Observations on a Baptism

A charming little boy, Emerson Paul Goerk, was baptized at the 10:45 service Sunday. It was not a
traditional day for baptisms, of course, but that no longer seems to be a consideration at St. Paul’s.

The “Additional Directions” regarding Baptism on page 312 of the BCP begins with the following paragraph:

Holy Baptism is especially appropriate at the Easter Vigil, on the Day of Pentecost, on All Saints’ Day or the Sunday after All Saints’ Day, and on the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord (the First Sunday after the Epiphany). It is recommended that, as far as possible, Baptisms be reserved for these occasions or when a bishop is present.

I have advocated that we try harder to confine baptisms to the recommended occasions, but my suggestions have not been well received.

There are several improvements we could make to our baptisms, most of which used to be standard practice at St. Paul’s.

We used to indicate in the bulletin that flash photography is forbidden during the service. This admonition is unnecessary for ordinary services, but it is relevant to weddings and baptisms. I don’t think that this forgotten rule was violated Sunday, but it surely has been recently.

We used to have two spotlights aimed at the pulpit and two aimed at the font. In past times, these spots were lit only when highlighting was needed. Changing lighting treatments during a service is no longer practiced at St. Paul’s. Moreover, the four spots are no longer aimed where they used to be. They all seem to be more or less aimed at the altar. Someone actually asked me the last time we had a baptism why the font was so dark. This is why.

We used to begin a service with the cover atop the font. The celebrant lifted the cover before water was poured. The effect was dramatic. Like most other drama at St. Paul’s this little act has been eliminated. The font cover is lifted from the font before the service begins and is only returned to its resting position after the service is over.

There is one practice that I would like to see that, so far as I know, has never been the practice at our church. A baptism is a significant event in the life of a person and a family. The bulletin should clearly and conspicuously announce the names of those being baptized. Worshipers want to know, and the bulletin becomes a keepsake. As a keepsake, it would be thoughtful if the name or names of baptismal candidates were more than just small footnotes in the bulletin. One had to read the last sentence of the Prayer List on Sunday—the last sentence in the bulletin, actually—to learn that Emerson was being baptized. Additionally, the event of Baptism and the actual person or persons being initiated into Christ’s Church, should be worked into the sermon. This is an important event. We should act like it is.

The cover of Sunday’s bulletin is shown above. Ideally, the baptism of Emerson should have been announced on this page, though the objection will be raised that the same bulletin is used for the Saturday and 8 AM Sunday service. If we eliminated the advertising about how great we are on the cover, Emerson could have been given a square inch or two. Wouldn’t that be thoughtful—welcoming, even?

Why Can’t I Get My Messenger Sooner

I received my copy of The Messenger today. No doubt, I would have received it in the mail earlier were I still living near St. Paul’s. The real question, however, is not how I can get it faster through the mail, but why is the parish newsletter not available on the Web. The Messenger used to appear on the parish Web site, but it hasn’t done so for a very long time. Moreover, I don’t remember having ever been given the option of receiving my newsletter as a PDF file via e-mail. Many smaller, seemingly less sophisticated churches offer one or both of those options. Why not St. Paul’s? Not only could this be more convenient for parishioners, but it could also save the church money on postage. The effort on the part of the staff would be minimal.

Welcoming perhaps, but not helpful

Where Are the Vestry Minutes?

We’re now a week away from hearing from Vestry candidates and two weeks away from voting for four new Vestry members. Unfortunately, it has become harder and harder to find out just what the Vestry is doing. In times past, The Messenger carried highlights of Vestry actions, and, also in the past, the newsletter was available on the parish Web site. Both traditions are no more.

I’m sure that few parishioners know about it, but Vestry minutes are posted on the bulletin board outside the church office. This is another tradition that seems to have fallen by the wayside. The most recent Vestry minutes posted there are from July 2014. I am assured, however, that the Vestry has continued to meet since last summer.

Apparently, church leaders don’t think it important that parishioners know what the Vestry is up to, and parishioners have given no reason for them to think otherwise.

How do we select among Vestry candidates if we have no idea what the Vestry has been up to?

The Importance of Worshiip

Kazimierz Bem has written an thought-provoking essay titled “Christianity Cannot Survive the Decline in Worship.” The essay argues for the primacy of worship and the need to resist pressures to scale it back—particularly to make it briefer—and to emphasize good works in the community to the detriment of worship.

When I was on the Worship Commission, I think that St. Paul’s considered splendid worship as its special mission. Even then, I worried that worship needed to be balanced with God’s work in the world.

Read the Bem essay and see what message you see for our parish.

More on Our New Sign

After a number of complaints—mine was probably the least of them—St. Paul’s revised its sign message about being a welcoming church to a message a bit less arrogant. The original message was

The Most
WELCOMING
Church
for All

The current message is below.(When I wrote down the message, I failed to note line breaks and capitalization. Thus, the formatting shown may not be exactly what is on the sign.)

A Most
WELCOMING
Church
for All

Not really a big revision, is it? We have toned down the suggestion of our unique virtue, though we have retained “for all,” suggesting that other churches are more selective in their hospitality.

My personal preference would be to stick with the tried and true:

The
EPISCOPAL
CHURCH
Welcomes You

This message is more personal and doesn’t besmirch the competition. If we do want to emphasize that all are welcome, we could use a message that Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh has used on buttons:

The
EPISCOPAL
CHURCH
Welcomes All

PEP even has buttons with this message I suspect it would be willing to donate.

