Liturgical space, and how it shapes us

Jamie Howison reflects on what it meant to change liturgical spaces for three months

A considerably shorter version of this reflection paper was published by The Living Church in February 2020, and can be accessed by clicking here.

In January of 2007, I spent a brief two-week study leave at General Theological Seminary in New York City, researching and writing on our congregation’s practice of an open communion table. At that point saint benedict's table had only been in existence for a little over three years, and had already developed a strong sense of identity related to both our Eucharistic practice and to our original music. We also carried a strong sense of being what we called a “tent people.” We had first begun to gather for our evening worship in a small parish church just outside of the centre of the city, and then nine months later had moved right downtown to All Saints’ Church, where we still make our home. We were convinced that as a new and younger congregation we were best off if we remained unencumbered by building ownership and maintenance, and so to be “tent people” meant seeing the church as first and foremost the people, wherever we happened to pitch our tent.

All of these things were foremost in my mind as I wrote what would eventually be published as Come to the Table: a reflection on the practice of open communion at saint benedict’s table (Winnipeg: saint benedict’s table press, 2008), and they were thoughts I was eager to share with Titus Presler, at the time the Sub-Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs for the Seminary. He was interested in how we’d arrived at our perspective on an open table and very happy to receive a CD of some of the best of our original music from those opening years, but when I began to talk about this notion of our being a tent people, he just sat back in his chair. When I was finished talking, Dr. Presler cautioned me that I might want to think differently about this idea of being unencumbered by a building. We stand in a strongly incarnational tradition, he said, both theologically and spiritually. Our buildings matter, because they can serve in an almost sacramental way, standing as outward and visible signs of the church’s presence in its neighborhood. Further, he suggested, our buildings can actually shape and form us, both liturgically and spiritually. Much as they can require of us to maintain them, our buildings matter.

Because All Saints’ Church is quite possibly the most visible church building in our city, standing at a major intersection across the street from our provincial legislative building, Dr. Presler’s points rang very, very true. We’ve now been at All Saints’ for fifteen years, and while we still don’t own the building, our rent from over those years has made a critical difference to our host parish’s financial sustainability. Perhaps not surprisingly after fifteen years, our status as tenants—or better, tenant-partners—has not hindered our congregation from developing a strong sense of belonging in that place.

What I had not quite realized is the degree to which the building has in fact shaped us over the years, and this past summer we were provided with what amounted to a three-month laboratory experiment on worship spaces. A couple of years ago the church roof failed during a major rainstorm, and for the next two years water from the rain and melting snow was allowed to seep into the ceiling and down the plaster walls. Because this was due to defective shingles and questionable installation, in time the insurance company agreed to cover the full cost of the restoration and roof replacement, but in order to do this the contractor required full and exclusive use of the building from the end of April until the beginning of August. The interior of the church was to be scaffolded from floor to ceiling, so there was no question of the need for both congregations to temporarily relocate.

The All Saint’s congregation quickly came up with a plan of joining with a nearby Anglican parish for those months, while we set about looking for an option suitable to our needs. We identified some basic priorities, including a location in our downtown neighbourhood, a sound system that would meet the needs of our various music ensembles, and the accessibility of the building. In short order we settled on a move to Elim Chapel, a local non-denominational congregation which extended a warm and generous welcome.

We were aware from the outset that the differences between the two church buildings would bring some changes and challenges. All Saints’ is a designated heritage building constructed in 1926 in the gothic revival style, with a high altar, chancel choir, rood screen, high open ceiling, and straight rows of fixed pews described by one of members as “soldier-straight.” In the 1970s several rows of pews had been removed from the front of the church to make room for a nave altar, while more recently a few rows were removed from the back to create space for a reception area, but otherwise the interior of the church looks very much like it did in the 1920s.

