Summer Lite

MGOBLUE

Our rector is off for his sabbatical that church policy provides, scripturally, after six years of parish ministry. He will be away for the summer, concluding with the September 1 opening game of the 2012 football season when the University of Alabama plays the University of Michigan at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, returning to work the day after Labor Day. For the summer, his tasks have been delegated as appropriate; my part is pastoral and worship; and, with the Parish Administrator, general knowledge and oversight of goings on. My plan is to be in the parish office mornings Monday-Thursday as needed but not superfluously.

Father Steve and I are different in several ways. One is that he is fifty something while I am seventy something. Another is that he is Red and I am Blue: he is a graduate of the University of Alabama (Roll Tide) and I am a graduate of the University of Michigan (MGoBlue). However, in several years of working with him, the most significant difference I’ve seen is that I like my okra steamed or boiled. But he roasts his okra on the grill: that just don’t seem right to me.

My hope for the summer is that everyone will enjoy being with me for Sunday worship. While eight o’clock worship will be the same as usual, during the summer our ten-thirty Sunday morning worship service will be something that at other churches I've called “summer lite.” Liturgically, we’re in the “green season.” For comfort, my vestment will be a very lightweight white chasuble-alb (no black cassock) and green stole. Worship will be lighter also.

For the summer, we'll take advantage of some of our Prayer Book’s generous rubrics. Worship will be more simple, omitting those things for which the rubrics give the Celebrant the option (may versus shall). My experience at past churches I have served is that this often makes Sunday worship about ten minutes shorter -- but we are not 17th century New England Puritans who demand a three hour service anyway -- and I don’t use that ten minutes for a longer sermon. 

Which brings to mind that at the University of Florida in the 1950s and attending First Presbyterian with my friends, members of the congregation started looking at their watches ten minutes into Brother Gordon's sermon, wondering, hoping we would get out of church early enough to beat the First Baptist folks to the Tower House Restaurant for Sunday dinner.

There’s no adult Sunday School or Tuesday morning Bible Seminar during the summer, but we’ll try to learn something anyway. General Convention of the Episcopal Church has given us a restored version of the Nicene Creed: without the filioque clause “and the Son.” We’ll try it out some during the summer, opening it up for discussion.    

Finally, our closing hymn on Sunday, August 26 will be the Michigan Fight Song.

TW+