[Magdalen] opening churches

[Roger Stokes]

Grace,

I think it wise to vet the sermons beforehand. As for the background for 
a Zoom service you need a plain surface to serve as a "green screen". I 
don't think it needs to be green but it does need to be plain as I 
discovered when I tried to have a fake background. I'm thinking of 
trying a sheet draped over a clothes airer just behind my chair if we 
have another Maddies Zoom listmeet but I will try it before.

Like you I would find the idea of celebrating the Eucharist but nobody, 
not even the person presiding, partaking, unsatisfactory in the extreme. 
It seems to me to be also theologically unsound. Basically it's saying 
"I am consecrating these elements to be the Body and Blood of Christ for 
us but none of us can partake of them".

Roger

On 05/07/2020 17:39, Grace Cangialosi wrote:
> First of all, with regard to the sermon, I absolutely agree that it needs to be relevant, both to the external situation and to the particular context of the congregation. When I pastored two small mountain mission churches and went on vacation, I tried at first to use sermons from a service provided by the national church. But they were totally irrelevant to our situation, and since a whole year was given at once, they couldn’t address current issues.  So I ended up having to write my own sermons and leave them for Morning Prayer.
>
> All of that being said, the sermons our diocese is providing are being done by one of the bishops or diocesan staff and are very current. We only get them the week before the Sunday they are to be given, and I preview them. I just figured out last week how to actually plug them into Zoom. I’ve listened to some of the others, and the quality is mixed. There was one a couple of weeks ago that I thought was pretty weak, and I wouldn’t have used it.
>
> As to doing the service from my kitchen, it’s the room with the most light, and I’ve put a cross and a lovely picture on the wall behind me. This week I’m going to try for a fake background, hopefully using a picture of the inside of the church.
>
> Rolls sound lovely, but I’m only using the Liturgy of the Word portion of the service of Eucharist, through the peace. Then I’m essentially doing the last part of Morning Prayer with the Lord’s Prayer, a few prayers from the BCP, one of the general thanksgiving prayers, Blessing and a Dismissal. It makes the service short, depending on the length of the readings, but without music it’s just not a long service.
>
> We are allowed to do the full Eucharist if there is another person present for the consecration, but then we have to use the prayer for a Spiritual Communion and we are asked not to receive the elements, since no one else can. That’s the way they’re doing it at the National Cathedral, and I find it very unsatisfactory, so I’m not doing it that way.
>
>> On Jul 5, 2020, at 11:29 AM, Roger Stokes via Magdalen <magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>>
>> Grace,
>>
>> I have long felt that a sermon should consider the context in which it is delivered, i.e. be relevant to the congregation. Decades ago I was in a diocese where the Suffragan "guided by the Spirit" was known to deliver basically the same sermon whatever the context with a minor variation according to whether it was a confirmation or the institution of a new priest. It was a joke around the diocese until I wrote to him to say that I felt his normal confirmation sermon was not appropriate for the congregation I was serving then. That must be a problem for anybody recording a sermon to be played back for congregations up and down the land.
>>
>> When you said you deliver the service from your kitchen the naughty side of me wondered about having some fresh-baked rolls which you take out of the oven at the start of the service and then use for the sacrament of the table. (When I was at university we had a roll for communion in the college chapel.) The kitchen would also be a suitable venue for a week when the Gospel admonishes us to be like the leaven which leavens the whole dough. That would go down well with Zoom and a "here's one I made earlier" bit.
>>
>> Roger
>>
>>> On 05/07/2020 15:07, Grace Cangialosi wrote:
>>> We are allowed to have outdoor worship with no more than 50 people, masks,
>>> no group singing and no sharing of communion.  Some churches are doing
>>> this, some aren't.  We aren't, for a variety of reasons.  Churches may also
>>> record or stream services from their buildings with no more than the
>>> numbers necessary to do that.  We don't have the technology for that.
>>> I'm still doing services on Zoom from my kitchen.  Last week and this I've
>>> patched in sermons by our bishop and another staff member.  They're
>>> offering us one each week as a break from preaching, if we want. I'm not
>>> going to make a habit of that, but it was nice to have a couple weeks'
>>> break from preaching. I'd only missed one week of preaching since December,
>>> except Easter, when I sent everyone to the Cathedral website and went there
>>> myself.