Congregational meeting October 09

“The mission of the Church,” we are taught in the Anglican tradition, “is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” Honestly, I am hard pressed to explain exactly what this means and how it happens, but the second part of the teaching tells me exactly what to do: “The Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace and love.”

Our biggest project as a community of faith in the months ahead will be to focus on how Christ Church pursues its mission through prayer and worship. As Rector, a most important responsibility in the year ahead is to call a new director of music who will greatly shape our worship for years to come.

To know whom to call to offer music in our midst to the glory of God, we must strive for a common understanding of what we believe worship is, and will become, at Christ Church. To find consensus on such a lofty—and emotional—topic in a community as diverse as ours, will be no easy task. Most of us want our worship like we want a Whopper from Burger King: “My way!” We want worship in our church to be comfortable, familiar and accessible, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Still, it is Christ’s Church, not your church or mine. Christ Church has a mission pursued through prayer and worship. How will we pray and sing? Rather than debate how we want worship to describe us (low church/high church, traditional mu-sic/contemporary music, Morning Prayer/Holy Eucharist, adult-specific/child friendly) we must discern together how we hope worship will transform us so that we might be about the mission of the world’s transformation in Christ’s name.

So, we must be talking about worship in every corner of our common life—in meetings, at meals, in classes and in special gatherings. And we must share those conversations in larger gatherings.

I invite you to the first such larger gathering to share with each other about wor-ship at Christ Church on Saturday, October 10, from 8:30 to 11:30 AM. We will gather to worship, share about worship and learn from each other. Please let Cecilia Wagner know if you will be there.

Timothy Safford

The Christ Church Preservation Trust is a non-religious non-profit organization whose goal is the preservation of the historic Christ Church buildings and burial ground, and the interpretation of church history.

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