I think I'm starting to get the hang of this church thing, you know, that a church is a community. You might think this obvious, and that I should know this as a religious studies person if not as a churchgoer, but I guess I'm dense that way. It's hard for me to believe there's actually a community - not defined by family, friendship or shared workspace - I could or would want to be part of.
To my shame, despite my oft-repeated refrain in class that we no longer think religious traditions are constituted, let alone sustained, by what is said from the pulpit (instead we ask who's in the pews and why are they really here, are they listening and if so what are they hearing, etc.), my relationship with Holy Apostles has thus far been focused on the clergy (two of whom I count as friends). My contributions to the proceedings have been confined to occasional lectoring (reading the Old Testament text or Epistle),
and two sojourns with the Sunday school-childcare group. Not that the rector hasn't pestered me (as he famously and in the end effectively pesters everyone) to get more involved in some other way - acolyte, sacristan, hospitality, whatever - but I have resisted his blandishments. "I'm already a sort of clerisy at school," I say, "here I want just to be an ordinary lay person."
But the ordinary Episcopal layperson does get involved, as I'm starting to understand - and not just a self-selected group consisting of the holier-than-thou, the attention-hog and the busybody. My eyes were opened last week when I agreed to be trained as a subsitute usher, and was thrown right into it. The service is entirely different if you're an usher: before it begins you're greeting people and/or handing them prayer books and hymnals; during it you do the offertory collection, then bring it up to the altar; during communion you direct people to the kneelers; at the end you collect and reshelve the prayer books and hymnals; and one member of the ushering team keeps count of how many people attend and how many people receive communion. In short, you're all over the place - at the back, along the aisles, at the corners of the sanctuary. And the Eucharist feels completely different, seeing it from so many angles and participating in the choreography of it all, noticing, indeed, that it is at the center of all this choreographed activity. And since you have to show up a bit early, you see the legions of other lay people doing their various appointed tasks. It's actually a major operation with many precisely moving parts, and all but a few of them are laypeople.
I suppose this happens also in Catholic churches, but less so, and in bigger congregations I imagine only a small subset of parishioners participates. But Holy Apostles is just the right size that almost everyone is doing something every few weeks, not just the teacher's pets. It's kind of wonderful.
To my shame, despite my oft-repeated refrain in class that we no longer think religious traditions are constituted, let alone sustained, by what is said from the pulpit (instead we ask who's in the pews and why are they really here, are they listening and if so what are they hearing, etc.), my relationship with Holy Apostles has thus far been focused on the clergy (two of whom I count as friends). My contributions to the proceedings have been confined to occasional lectoring (reading the Old Testament text or Epistle),
and two sojourns with the Sunday school-childcare group. Not that the rector hasn't pestered me (as he famously and in the end effectively pesters everyone) to get more involved in some other way - acolyte, sacristan, hospitality, whatever - but I have resisted his blandishments. "I'm already a sort of clerisy at school," I say, "here I want just to be an ordinary lay person."But the ordinary Episcopal layperson does get involved, as I'm starting to understand - and not just a self-selected group consisting of the holier-than-thou, the attention-hog and the busybody. My eyes were opened last week when I agreed to be trained as a subsitute usher, and was thrown right into it. The service is entirely different if you're an usher: before it begins you're greeting people and/or handing them prayer books and hymnals; during it you do the offertory collection, then bring it up to the altar; during communion you direct people to the kneelers; at the end you collect and reshelve the prayer books and hymnals; and one member of the ushering team keeps count of how many people attend and how many people receive communion. In short, you're all over the place - at the back, along the aisles, at the corners of the sanctuary. And the Eucharist feels completely different, seeing it from so many angles and participating in the choreography of it all, noticing, indeed, that it is at the center of all this choreographed activity. And since you have to show up a bit early, you see the legions of other lay people doing their various appointed tasks. It's actually a major operation with many precisely moving parts, and all but a few of them are laypeople.
I suppose this happens also in Catholic churches, but less so, and in bigger congregations I imagine only a small subset of parishioners participates. But Holy Apostles is just the right size that almost everyone is doing something every few weeks, not just the teacher's pets. It's kind of wonderful.
