Thoughts on the Architecture of Virtual Worship
The issue of Liturgy entitled “Fruits of the Liturgical Renewal Movement,” guest-edited by Stephanie Perdew, includes essays by members of the board of The Liturgical Conference (publisher of Liturgy) describing how liturgy and liturgical studies have been affected by liturgical renewal. This is an excerpt from Lester Ruth’s essay on virtual worship, his contribution in a new column called UNMUTE YOURSELF, meant to give board members of this journal an opportunity to explore liturgical matters they have been working on. –– Melinda Quivik
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Here’s my candidate for perhaps the biggest understatement of the year: the pandemic has been disorienting. I don’t think my experience has been exceptional but, even if it has just been me, the last twelve months or so have felt like a crash course in learning how to live in a new culture. It has felt as if I went to bed one night, safe and secure under the comforter of my old culture, and the next morning I rolled out of bed with my feet landing on the cold, hard floor of having to learning new ways of living, relating, and working immediately . . .
As a worship professor, I have learned, too, that some of my old categories for teaching others how to plan and lead worship were just insufficient. At times these categories were just unhelpful. For instance, one day I was teaching James F. White’s categories for different liturgical spaces and centers to my Introduction to Christian Worship course . . . According to White, there are regularly six “spaces” found in liturgical architecture: gathering, movement, congregational, choir, baptismal, and altar-table (i.e., Eucharistic). In addition, White identifies four liturgical “centers”: baptismal font/pool, altar/table, the presider’s chair, and the pulpit/ambo/lectern.
I know no better summary of traditional liturgical space and so I regularly teach White’s schema in this class to help students decipher already existing buildings and contemplate organizing new spatial arrangements for worship. In February 2021 I did just that and waited for the students to shake nodding heads of approval and recognition. I saw no nodding heads as I looked through Zoom at the students and, if I had, those heads would have been shaking left and right in disagreement, not up and down in approval. Finally, a hand shot up. I called on the student. And the question of this time was asked: “Professor, what does any of this have to do with worshiping online?” I had no immediate answer because there was no good, obvious answer . . .
. . . The student’s question forced me to think through what categories might apply to the “architecture” of virtual worship online. What I devised—partly from my work as a historian and partly from my own experience in online worship for the last year—I offer here.
The first thing I realized is that White’s categories were based on his observation of actual brick-and-mortar buildings, utilizing his wide-angle lens of being a liturgical historian. I followed the same path but decided to shift from looking at actual buildings to actual activities, i.e., things I had seen done in worship across history and in current online services. I came up with five core activities:
praying;
commemorating (which would include scripture reading and preaching, i.e., both liturgical activities that remember God’s creating and saving work and also liturgical activities that proclaim this work’s ongoing immediacy);
offering (of ourselves, our money, etc.);
unifying the worship community;
transitioning across thresholds (whether through baptism, weddings, funerals, consecrations, etc.). . .
Notice I decided to jettison White’s static, geophysical labels of “spaces” and “centers” to opt for the more fluid category of “dimensions.” Dimensions seemed a word with more pliability . . .
The rest of this essay is available in the full digital and print editions of Liturgy. All of the essays in Liturgy 36, no. 3 are available by personal subscription and through many libraries.
Lester Ruth, a member of The Liturgical Conference Board, is the Research Professor of Christian Worship at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. Along with Lim Swee Hong, he is the coauthor of a forthcoming volume entitled A History of Contemporary Praise and Worship: Understanding the Ideas that Reshaped the Protestant Church.
Lester Ruth, “Thoughts on the Architecture of Virtual Worship,” Liturgy 36, no. 3 (2021): 5–7.