In any case, I don’t know exactly how to fit messages on our sign. We still have not figured out how to display reasonably legible letters. For example, “8,” as in “8:45,” is pretty much an unreadable blob. How much money did we pay for this? I suspect the problem here is with the software, rather than the hardware. Either we don’t know how to use it, or it simply sucks. There ought to be a fix, and we ought to be insistent on finding it.
 

Lessons & Music

The 10:45 service on the First Sunday after Christmas was described as “Lessons & Music,” which has become our usual label for a version of “A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols,” the service made famous by King’s College Cambridge. The King’s College service is always held on Christmas Eve. Because I had listened to the service on the radio and had experienced a version of it at Christ Church, Indiana, that same evening, I was more attentive than usual to details of the service that St. Paul’s does the Sunday after Christmas. That service is largely the responsibility of the music department, and choir members read all but the final lesson, which is read by the rector. (At King’s College, the final lesson is read by the provost, who, as best I can tell, is the analogue of an American college president.)

Doug always distributes the readings to choir members, but it seems that every year there is some confusion about what readers say before and after their passage of scripture. I had been assigned the first reading, so I couldn’t simply rely on doing whatever the previous reader did, so I decided that we couldn’t go wrong by following King’s College. As you can see from the service bulletin (see link above), each passage is described briefly, and the lesson is concluded with “Thanks be to God.”

I prepared a handout with all the lesson descriptions and the instruction about how the readings should be concluded. When I saw the St. Paul’s bulletin, however, I discovered that (1) we were only reading six lessons, and (2) the bulletin included descriptions of the passages. Our descriptions differed from those I had compiled, but they were serviceable, so I told readers to preface their readings with the descriptions from the bulletin. This worked out fine.

I suppose that, in previous years, I concentrated on what the choir had to sing and somehow missed the fact that we read fewer than nine lessons. I was aware of a fundamental problem with the service, however. It is not a communion service, and, if done at a time when people would normally expect communion—on Christmas Eve or on a Sunday morning—this is something of a problem, however beautiful the service is. Some years ago, we just did our version of the King’s College service, and I felt ambivalent because of the lack of communion. Now, apparently, we shorten the special service and tack on communion at the end. In fact, on Sunday, the service ended earlier than usual.

So what have we cut from the English model? St. Paul’s dropped the reading from Isaiah 11 (no rod out of the stem of Jesse), the second lesson from Luke 2 (no shepherds), and the lesson from Matthew 2 (no wise men, either). You can decide for yourself how essential these readings are.

I have always wondered, by the way, why we insist on calling the service “Lessons & Music,” rather than “Lessons & Carols.” Arguably, all the music paired with the lessons are carols. (Well, I suppose the duet from Vivaldi’s “Gloria” is not actually a carol, but that’s only one ringer.)

Anyway, the service largely went smoothly, although I did have a slight problem. I had misplaced the copy of the lesson (Genesis 3:8–15, 17–19) that Doug had given me at our last rehearsal. When I asked Doug on Sunday morning if I could have another copy, he said he didn’t have one and suggested that I could simply read from a Bible. Happily, I had a backup plan. I had taken my tablet to church and was prepared to read the lesson from my copy of the NRSV on the device. This worked well—almost. In walking to the pulpit, I did not keep my tablet upright, and, when I placed it on the lectern, the device had rotated the text from portrait to landscape orientation. (I had not thought to  lock the display.) I read the introduction to my lesson and turned the tablet 90 degrees. Unfortunately, it seemed to take forever to redraw the screen in portrait mode. I’m sure everyone was wondering why I had inserted such a long pause. I hope I made up for any discomfort I caused by reading the passage reasonably well.

You may have noticed that we did not read Genesis: 3:16. This verse was not omitted by King’s College, although I did do a double take when I heard it on the radio. When I saw that it was not part of the first lesson, I knew immediately why. Here it is from the NRSV:

To the woman he said,
   “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing;
      in pain you shall bring forth children,
   yet your desire shall be for your husband,
      and he shall rule over you.”

The verse is a feminist’s nightmare, but its omission is almost as problematic as its inclusion. Beginning in verse 14, God addresses the serpent after the forbidden fruit is eaten. God addresses the woman in verse 16. God address the man beginning in verse 17. By omitting verse 16, it seems that God is ignoring Eve, who is, after all, an important player in this little drama. God’s ignoring Eve hardly advances the cause of gender equality.

The choir readers were on board with how the lessons were to be read. No one spoke to Lou, however. I assumed I was not going to convince him to do what everyone else was doing unless it suited him. We hoped that he would observe what we did and choose to read the final lesson in like manner. That didn’t happen. He cited the passage and ignored its description. He ended with “The Word of the Lord,” to which the congregation duly responded with “Thanks be to God.” Sigh.

Do We Welcome LGBTQ People?

The image below shows both sides of a cardstock handout from Integrity Pittsburgh that I was given at last month’s diocesan convention. (Sorry about the crease. I had to fold the card to put it into my pocket.)

I am told that the Integrity chapter contacted every church in the diocese to ask if the church wanted to be listed on the card. Why is St. Paul’s, Mt. Lebanon, not listed. If we are such a welcoming church, shouldn’t we stand with Calvary, Redeemer, St. Brendan’s and other diocesan churches? Perhaps this is a question you should ask our leaders.

Click on the image for a larger view.