All Saints’ Church

Elim Chapel, on the other hand, was built by a Presbyterian congregation at the turn of the 20th Century, and then purchased by the Chapel congregation in the mid-1920s. In the 1970s it suffered a devastating fire that completely gutted the church building, and the decision was made to rebuild within the old shell. From the outside Elim Chapel looks like a heritage building, but the inside bears few signs of the original church. There are a few touchstones of a more traditional church building, including the stained glass windows and pipe organ that replaced the original ones lost in the fire, but otherwise it largely reflects the sensibilities of late 20th Century evangelical church design. Where the layout of All Saints’ is long and narrow, Elim Chapel is configured in something of a semi-circle, with the pews set in four wide and relatively short sections. The floor is gently sloped and the pews upholstered, giving the space a somewhat theatre-like feel, which is accentuated by the fairly high platform at the front, which accommodates their musicians, choir, preacher, and other worship leaders. Aside from that platform, the entire sanctuary is carpeted, and between the carpets, upholstered pews, and an enclosed mezzanine level that runs the full length of one side of the sanctuary, there is almost no acoustic resonance to the space; something entirely different from what we are accustomed to at All Saints’.

Elim Chapel

The difference in acoustics was something of which we were immediately aware, in that it deeply impacted the character of our congregational singing. In All Saints’ the congregational voices resound to fill the space, with our music ensembles essentially accompanying the congregation. This is signalled by the way we normally place our musicians, who play seated and off to the side. At Elim Chapel, their role moved from “accompanying” to “leading,” using the high-quality PA system to compensate for the acoustics of the space. Further, they had to be seated on the platform, and while we did locate them off to one side, they were always far more visible than is our usual practice.

Our congregational singing was not the only part of the liturgy impacted by the acoustics. During our last few weeks at Elim Chapel, I had invited people to share with me their reflections on the experience of our temporary sojourn, to which I received fifteen written responses. With a touch of wry humour, one person noted that when my associate and I preached, we “sounded rather like evangelical pastors,” adding, “this is a comment about the sound—predominantly conveyed by electronics, soaked up by padded pews, and missing the ‘resounding’ natural effect of the All Saints acoustics.” Another person focused on the way in which the room “shaped” how I presided at the liturgy:

One thing that was very noticeable to me was the cadence of your speech. Because you do not have to wait for the reverb to finish in the massive cavern that is All Saints’, you were speaking into a “dead room,’ you sped up all of your speech to match the space. You went so far as to “swallow” some words that you would normally have articulated clearly. It was one of the things I have loved about the way you have presided is how clearly and thoughtfully everything was said. It's not that it was unclear or less thoughtful, just much faster and without each word.

That was a somewhat sobering insight for me, as I’d had no idea the degree to which I was responding to the acoustics of the space.

 Another area in which we felt the difference in spaces was in our practice of communion. At All Saints’ people all come down the centre aisle to gather in a series of circles around the communion table. There is enough room for forty people in each circle, at the centre of which stands both the communion tables and the baskets full of the donated goods we collect each week for a nearby soup kitchen. With Elim Chapel’s three aisles and angled pews, we had trouble determining the best way for people to come forward. Describing it all as “awkward,” one person noted “the laughter, wide eyes and shrugging shoulders as we tried to figure out the best way to move through communion.” More than just the movement of people, however, it was the loss of the ability to receive in a circle that changed the experience of communion.  As one person observed, at All Saints’ “one is conscious of intentionally deciding to step out and come forward to receive, of standing in line waiting to assemble into a circle, and then actually receiving with others in the circle,” adding, “All of these dynamics seemed minimized at Elim.”

Finally, there was a loss of what several people described as “anonymity” and “privacy.” While these may seem strange things to long for in a gathering of the Body of Christ, those words immediately made sense to me. To enter the Elim Chapel sanctuary requires one to come through a large atrium, ascend to the second floor and walk through a reception area furnished with café tables and large couches, to finally enter the worship space through a door very close to the front and in full view of most of the people already seated. The configuration of the pews also meant that no matter where you chose to be seated, you could always see the faces of the people in the other sections. The positive take on this was nicely articulated by one person:

There's a transparency. A new vulnerability that comes with being seen. It's not always a bad thing to have no place to hide. The community can see itself. Receptive of the beautiful face looking back from the mirror, blemishes and all. Surprisingly accepting. The light of something good in something so familiar.

“For me personally,” commented another, “it was fine – in fact probably a positive development. However, I suspect that I may be in the minority on this.” And indeed, this particular respondent was most definitely in the minority, in that six people wrote specifically of the loss of anonymity, with at least twice as many commenting on it to me in conversation.

