DRAFTING eucharistic prayers aimed at teenagers would be a waste of time and effort, the Synod was told on Thursday afternoon last week: the existing prayers could be explained, and new ones intended to reflect youth culture would look dated by the time they could be authorised. The Synod rejected a diocesan-synod motion on the subject by passing to next business.
Introducing the debate on behalf of the Peterborough diocese, Canon David Bird (Peterborough) said that he had a background in youth work, and was currently the vicar of a church with a large number of children and young people. There was a clear need for liturgies and eucharistic prayers composed for use with young people.
The time had come, he said, to draw on experience and to recognise that young people were in the mainstream of the Church’s life — to quote from what the Synod had agreed in 2002 — “to enable more young people to have experience of worship within an Anglican context”. At present, there was no gathered information on collection of good material and what worked. “Let’s collate it and put it into one volume on the internet.”
The Revd Dr Tim Stratford (Liverpool) said that he was a team rector with multiple congregations of young people, young families, church schools, and fresh expressions of worship. It was just the sort of setting that the motion addressed. But while welcoming the sentiment of the motion, he hoped it would not be carried. It asked for more eucharistic prayers. At present, there were 13 available. Were more really necessary?
Supporting the motion, the Archdeacon of Peterborough, the Ven. Christine Allsopp, said that she had been disappointed by the response of the Liturgical Commission that there was “no evidence” that teenagers could not understand the language of the liturgy. She believed there was no lack of evidence that it was not suitable for young teenagers, so many of whom were lost to the Church in the first year or so of their secondary school. “Not only how we worship, but the words themselves are important,” she said. Liturgy was about doctrine, and “for Anglicans what the words say are what we believe, and it is essential to get it right.”
For churches to continue to use material that was not authorised, even though it drew in young people, put archdeacons like herself in a very difficult position. There were good sources for school worship and in fresh expressions, but because the drafting of liturgical text was laborious and considered, it was not deemed essential for young people. Perhaps, she suggested, when the Liturgical Commission were out and about they might see some of the unauthorised texts in use and consider them worthy of consideration.
The Revd Andrew Dow (Gloucester) said that a prayer was more than mere words or a learning experience. It should be an encounter with the living God; so the context was as important as the words. Because of the rapid change in youth culture, there was a danger that the prayers would be “fossils” before they were printed.
He wanted enough flexibility so that the incumbent, the youth leaders, “or even the young themselves can compose their own eucharistic prayers”.
Catherine Wiltshire (St Edmundsbury & Ipswich) had met hundreds of able and articulate and spiritually aware young people who did not need the eucharistic prayers watered down for them. This was surely a teaching opportunity instead: studying, engaging with the detail. She did not see how having special eucharistic prayers would help. Culture changed rapidly: fashion, music, language soon dated. Concentrate on developing teaching about, and guidance on, worship, and a deeper understanding of the faith, she urged. It was important to do things with young people rather than to them.
Canon Carl Turner (Exeter) said that culture changed so fast that writing special prayers would take so much time to do that people, especially young people, would ask who this was meant for. Creative work could be done with young people: they were not interested in “synodical formation of eucharistic texts”. Synod would be “embarking on a slow boat to irrelevance” if it passed this motion.
Rachel Jepson (Birmingham) moved to next business.
The motion cannot now be brought back in the lifetime of the Synod.
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