Worship Innovation Team

The Worship Team is focused on creating dynamic and meaningful worship services. Sometimes that means shaking things up! Here are a few of the worship innovations and accomplishments from 2005:

Bonjour, Buenos Dias, and Buongiorno! Our Pentecost service featured parishioners speaking the lesson in multiple languages!
Aztec Dancers at The Rev. JJ Bernal’s Ordination service: do you remember all the energy, strong rhythms, bilingual sermons and a recessional that spilled out into a big party?!?
New, creative liturgies like the Oral History presentation and the Christmas Pageant with youth and children performing the Christmas story.

In addition to these dynamic new forms of worship, ideas now under consideration include:

Establish a drama team to work on dramatizing/storytelling the liturgies, and perhaps hire professional actors for Palm Sunday reading of the Passion.
Add a Mary Magdalene/Women's service, close to July 22, near her feast day.
Add one extra-biblical reading each Sunday. It will replace either the Old Testament or Epistle reading and support the theme of that week's gospel.
As soon as possible, we want to begin telling the gospel story instead of reading it.
Creative experimentation, have the clergy sit in the congregation, move up to do prayers and Communion, then return to the congregation.
Have the kids in church every Sunday.
Fine-tune the role of music in our services:

Feature instruments in addition to the organ.
Include more peace music/folk music.
Try new music.
Have the Choir sing an anthem for a processional.
Consider the possibility of shortening congregational hymns to fit the length of the action happening (offertory, processional, recessional, etc.) or reduce the number of hymns overall.

Simple Anglican Chant, where the congregation learns it, either in whole or just for antiphons.
Begin exploring changes for Summer 2006: moving the gospel and sermon to after the service/small group discussion as coffee hour.

While this team explores innovation, creativity and meaning, it follows some important guiding principles for making changes in the liturgy:

Stay in touch with who we are, but update our worship methods. For example: keep Anglican Chant, but make it contemporary, keep the Liturgy of the Word but adding extra-biblical readings.
Changes must be "owned" by the worship team, and not do "violence" to the rest of the parish.
Energy levels must be high, even if the service is quiet.
Changes in the liturgy and worship at All Saints, if done thoughtfully and well, are generally well received at the 10:30 service.

If you’re interested in helping shape All Saints’ worship, contact Father Rob.