Liturgies of Liberation

Worship is the life of the church. It is not the whole life of the church, for moral, political and evangelistic concerns are also part of the church, but this is all undergirded by the worship of God. Worship, whether public or private, formal or informal, informs all our lives, our faith, and our understanding. The liturgy is more than simply a set of ceremonies for the church year and important events; it reveals our faith, deepens our knowledge and provides the base from where we minister to others. This is why many churches place great stress on liturgical activities, and why they encourage the participation of all, and not only of the clergy, in its practise. Even the Roman Catholic Church, the most conservative and hierarchical of churches, has realised the need for lay participation both in public worship and in the formation of the liturgy.

There is no set form for liturgy, and all communities of faith, whether it be an entire church you attend or just you, family or friends worshipping God in your own home, can alter these liturgies in whatever way you feel suits you best. Likewise you can create your own or use these "as is". Its all up to you and your comrades in faith, wherever you are.

The liturgy involves a variety of roles that all in the church may take on, to reflect the different roles in the Body of Christ we all share. Not all people may feel called to a public office in worship, such as reading the Gospel, for instance, but their participation is none the less great for that: we all have different roles to play. No matter what our calling may be, we all contribute to the development of liturgy within the church - which is why contributions and suggestions for this part of the site are especially welcome.

In all our liturgical activities, in all our worship shaped by the church, whether public or private, we celebrate our faith. This is true even of funerary rites, for we rejoice in our salvation and in the salvation of the departed even then. Our celebration, our cry of "alleluia!" in every service is what brings us through doubt, and pain, and fear, for it represents our fundamental and deep-rooted joy in God, in His promises, and in His presence. Celebration is at the heart of our worship, and our liturgies must reflect that. In many churches, while thankfulness may be present, it is constrained by formality, and cannot break free into true joy. Many churches wouldn't dream of allowing members to dance like David before the Lord "with all his might" (2 Samuel 6:14), expressing exhuberant joy in Him. Yet we must allow such spontaneous, extreme delight to have a place in our churches - it is true, unfeigned and vital worship of God, and there is nothing wrong with it. Having a set, formal service arrangement is good, but it ceases to be good when it prevents joy and deadens the senses. This is something we must always be aware of in our worship, and guard against. This, of course, is the advantage of solitary or non-interactive participation on the internet. If you are celebrating the eucharist, for example, and simply use the liturgies alone, in non-interaction (except in spirit) with the others on the internet, then you can alter them to include any spontaneous worship you wish. Even connecting with others may include spontenaity, on a formal framework, if such a service is properly controlled (one is reminded of Paul's words to the Corinthians about orderly services in 1 Corinthians 14).

Liturgy & Worship in Cyberspace

In many respects we are deeply advantaged by our medium. In a physical church much more attention must be paid to the role of the minister or priest in the liturgy, as the central point of a church, whether that be altar or pulpit, is simply the easiest place to hear a speaker. That being so, it breaks the continuity of a service to have lay members wandering up and down the nave at various points. This means that there is necessarily far less of a congregational involvement in the service, bar the occasional responses to a ministers' words. Additional problems are caused to those who are disabled, or who are deaf in a normal service, as well as the more mundane problem of shyness.

These problems can be countered on the internet. Disability is not a bar - no one has to get up and go anywhere. The deaf can have as full a participation as anybody else, and no one need even know they are deaf. Shyness is much less of an issue when one is only communicating via a computer monitor rather than face to face. As we are not in a physical church, acoustics are no longer an isue, and all may particpate equally, as befits priests in Christ (1 Peter 2:9).

There are significant difficulties with worship on the internet, however. The lack of face to face interaction is in itself a major problem. Communicating only via text can lead to serious misunderstandings simply because we cannot read the other person's body language. Most services rely on sensory perception, of music, lights, incense, and movement, which are difficult to arrange online. If we have services through some sort of chat room then the use of song, dance or visual art or theatre is at best limited, and probably non-existent. We also have the problem that our members cannot visualise one another, cannot see one another, cannot hear their voices or get to know one another all that well, unless they do so by email. Services online will also, sadly, exclude the illiterate, those with reading difficulties, foreign-language speakers and worst for this church, the poor. There is little we can do about these latter problems, they are the nature of this medium. Participation may also be limited because to have twenty or thirty people all typing "amen" or the like into a chat room is visually boring. Long pieces of text from one person is also boring to read (rather than to listen to). These are significant problems that our liturgical development must address.

The liturgies on this site have two purposes. Some of them are meant for solitary contemplation or use in the real world, and are more traditional in structure. They can be used with friends, or you can take them to the minister of your real life church as a suggestion. The others are specifically for online use. These are rather peculiar, and have no antecedents. Such "e-liturgies" must be regarded as first drafts only, and must be tested and refined in online situations and changed in response to those situations. If anyone uses those liturgies in chat rooms or other online media outside this site, any experiences or suggestions for improvement will be greatly appreciated. For purely online services, the only group which has developed and tested these new forms of worship are Neo-Pagans. While obviously our services will be very different in content, we share the same media (and thus the same problems) and can learn from their experience.

To conclude, liturgy is simply the formal lay-out for worship in a public setting - that is, not solitary prayer. As such it must be informed by all the congregation, not just a priest or minister, and should allow a measure of spontaneity and joy. While there are several problems in online worship, I am confident that we can together discover a workable way to worship God in cyberspace.

Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him." (John 4:21, 23)

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:28-9)

© Rev Emma McCarthy, 2003. All content on this site, except for material written by others and designated as such, is copyleft under the provisions of the GNU General Public License. This means you can reproduce it in any form you wish, provided that you retain the copyright information.