“A”, not “The”

On an old I Love Lucy episode, the Ricardos and the Mertzes hired an English teacher to help them with their elocution. (Perhaps people did this sort of thing for fun in the 1950s?) At the start of his lesson, the teacher told them, “There are two words I want you never to use. One is swell and the other is lousy.” After taking a beat, William Frawley (Fred Mertz) replied with, “Well give us the lousy one first.”

Now, Reformed Liturgical Institute readers, there are two phrases I wish we would all delete from our vocabularies.

One is, “The Doxology,” and the other is “The Threefold Amen.”

Let’s take them up one at a time.

Doxology, as you no doubt know, means “a word of glory” or an expression of praise. As such, there is not merely one doxology.

An Instructed Liturgy

by John Allen Bankson 

I think it may be time for another instructed liturgy (or instructed Eucharist) at our church.

An instructed liturgy is something we do from time to time. It’s a chance to give the whys of what we do. I try to have one about once a quarter, especially for the benefit of visitors, but also for the young people in our church, and really for everyone else, because we can all slip into automatic pilot mode and forget why we are doing what we do.

I’ve noticed some churches, when they notice a lag in participation, try to solve the problem through punctuation, thus what I’ve dubbed the Seinfeld liturgy. I don’t think punctuation is the answer. I think information will do a lot more than punctuation. Hence the quarterly instructed liturgy.

How does it work? First, allow me to list our typical order of worship and mark those points in the service in which I insert some words of instruction when we do an instructed liturgy.

Entrance Rite
Voluntary
Votum
Sentences (Call to Worship)
Opening Hymn
Acclamation
Collect for Purity

Instruction: A few words about personal and corporate preparation for worship and why the Prayer of Confession (which comes next) is positioned so close to the beginning of our liturgy rather than later on. I also will say something about standing, sitting, kneeling, and lifting hands.