Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The first light 2012 in Dunoon woomphs up: courtesy of goforchris on Flickr

That's the traditional cry in churches up and down the land as Easter Day finally arrives - with the response: 'He is risen indeed, Alleluia!' echoing back.

It's been a good Holy Week and Easter in the linked charges of Cowal and Bute. It's a week of hard work, lots of services, lots of themes and different encounters. Some churches (as I follow them on Twitter or 'like' them on Facebook) have a greater degree of formality. Latin phrases abound as the days of the week, wrapped in unreformed tradition, are played out. Devotional artwork is splashed all over the web, and in church buildings.

The usual slightly competitive edge also seems to appear when clergy blog or tweet or status update about these things. It may just be a desire to articulate that things have gone well (or otherwise) that makes people talk about numbers at services, or running out of hymn books, or all the rest of it. But it is not, in my humble opinion, very healthy to splash the pages of the service register for public display on the web.

Does that mean, Mr Swift (I imagine you say) that your Holy Week and Easter was a poor one? There you go - the desire to prove that we are doing a good job, it is growing, all is well - it can even dart out in the middle of a blog post about it actually being about our Lord and Him being risen!

My statistics I choose to share for this Holy Week and Easter:

Number of candle drip screens gone up in flames in services: 2

Number of tins of petrol consumed for 'first light': 1

Number of ecumenical services I nearly nodded off in: all of them (including my own ones)

Number of shoreline weddings: 1

Number of hours spent worrying about doctrinaire colleagues disapproving of shoreline wedding in Holy Week: 0

Number of business miles driven: 279

Number of business ferry rides: 10

(OK, those last two might be a little bit competitive, but I am a mere human!)

Number of last suppers, crucifixions, lights lit, alleluias shouted and empty tombs fled away from: the right number.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

That would be an ecumenical matter...

I have been reflecting much on a service that took place in the Scottish Episcopal church on Bute on Sunday. I have hesitated to say much about it, because I find clerical fascination with how worship goes can be quite unflattering and ungracious, especially when read by others in the same line.

But it was a wonderful evening.

It was a 'slightly' choral evensong - sung versicles and responses, and a taize 'anthem'. With a smattering of hymns, of generally rousing genre. It was 1929, in form, lectionary etc. The officiant shewed up in choir dress. All that sort of stuff.

...and the delight?

We ran out of orders of service, almost by half. Bad planning, of course.

...I found myself wondering if I should have pushed the structural engineer from Ayr harder to get on and survey the balcony before we squeezed so many folk into it.

...and the responses were sung loudly by baptists, catholics, presbyterians, a salvationist (Major Nessie!) and our smattering of piskies, old and new members alike.

It was a gorgeous evening of ecumenical worship, with ALL the church leaders of bute, bar none, all there with big smiles on their faces.

Dare one say it? Yes, one dares: Praise the Lord!

Deeply wa-a-a-iling...

We have an Advent Evensong in Holy Trinity Dunoon this weekend. Musical talent is being imported in to assist with the choral elements, a piece has been written especially and we (nearly) have the order of service ready to roll.

A reflection on my input to the process? I am sufficiently musically inept (and our organist more than sufficiently not so!) to not try and risk too strong an input there.

So the liturgy is mine.

Prayer Book evensong - as it done. The bits missed out that one misses out, the bits added in that one adds in. Download of the text to get it all started.

But a process is needed - which is a variant of one I still find myself doing regularly.

• Starting point: liturgy that I know pretty well


• Working point: modified, massaged and changed to work for the particular service in question.


• Pause


• Check for Scottish Episcopalian variations (e.g. how does 1929 vary from 1928/1662/CWO2trad).


• Go for it!

So Catholick becomes Catholic. An extra 'Let us pray' appears. Do they matter?

Well, yes, they do. Otherwise why does any of it matter?