We attended the Parish Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. Worshipping in the congregation is less comfortable for me at the moment than celebrating, as a priest stands for most of the service! Even so, I appreciate more as I get older the sense of fellowship in worshipping among people, rather than leading them. There's an element of loneliness in leadership requiring a priest to be the voice of the whole praying community. One has a different relationship to 'The Fellowship of the Spirit' when out there at the front.
The liturgical structure of almost all churches, their architecture, the way we use the buildings to perform our rituals is theatrical in nature and quite hierarchical, we might say, by necessity. Even in far less formal acts of group worship, over time, a structure evolves that makes clear the distinction between the leaders and the led. It gets embodied in church architecture and furniture. But must it be like this? Must performers and performed always be separated for worship to work?
Certain kinds of experimental theatre explore the question of separation in their own context, as does the phenomenon of the 'flash mob'. Seemingly spontaneous, but brilliantly, quietly organised outbreaks of group singing and dancing in public places proves both powerful, entertaining and attractive to some, even if others are left bemused, and it breaks barriers between those who act and those who watch. The church doesn't often explore this possibility, with one notable exception.
I found myself remembering and reflecting on worship at Taizé today, with the community seated together, surrounded on all sides by worshippers. Leadership tasks and roles are well distributed, but despite an east end sanctuary and free standing altar, the conventional church 'tribune' layout, with presidential chair and/or pulpit is absent, there is just the free standing altar table, and it's only used briefly when clergy stand there to say the Eucharistic Prayer. It's the focal point for just as long as it's needed.
This change in liturgical design has proved possible to implement with large crowds of worshippers, thanks to the use of modern sound systems. Seeing the person is hardly important in comparison to hearing them attentively, and this experience is all-encompassing and independent of where people choose to sit.
There may be few or no seats in Taizé worship spaces, but the design is effectively implemented (given an appropriate sound system) in all kinds of sanctuary, ancient or modern, as witnessed to in the great Pilgrimage of Trust events around the world. Taizé continues to commend itself to rising generations of young people seeking faith. Perhaps this change in approach to how worship is offered could represent a paradigm shift in the life of the church whose significance would be far reaching eventually.
In my lifetime we've recovered a healthy sense of the importance of baptism in relation to our own discipleship and to the life of the church, as the source of our shared identity and purpose. We're learning how to share responsibilities in God's mission as equals, how to play our part in decision making and how our particular gifts can be exercised in serving others. We still rely on hierarchy, but as service to others, not as controlling or forming us in dependency.
Mutual interdependence of equally valued people is how we're learning to understand membership of Christ's Body, in a world where most are better educated and have unprecedented access to knowledge. Worship at Taizé expresses prophetically a transformation of human relationships in society and the church, made possible in this new era of communications and self-understanding. Movement towards achieving greater participation has been happening in a variety of ways in every form of worship over recent decades, but the manifestation of hierarchy still prevails, with the exception of Taizé.
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