And more change

I really like when my education, field education experience, and real life come together. This week on my way home from church, I started piecing together liturgy and everything else that's going on right now. This week, we talked about how change works in a worship service/community. For those of you who don't know or don't pay attention, there are certain aspects of the worship service that are intended to remain the same for long periods of time, or even always. For example, we use the same confession and forgiveness for the entire season of Lent. On the other hand, we have certain portions of the liturgy that change on a weekly basis: hymns, certain prayers, etc.

The point of the relative stability in worship is for people to get used to the liturgy. Imagine walking into church each week and not knowing how the space will be arranged, what the colors of the banners will be, what kind of songs you'll be singing, what the structure of the service will be, etc. The point is not to terrify the worshipers, but to facilitate their worship. However, letting people get to know the liturgy too well can cause speaking/singing it by rite, rather than really paying attention to what they are doing in worship. For this reason, change is a liturgical aid. We can see the need for such change when we hear people recite the Creed or the Lord's Prayer. Are they really meaning what they say? Do they even pay attention to their own words?

I, for one, am all for change in liturgical words, space, and music. I think this mostly comes out of my formative years in church, when we were starting and building the mission congregation. We rented a building on Sunday mornings, and we set up for worship each week. Because of this, we were able to rearrange the seating, altar placement, etc. whenever we wanted to. This was great, but sometimes caused problems, like when Dad put the altar directly under a smoke detector and extinguishing the candles set of the smoke alarm. We were also fairly free with the liturgy, because no one had been around long enough to say, "But that's the way we've always done it!" There was a period where we sang the same songs for a month at a time, and other aspects of the service were changed.

So what does this mean in daily life? I made the connection on my way home from church. We don't change everything all at once for a reason. We might change the Creed and the hymns, but we keep the Eucharistic prayer the same. We change the colors of the banners, but we keep the altar in the same place. We do new readings, but the Gospel message never changes. People can accept some changes. People can latch onto the parts they know and learn the new things, without getting overly tired from the constant barrage of newness or bored because everything is the same.

Life is the same way. This is why I was freaking out a few weeks ago about everything changing at once. We're not prepared to have too much change at once. It's overwhelming and tires us out. But when we change one thing at a time, life is manageable. If I moved, but kept the same job and went to the same school, I would be a little stressed out, but it would be okay. Unfortunately, generally when people move, they also change jobs, schools, distance from friends, knowledge of the area, and much more. THAT'S why moving is so stressful. There's too much change. It would be like moving from setting 2 of the ELW to a praise and worship service the next week. We'd all be lost, confused, and worn out by the end.

So when I complain about hating change, it's because I'm at a point where too much is changing at once. I'm going to have to leave St. Mark, start CPE, lose my seminary friends for the summer, stop working, etc. What a mess. Sure, I'll get through it, but now at least I understand why change is so stressful sometimes.