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 [...]
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 pucntuation is the answer. I think information will do a lot more than punctuation. Hence the quarterly instructed liturgy.
