Liturgical Markers for Times of Transition
The issue of Liturgy entitled “Liturgy and Hope,” guest-edited by Michelle Baker-Wright, an Episcopal priest in Los Angeles, offers a number of essays from scholars dealing with hope in times of difficulty––death, environmental disaster, imprisonment, when flexibility is needed, when isolation threatens community––and the role that liturgy plays in speaking truth. Here is an excerpt from the Stephanie Perdew, Conference Minister of the UCC Illinois Conference. –– Melinda Quivik
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We know that we live in the time of the “Great Resignation,” and that clergy are retiring in record numbers across denominations. Some clergy delayed their planned retirements to continue to serve through the time of pandemic. For some, the stress of serving through the time of pandemic contributed to taking retirement earlier than expected, or non-retirement-age clergy leaving pastoral ministry altogether. This is a moment that invites creative adaptation and expansion of liturgies of leave-taking or the creation of new ones.
Likewise, we live in a time when economic stresses and cultural shifts mean that parishes are merging or consolidating either under the direction of a bishop or ecclesial authority, or under mutual discernment between congregations in Reformed or free church traditions. These transitions are also moments for liturgical celebration which may have no standard or ordinary liturgies on hand. In my suburb of Chicago, several Roman Catholic parishes will soon be gathering into one parish with various locations. A few years ago, this took place in a neighboring suburb in which two congregations were merged into one parish, retaining the two church buildings with their own schedule of masses, education, and fellowship under the service of one priest and his associates. The merger was a vulnerable time. Both congregations feared the loss of their unique ministries and historical identities (one primarily Irish; the other, German).
A friend who is a life-long member of one of the congregations explained to me that a liturgy marking the union helped in her grief and suspicion about the transition. It was held outdoors in a local park about equidistant from both church buildings. The liturgy included a procession of officers, staff, leaders, and representative ministries of each congregation. Those in attendance quickly realized they knew one another from civic or neighborhood or school activities. People could put faces to the abstract “others” of the merger. The ensuing mass helped launch the consolidation which, although not free from struggle, has gone more smoothly than it might have without careful attention to the liturgy marking the moment.
Finally, we are seeing that there are congregations which were financially or missionally vulnerable before the pandemic will not remain sustainable for the future. In these moments, we are invited to use or construct liturgies for church closure that take heed of the exhaustion, shame, and grief likely felt by the faithful in those closing congregations. We can proclaim that since Christ is resurrected, his church cannot die, even as individual parishes and their members may be incorporated into the Body of Christ via other congregations and ministries in the future.
At my own recent liturgy of farewell from the congregation I had served for seventeen years, a congregant told me in the receiving line after worship that “we need these rituals. They tell us what is really happening, even if it is difficult. We needed that.” This is indeed what faithful liturgies do: bring about and enact what they proclaim, name the truth, make room for grief, give voice to hope, and guide us through transition in God’s gracious care.
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The rest of this essay is available in the full digital and print editions of Liturgy. All of the essays in Liturgy 37, no. 2 are available by personal subscription and through many libraries.
Stephanie Perdew (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) was until recently the president of the Liturgical Conference. She is an Associate Conference Minister of the Illinois Conference, United Church of Christ, and an affiliate faculty member at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in liturgy.
Stephanie Perdew, “Liturgical Markers for Times of Transition,” Liturgy 37, no. 2 (2022): 4–6.