Christchurch Parish News, August 2014
A reflection on the challenges of all-age worship.
Then and Now
When I was a child I remember being taught by my mother how to lay the table. She would patiently show me where the knives, forks and spoons were to go and in what order: smallest cutlery on the outside for the starters, largest on the inside for the main course, with a spoon and fork positioned above for pudding (I remember often being confused as to where to put the fish knives). The plates were warmed, the candles were lit and the wine was decanted. Above all, no one was allowed to start until my mother had finally sat down at the table and taken a hurried sip of wine. Then, and only then, would my father give the nod for us to begin.
Looking back from a distance of more than thirty years, it now seems all so very formal. Especially as this was not just the ritual for Sunday lunch. It was the same for our midweek evening meals as well; three courses every time, the only difference being the location. Sunday lunch took place in the dining room, whilst every other meal was eaten at the long, pine table in the kitchen.
Over the years, however, things started to change. Sometime in the early 80s, the decision was made that Sunday lunch would now be eaten in the kitchen, primarily in order that the dining room could then become a second living room and squabbles as to what we were all going to watch on TV could be averted. But that was not the most seismic change to occur. One evening it was announced that there was no need to lay the table as were not going to have dinner in the kitchen. We were going to have it instead in the sitting room. Not only that, we were going to eat dinner on our laps (actually, it was on trays with many a strategically positioned napkin)! This was so that we could watch the TV whilst we were eating together; or, to be more precise, so that my father could watch TV whilst we were eating together.
The inevitable informality that came with struggling to eat spaghetti bolognese on a tray in the sitting room without spraying it over the sofa started to have an effect on how formal were our regular evening meals in the kitchen. The table was still laid, but over time the atmosphere slowly changed. We had always had music playing in the background on the stereo whilst we ate but hitherto it had strictly been only classical music, and almost always Mozart. But then, ever so often, my father started to put on music that was slightly more contemporary: Ella Fitzgerald, for example, singing from the Cole Porter songbook. Or even a musical, like My Fair Lady, whereupon dinner would be interrupted by impromptu reenactments as we all sang along with Stanley Holloway imploring us to “pull out the stopper, let’s have a whopper, but get me to the church on time.” And then dinner would resume.
This trend towards ever greater informality continued over the years as the number of people eating at the table fluctuated. One by one as children we left home and as adults we returned, in time bringing home with us our own children. Now when we visit my mother, my father having passed away, and we all eat together, there is a 70 year difference in age between the youngest and the eldest person sitting at the table. Not that the youngest stays sitting for very long, mind you. But my mother is ‘cool’ with that. What matters most for all of us, her included, is that we eat together and the easier we can make it for all of us to do that the better. We still lay the table, of course, but now, instead of my mother preparing three courses, we eat a fish ‘n chips take away with a bottle of white, which isn’t decanted of course. A bottle of Coke now also sits on the table for the children, which would never have been allowed when I was a child! Before the beginning of the meal, after a flurry of crisps, iPhones and iPads are put to one side, only to sneak back under the table as the dinner proceeds. Sometimes now even my mother brings out her iPad to show us a YouTube clip as we eat.
In many ways, it’s a world away from the family meals we had when I was a child. In other ways it’s just the same. We still eat together, though the conversation is definitely louder. We still laugh and we still on occasion cry. Nonetheless, through all of the changes, the sharing of our lives over the family meal continues.
The Challenge
Why describe these changes to you? The reason is actually quite simple. Over this last year since the decision was made to close the Second Sunday service and begin a new once-a-month Parish Eucharist in its place, I have often found myself reflecting on the challenges and opportunities that all-age worship presents us with through the prism of sharing a family meal. There are many similarities as well as obvious dissimilarities. In the second half of this article, I want to explore some of them with you, not with the aim of reaching any conclusions as to what should specifically be done next but with the hope of contributing to the broader discussion by providing a framework for thinking things through. Whether you agree or not with what follows, if it helps sharpen your own reflections, then it will have served its purpose. Finally, as we proceed I’m going to jump back and forth between talking about the Eucharist and the family meal without always signalling clearly that I’m doing so, partly because that will just slow down the flow of my argument, but also partly I want deliberately blur the lines for reasons that will become clear.
All-age worship is undoubtedly tricky. Gathering together to worship in a way that is meaningful for both young and old and those in between is not simple. Jump back to the family meal: does everyone have to eat fish fingers and chips with copious quantities of tomato ketchup, including Grandma? Or should the children be expected to eat the sea bass and jolly well learn to cope with the bones? But hang on, don’t we want the children to learn that there are better things to eat in this world than fish fingers? Of course we do, and so we have to introduce them to the joys of Dover sole and sea bass, taking our time to show them how to fillet the fish properly. The family meal is the occasion where we can do that, with the older and more experienced member of the family leaning over and patiently showing the younger one (who is full of trepidation and who has most likely has already pushed the plate away with a resolute ‘Yuk!’) how to flake the fish meat gently away from the bone.