Yet the interesting thing is that at All Saints’ it is not as if everyone sits his or her own private devotional silo. We sing as a congregation, and— to cite Psalm 33:3 from the old Coverdale translation—we “sing praises lustily with a good courage.” We exchange the peace as a sign of our anticipation of the peaceable Kingdom. We receive communion together in those circles, with the administrants encouraged to look in the eyes of each communicant and say clearly the words of administration. At the end of the liturgy, the majority of people will stay for coffee or a visit, and it isn’t at all unusual for some to still be lingering after three-quarters of an hour.

So what is this talk of lost anonymity actually getting at? It speaks, I believe, to something that is in our “cultural DNA,” and has been from our very earliest days at All Saints’. The configuration of All Saints’ makes it quite possible for someone to slip in the door at the beginning of our 7pm liturgy, pick up the liturgical material, take a seat near the back or off to the side, and participate as much—or as little—as feels right to them. This was precisely the case with one of the most formative and creative songwriters from our congregation’s earliest years. Her name was Jenny Moore, and for various reasons she was at the time unsure about getting involved in any church at all. For months she would come during the singing of the opening song and leave before the closing one was finished, slowly building a sense of trust and confidence in what saint benedicts’ table was all about. Once she’s reached that point, she stepped forward to offer to help with the music, and very soon had produced a half dozen songs that are still very much a part of our community’s repertoire. She was with us for just over two years before moving to the UK to pursue graduate work, but her mark on us has been lasting.

My priest colleague Rachel Twigg has a somewhat similar story. Having just resigned from congregational ministry in another denomination, for the first several months that she and her husband attended saint benedict’s table they made sure to leave before anyone had a chance to talk with them. That was back in 2007, and while they continued to attend and then become increasingly involved in things, it took close to a decade before Rachel was prepared to join our roster of communion administrants. Sometimes it just takes time to sort things through in the right way, and now as a priest she not only administers communion, but also presides at the Eucharist every second week. In an interesting little twist, the timing of her ordination landed squarely in the middle of our time at Elim Chapel, meaning the first time she presided was in that space, up on the platform, standing at a folding table covered with a custom-made cloth another one of our people had designed for us to use.     

Those are only two instances as to how “anonymity” can function positively in our space, and there are many more. We are known as a liturgical community that welcomes people to land with us as what we call a “second church home,” many of whom are very much involved in the life and ministry of their primary congregation. For such people we are able to provide something of a resting place or bit of liturgical and sacramental refreshment, with nothing asked or required. Others come because they’ve had a hard, hurtful, or just exhausting experience in another congregation, and more than once we’ve been told that we were their “last chance for the church” congregation. That we don’t have an enthusiastic greeter meet such folks at the door, ask them to fill out visitor cards, or have them stand at the announcements so we can welcome them—the good Lord save us all from that!—allows them to feel safe in our space at All Saints’.

At Elim Chapel, it simply wasn’t possible to make room for such anonymity, either for the people who regularly attend saint benedict’s table but crave a more contemplative space for worship, or for those first-time visitors who are looking simply to test the safety of worshipping with us. In fact, we did see a decline in attendance during our three months at Elim Chapel, and now three months after our return to All Saints’ we’ve still not fully rebounded. I wonder, had we been required to relocate longer—say for six or even twelve months—would that very different worship space have begun to change not only some of the patterns of our worship but also the very membership of our congregation? Frankly, I’m inclined to think so. 

And yet while acknowledging the degree to which our buildings shape us—how much our buildings matter, as Titus Presler had said to me—we also emerged with a strong reminder that before all else a church is a people, and a people gathered to pray, sing, listen, reflect, worship, and break bread together, and then to be sent out beyond the walls and stained glass of the building as disciples of Jesus. Much as we longed to return to our creaky and familiar home, we remained saint benedict’s table and a gathering of the one Body of Christ.

One of our folks wrote most movingly about coming to a place of deep realization, and to her will go the closing words. She was on the roster to administer communion that night, and after noting that it was her very first Father’s Day after the death of her own Father, she offered these words:

I got to look my community in the eyes and say “The blood of Christ shed for you.” I got to look into some eyes that seemed to say they had spent the week on their knees in grief, other eyes that were standing looking to Jesus, and some eyes with that glimmer that said they slew the dragon that week. Whatever it was, it was in the eyes of my community. A place that was safe and comfortable to come to no matter how I was feeling or what building I was in.

Jamie Howison