Life & Work Magazine
Life & Work Magazine


2 mins

Change and more

In the first of a new series focussing on worship John L Bell reflects on the value of change in worship.

IN the Ayrshire church of my acquaintance, the story was told of a previous beadle who had diligently taken care of the church building and successive ministers for over fifty years.

When his life was drawing to a close his large family gathered round his bedside. As the moment of death drew near, he summoned to his side his eldest son and successor as beadle. He pulled the son down close to his lips and with his dying breath advised: “Resist all innovations.”

Thirty years later in Thurso, a colleague and I were leading a series of workshops for people in local churches. One of them concerned how we enable change. It was a dreich day and it felt like a dreich meeting until a senior elder commented: “This issue of change, has vexed me for long and weary. Indeed I have prayed about it. You see, if we had someone in our pulpit who said that he or she didn’t believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, probably no-one would bat an eyelid. But if they were to move the communion table six inches, there would be mayhem.”

On being asked why that was so, the elder replied: “All I can think of is a line in a hymn which I learned as a child. The hymn is Abide With Me; and the line is: ‘Change and decay in all around I see.’

All I can think of is a line in a hymn which I learned as a child. The hymn is Abide With Me; and the line is: ‘Change and decay in all around I see.’

“Now,” said the elder, “the church is the only place where I automatically associate change with decay.”

Apart from being indicative of how a line in a hymn can have a hold over us for good or ill, it is evidence of how within religious circles change is looked on more with suspicion than enthusiasm. And perhaps no more so than in the area of public worship. As Presbyterians we espouse a tradition of worship which is allegedly not as formulaic as that of Episcopalians or Roman Catholics. Yet it is amazing that in the absence of a printed prayer book, there is a fairly widespread practice of five hymns, two prayers, two readings, a sermon, offering and announcements in a predictable constellation.

Maybe it is because we are protestants who, five hundred years after the Reformation, still feel duty bound to avoid anything which veers too close to Canterbury or Rome.

But the truth is that our practices have always been changing. The only constant in ‘tradition’ is that it evolves, it changes. We no longer, in English speaking churches, line out the psalms with the congregation singing a fragment of a tune in response to a monotone rendering of the text by a precentor. We no longer, in most churches, read the Bible solely from the Authorised Version. Few churches impose seat rents, and in many Communion is more frequently celebrated than before.

If we but reflected on it, for many of us ‘tradition’ is what we remember not from the practices of John Knox, but from what we associate with our childhood.

In future months I hope to open up what, in worship, has changed and what might change even more. 

This article appears in the January 2023 Issue of Life and Work

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  COPIED
This article appears in the January 2023 Issue of Life and Work