So learning simply how to eat and the joys of eating are some of the things that we do when we eat a family meal together. Similarly, they’re some of the things we are doing when we worship together as a church family. We aren’t born as Christians knowing how to worship corporately. We have to learn how to do it. And much of it is obviously learnt simply by imitation. But sometimes, we need to explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Why do we stand for this bit but sit for others. Why do we kneel quietly one moment but move around shaking hands the next? If we’re practised at it, we take it all for granted in the same way that we know which knife and fork to use when eating the fish starter, but when the children of our church family are worshipping with us for the whole service, this is all new to them and so we need to take the time to explain the whys and the hows of what we do.
But when the family all eats together it’s almost inevitable that it’s going to be a more informal affair. All of us will be aware of how many areas of life have become less formal over the last few decades, and table manners are no exception. Some of us will feel uneasy about this, seeing such changes as being just one more indication of how society and its moral values are in decline. But I would suggest that just in the same way that if we want the youngest members of our family to feel comfortable about and look forward to eating with their grandparents around the family table, the grandparents will need to recognise that the children cannot be expected to behave as if they were children in the 50s or early 60s. This is not to say, however, that it is reasonable for the children to behave at the family meal as they do when they are eating tea at a friend’s birthday party, with all the noise and ruckus that entails. But the family meal where the children are welcome and feel relaxed and so are able to enjoy the meal itself is for sure going to be a noisier, less formal affair. The same applies, I would argue, when we worship together at the Eucharist and if the atmosphere is one of pursed-lipped disapproval or frankly open irritation at our worship being spoiled by all the noise these children are making (it wasn’t like that in my day etc.), the children will soon realise that for all the talk of the their being the future of the church, that in fact they are not really welcome, at least not here and now as they are, full of energy and finding it hard to sit still. Long-term it is hard to see how they will not soon associate worship, which much of the church year should be full of joy and gratitude, with being a dreary obligation that they will shirk as soon as given half-the-chance when they begin to grow up. “Oh, do I have to go to grandma’s for lunch/church for worship? I’m really backed up on my revision and my exams are coming up in the summer… / Mum, I’ve got football training and coach said if I miss another practice session …” Likewise, Grandma, at the prospect of yet another noisy meal of the same old pizza and chips, picks up the phone and says, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry my dear. I’ve not had the best of nights so if you don’t mind, I think I might on this occasion just give Sunday lunch/worship a miss.” And so with a well-chosen excuse on either side, both generations drift away.
By this point, you’ve probably got the gist of what I’m saying. If you have the time, you might like to have a second read of the first half of this article and think about how the family meal sheds light on how we understand our all-age act of worship as there are many other correlations which I haven’t covered but it’ll be more fun for you to explore them by yourselves, and in conversation with others, too, I hope, as there are many I haven’t even touched on. But before you do, I’d like to close with a few words about something that’s been implicit throughout this brief discussion.
Compromise is often viewed in this context as a watering down, something which frustrates both sides and leaves all concerned dissatisfied (funnily enough watering down was exactly what my father used to do with the wine he would serve us at the family meal when we were young). But, as many have pointed out1, if you take the word ‘compromise’ apart, its roots tell a different story which may open up a space that is more hopeful. Compromise is made up of two parts, com- and promise. Literally it means to promise together, as in promising to submit together to an agreement reached or arbitrated by a third party. So underpinning any compromises we may reach when it comes to a family meal or to an act of all-age worship, is a promise we make to each other. One might even say a covenant. The theological implications hardly need spelling out. Just as Our Lord has made His promise of steadfast love known to us, ‘Remember, I am with you always’ (Matt 28:20), and makes Himself known to us in the breaking of the bread and wine at the Eucharist, so we too are called to a steadfast love of our brothers and sisters in our church family. Young and old.
But it doesn’t end there, of course. Just as the word compromise is made up of two parts, so too is the word promise itself. Its roots lie in the old word pro-mittere, which means to be sent forth. And that is what we are, we are sent forth into the world. For we don’t only eat with our families, we also go out from our homes and we eat with our friends, with our neighbours and with those with whom we work and spend our times of leisure. We also sit down and eat with those whom we’ve never met before, be it squeezed in at the end of a table with a family on holiday in a crowded motorway service station, be it sitting down next to someone all alone in a busy café in town. And when we do, what we eat and how we eat says much about not only us as individuals but about our family and the upbringing that has shaped us, too. In a similar way, after we have worshipped together, the way all of us, both young and old and those in between, go out into the world and live our lives says much not only about ourselves, but also, and more importantly, it can speak volumes about the One who lovingly sends us out, who accompanies and sustains us on our journeys, and who welcomes us, arms open-wide, to the banquet at our journey’s end.