the joys of seasonal worship to parts of the Church which had never previously experienced them. Further new material arrived in 1995 in the shape of Patterns for Worship, published shortly after newly authorized provision in A Service of the Word. With the authorization of the ASB due to end at the millennium, the wholesale revision of the Church of England’s liturgy was now in full spate.

Common Worship

Following some initial volumes in 1997 and 1998 (Calendar, Lectionary and Collects and an interim edition of Initiation Services), Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England was published in 2000, and authorized for use from Advent Sunday of that year.

The publication of Common Worship took eight years and spans nine principal volumes – the final volume appearing on the shelves in February 2008 – but represents many more years of creative work: of drafting, experimental use, debate in the General Synod and the House of Bishops, and painstaking revision.

Common Worship: The complete collection

Before starting to delve in detail into the resources contained within Common Worship, it’s good to remind ourselves what all the volumes are and get an overview of what they include.

Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England (2000) (CWMV)

This volume – usually referred to as the ‘main volume’ includes a range of ‘mainstream’ services which might be used in Sunday worship: Morning, Evening and Night Prayer, A Service of the Word, Holy Communion, Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child, Holy Baptism, together with creeds and affirmations of faith, the Psalter, collects and various prayers.

Common Worship: President’s Edition (2000) (CWPE)

Much of what is in the main volume is also included here, but in a large format; this is a book designed for use by those presiding at Holy Communion. The President’s Edition also contains material not in the main volume (e.g. additional eucharistic prefaces and other presidential texts, and also music for the eucharistic prayers).

Common Worship: Pastoral Services (2000, 2nd edn 2005) (CWPS)

The Pastoral Services volume includes services and material to resource wholeness and healing, marriage and funeral ministry. The second edition also includes the ‘traditional language’ Burial and Holy Matrimony services from Alternative Services: Series 1, based on those in the 1928 Prayer Book.

Common Worship: Collects and Post Communions (2004) (CWCPC)

This book contains both the original Common Worship collects and post communions and the additional collects (2004) alongside one another. It replaces an earlier interim volume from 1997.

Common Worship: Daily Prayer (2005) (CWDP)

This is a comprehensive resource for daily prayer which includes orders for Morning, Evening and Night Prayer and Prayer During the Day throughout the year, together with collects, canticles, the Psalter and forms of intercession.

Common Worship: Christian Initiation (2006) (CWCI)

This definitive edition of Christian Initiation (which replaces an earlier interim volume from 1998) includes all initiation services (including Baptism and Confirmation) together with Rites on the Way: Approaching Baptism, Rites of Affirmation: Appropriati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• 1 Common Worship: A New way of doing Liturgy?
• 2 ‘… Authorized or Allowed by Canon’
• 3 Flexibility within the Frameworks
• 4 Authorized Structures
• 5 Case Studies: A Service of the Word
• 6 Case Studies: Holy Communion
• 7 Case Studies: Christian Initiation and Pastoral Services
• Appendix 1 The Canons of the Church of England which Govern the Liturgy used in Public Worship
• Appendix 2 Services Authorized and Commended
• Appendix 3 The Ordering of Worship in Fresh Expressions of Church under Bishops’ Mission Orders
• Copyright