We vary our worship from time to time to give it a fresh hearing, to approach God with a renewed perspective. Changes can be distracting initially. So we do not make constant changes. Rather we vary styles by season.

The ancient liturgy remains constant in its shape: Word, Prayer, Sacrament. What changes is the style: musical responses, ways of saying the Psalm, form of Prayers of the People, Eucharistic prayer.

For summer we have used Eucharistic Prayer C. It is a participatory prayer for consecrating the bread and the wine. This form of the prayer is a call and response. The prayer sets salvation history in the creation of the cosmos and contains one of the most powerful challenges given to us who come to receive communion:

“Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.”

We will say the Psalm responsively, alternating by half verse. This method of reading accentuates a feature of Psalm verses. They are written as a call and response. The second half of each verse of a Psalm responds the first half in one of three ways; It restates the thought, completes the thought, or makes an answer to the thought. Alternating by half verse lets us really hear this aspect of the Psalms.

For our service music we will be making use of some options from Wonder, Love, and Praise. We will singing the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) to an American folk tune called “Land of Rest”. We probably best know the tune from singing “I Come With Joy To Meet My Lord”. Our fraction anthem, after the breaking of the bread, will be familiar Taizé song, “Taste and See”.

For Prayers of the People we will be using Form IV. We continue our effort to encourage each other to name our prayer needs in the silences. We distribute a prayer list each week encouraging the people of the church to take it and use it in our daily prayers. Rather that reading the list during our prayers as a check list, we encourage the congregation to add prayers during the silences. The intention is to be more meditative and graceful in our approach to prayer.

It is summer and we take a more languid stance toward life. We remember, however, that we are God’s emissaries to the world. We continue in prayer, worship, and service inviting the world around us know and feel the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord.