Consistency and Common Prayer (II)

7 February 2023

As well as in the text of prayers, there is great value in maintaining consistency in the style of worship offered on Sunday morning from week to week.

In 2005 Bob Jackson (The Road to Growth) identified what happens to churches that seek to please everyone by varying their style of worship Sunday by Sunday – they don’t grow. He offered as an extreme example the notice board for the mythical parish of “St Everywhere” which offered a completely different style of service for each Sunday of the month: Family Service with Sandpit, Solemn High Mass, ‘Old Hymns’ Songs of Praise, Extra-loud Eucharist with Rock Band and, rather pointedly, on the fifth Sunday of the month “Outdoors in the Graveyard”. The result of such an approach is inevitably the fragmentation of the congregation, with people choosing their preferred style of service, and coming monthly instead of weekly (assuming they could remember which Sunday of the month was “their” service.) Few parishes take things this far, but the “first Sunday of the month family service” and similar offerings have had the same effect in many places. Such an approach singles out a particular Sunday as being for a particular group of people (and therefore not for the rest, who consequently will often take the day off.)

Jackson’s counter-example, “St Wooldyed” basically offers exactly the same thing three times every Sunday – mass, mass or mass, taking the virtue of consistency so far that there is effectively only one way to worship in that parish. There can be too much of a good thing!  His gold standard is “All Saints”, which offers four different services each Sunday, each of which is in a different style and “does what it says on the tin.” (Road to Growth, pp.52-57.)

Not every parish has the resources to offer multiple services, but if parishes wish to attract a range of people then they either need a single service that is as close as possible to “one size fits all”, or else a range of services held every week that provide a different pathway. There is still scope for a monthly service to be held for a special purpose or particular demographic, but it should occur at a time when a weekly service is not held, or at the very least not at the time of the main or “flagship” service of the parish.

As well as the style of service, it is important to maintain consistent quality of content.

For example, January is the classic time for churches in Australia to scale things back – the choir “has a rest”, the post-service hospitality is wound back because Mrs Bloggs who coordinates the roster is at her beach house, teaching programmes take a break “because no one will come,” the evening service or early service is put into recess. (Presumably the people for whom the evening or early service is their regular one are all expected to attend at 10am, or to go away.) Whilst it is doubtless true that people need some time off, and that some key people might be away for a summer holiday, it is equally true that January is the classic “church shopping” time. Over the years I have lost count of the number of people who tested the waters by attending a Christmas service and being thoroughly drawn by it, only to turn up a second time on a Sunday in January to be utterly underwhelmed. To say nothing of those who take advantage of the closure of half their own parish programmes to sneak off and take a look elsewhere.

In one of my former parishes, even though some key people were always away we consciously tried to make January look as close as possible to “normal time.” But we varied it in one respect: we actually increased the level of post-service hospitality and welcome. Funnily enough, that parish gained new parishioners during January pretty much every year.

Consistency is attractive – and maintaining it helps parishes to grow.