This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, the gateway out of Eastertide and into the long green growing season of Ordinary Time, which will last until Advent. As has been the pattern, we are changing up our liturgical pieces with the change in liturgical seasons. Because Ordinary Time is so long we will be breaking it up into two blocks: May-August and September-November.
For this first block, we are moving back into the Book of Common Prayer with Eucharistic Prayer A. Our service music will shift too, to what are hopefully familiar and singable settings, and we’ll be using the piano a lot more. We will return to speaking the Lord’s Prayer rather than singing it.
Since change is in the air, we thought we’d move the chairs in church too! No, that’s not a joke. But it hopefully also won’t feel like a big shock. To create a more intimate feeling over the summer months we’ve shifted the chairs from straight rows angled forward, to curved rows angled forward. They kind of look and feel like an embrace.
The other change is that the baptismal font is now at the back, rather than the center of the carpets in the center aisle. One of the things we talked about in the Episcopal 101 series is that how a sacred space is set up is a theological statement. By putting the font there, what we are creating is a space where the two great sacraments of the church – baptism (font) and Eucharist (altar) – are the visual anchors at the front and back of the gathered community. The lectern where the Prayers of the People are read is now more central in the aisle.
I invite you to try on these shifts over the next few months. See what you notice, pay attention to what feels good and to what feels perhaps uncomfortable. Encounter Christ in community no matter what. And if you have questions or reflections you’d like to share, drop me a line so we can set up a time to chat.
Yours in God’s peace,
Kristin+