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Have confidence that liturgy is missional

by
18 October 2024

It is not necessary to dispense with inherited traditions to attract children and young people, argues Daniel Sandham

AMONG the various bullet points in parish profiles and clerical advertisements often lurks an aspiration that that the new rector or vicar “will maintain our traditional worship while finding new ways to attract and engage children and young families” (or words to that effect). It is, no doubt, well-intended, but it makes my heart sink.

First, there is the implication that traditional worship belongs to yesterday’s Church: that it is something to be tolerated, or even endured, until the oldies die out. It is the yet untried initiatives that will bring growth. (And the new incumbent is going to have to maintain the old and start the new, potentially with fewer resources than their predecessors.)

But there is a much more fundamental problem with this statement, which pervades so much thinking about worship: it conflates the Church’s liturgical ministry with its evangelistic ministry. It assumes that worship is primarily an evangelistic tool, or a means of getting people through the door.

The problem with this is that worship then becomes chiefly an exercise in attracting people — or, worse still, entertaining them. The starting point for those planning and leading worship becomes “What will make people come to this service?” or “What will engage them?” These are not bad questions to ask, but they are not the questions that should inspire the Church’s worship.

Evelyn Underhill defined worship as “the response of the creature to the Eternal”. The worship of the Church on earth is a reflection and a fragment of the worship that God is offered in heaven. Underhill says that it is “the ceaseless self-offering of the Church, in and with Christ her head, to the increase of the glory of God”. Richard Giles writes, almost a century later, that worship is where “we stand at the gate of heaven, handling holy things, and touching the eternal mystery”. Worship must start, then, with God. The question that we should be asking is “How does this liturgy, in this particular context, give God glory?”


THERE has, for some time, been a deepening crisis of confidence in the Church’s liturgy. Those who lead worship often do so without sufficient formation and training. Some are paralysed by self-consciousness, often leading to unhelpful improvisation and over-explanation. There is not the confidence to let the texts of the liturgy and the actions that accompany them speak for themselves.

Giles’s At Heaven’s Gate, along with Dowler and Clover’s An Everlasting Gift, Gordon-Taylor and Jones’s Celebrating the Eucharist, and Simon Reynolds’s Table Manners, all published since the advent of Common Worship, have sought to address these needs. Excellent though they are, I suspect that those who are most needful of them have neither the time nor the disposition to read them.

What, then, of evangelism? I am not for a moment deploring the “new ways to attract and engage”. This is not a dig at Fresh Expressions, or at any particular church tradition. On the contrary, in an increasingly secularised society, there will be many for whom the Church and the Christian faith need to be introduced in new and creative ways. Inevitably, there will be those for whom liturgical texts and ancient rituals will — at first, at least — be a turn-off.

I worry, however, that too many “new ways” are divorced from the Church’s inherited traditions. Unless there is a clear discipleship trajectory, we are simply creating revolving doors of initiatives. And what if someone wanders away from church life and then seeks to return, or just moves to a different area? Will they recognise what they encounter in another parish?


THE answer might be found in the reclaiming of our inherited traditions. What I find most grating about the statement with which I began is the implication that traditional worship and young people are mutually exclusive. Notwithstanding the distinction that I have made between worship and evangelism, worship that starts with God can be — indeed, by its very nature, is — missional. Liturgy that is celebrated confidently, competently, and authentically, with a deep sense of being in the presence of God, is profoundly attractive.

Moreover, traditional worship contains much that can invite and attract children. Participation is possible through serving at the altar, reading, leading intercessions, singing in the choir. In too many churches, the very young occupy a “children’s corner” where, with no sightlines to the liturgical action, it is no wonder that they become a distraction. When invited to kneel at the altar rail during the Eucharistic Prayer, they are drawn into the mystery of the liturgy, often providing an example of adoration to the adults behind them. It is to such as these, after all, that the Kingdom belongs.

The liturgy of the Church, shaped over two millennia, is a precious and sacred gift from God, by which we give him glory and enter into the mystery of salvation. Too often, we treat it like the awkward uncle at a wedding. Instead, we have an opportunity to invite those who already come to our churches, and those who do not, to step on to the threshold of eternity and to linger there in a spirit of adoration.

Orientating our worship to God, rediscovering our confidence in the liturgy, and understanding the liturgy’s appeal to young and old alike, we may just find that the old ways are the best.

The Revd Daniel Sandham is the Vicar of St Paul’s, Winchmore Hill, in the diocese of London.

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