Sunday Evening at St. Paul’s

All are welcome to join us on Sunday Evenings at St. Paul’s.
Through the use of silence and stillness, and the active opening of our hearts and minds, we'll explore together the ancient rituals of our faith, encountering one another in sacred conversation and sharing in the Holy Meal together.

(Enter through the Roy Street gate, to the right of the red doors.)

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Sunday Evening at St. Paul's was featured in the
DIocese of Olympia's Episcopal Voice.

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Sunday Evening at St. Paul's

The Marriage of Congregational
Development and Anglican Liturgical Principles

by Stephen Crippen

“Beauty and mystery. Silence and stillness.
Open hearts and open minds.
Sacred conversation.
The holy meal. Ancient ritual.”

These words, featured on new advertising signboards, are the images, objects, practices and patterns that guided a small group of clergy and laity at St. Paul’s, Seattle as they developed a new Sunday evening Eucharist that was held for the first time at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 27.

St. Paul’s took this step to respond to a practical need: recent growth of membership. Average Sunday attendance over the past year has increased to about 175, and the 10:30 a.m. liturgy began to feel uncomfortably full. In response to this, a series of town meetings were held in which the Rev. Melissa Skelton and parishioners explored their experience of numerical growth and options for responding to it. The result was a decision to create a liturgy that was neither a carbon copy of the morning liturgies nor a jarring departure from the rich pattern of liturgical life at St. Paul’s. It is called “Sunday Evenings at St. Paul’s,” a service of Holy Eucharist with music and expansive language; a new, more intimate worship space in the refurbished parish hall; social time following the liturgy each week; and a monthly dialogical time for adult formation.

A team of parishioners led by Skelton was commissioned by the vestry to lead the project. The team, aided by a diocesan grant to support some of the costs of the effort, decided that the work fell into four important areas: Property and Physical Plant; Liturgy and Music; Pastoral and Community Development; and Internal and External Communication.

Liturgy and Music

The liturgy and its music were created to be familiar to Sunday morning worshippers while at the same time expressing a simpler, deeply contemplative yet participative Benedictine character. These choices were an intentional way for the parish to live more fully into its Anglo-Catholic identity and make its identity more accessible to a larger number of people.

The evening service contains many of the elements of the St. Paul’s 10:30 a.m. Eucharist—sung liturgy, incense, silence and stillness. Other liturgical actions were carefully planned to fit both the space and time of the new evening setting, and a liturgy that encourages active participation from the congregation. Candles abound; incense is kept to a minimum. The presider offers a brief sermon from the midst of the assembly, and the sermon is followed by time for others to offer their own reflections. Gary James, organist and choirmaster at St. Paul’s, recruited a new choir and chose music both old and new for use in an intimate evening setting. Many of the choral anthems are written by James himself, and while some of the hymns are taken from Hymnal 1982 and also sung at the 10:30 a.m. liturgy, other hymns with expansive language complement the more familiar music.

The Rev. Ralph Carskadden, priest associate at St. Paul’s and a member of the planning team, said, “The new evening Eucharist is like an island of prayer, praise and silence next to a beautiful below-ground garden off a busy urban street corner. The simplicity of the setting, the gathering of the community ‘choir style’ on the sides of the altar and the gentle pace of the liturgy reflect a Benedictine spirituality which is part of the Anglican tradition at St. Paul's.”

Property and Physical Plant

Several changes were made to the building in an effort to create a distinctive yet consistent worship experience prior to a separate renovation of the existing nave. Parishioners are directed to a side entrance through the green space on the west side of the building. A ramp leads them down to a new ceramic water feature outside a new door to the parish hall.

The hall itself has been refurbished to accommodate the new liturgy. New wooden David Rowland chairs (the same chairs that grace Canterbury Cathedral’s nave) are placed in an oval pattern around new furnishings, which include a lectern, square altar and a Mary shrine near glass windows. The smaller room and careful layout of chairs and furnishings allow the people to see each other across the central area of activity and allow the liturgy to be focused on the altar at the center of the room.

Pastoral and Community Development

The planning team engaged the whole parish in the planning and preparation of the third liturgy, and encouraged current parishioners to actively participate in the liturgy itself. They also considered how newcomers attending the new liturgy would be welcomed, formed and incorporated into the St. Paul’s community. They decided to add a social gathering after the Sunday evening liturgy and a monthly time for adult formation. Many other adult formation programs and newcomers gatherings occur on weeknights and weekends, and those attending the Sunday evening liturgy will be invited to participate in those broader parish events. In these ways, Sunday Evenings at St. Paul’s leads participants into the heart of parish life.

Communication: Internal and External

The new liturgy needed to be introduced both to those already in the parish and to new people outside the parish. The parish was continually informed and involved with a dedicated website page, bulletin inserts and announcements at coffee hour. Parishioners were also involved in refurbishing the parish hall and creating vestments and other materials to be used in the Eucharist.

External communication to date has involved the development of new signboards, postcards and posters, and the development of advertising based on the signage. Other external marketing being considered are personal invitations to households in the neighborhood and hangtags on doors.

Principles and Process

When a person walks into the St. Paul’s parish hall on Sunday evening, in the center of the room she will see an illuminated table. Around the table, sitting and standing, singing and speaking, she will encounter the gathered assembly. As the liturgy unfolds, she will see the assembly actively participating in the four-fold liturgical rhythm of gathering, proclaiming the word, celebrating the meal and being sent back into the world.

This setting—a table surrounded by an active, participative assembly—silently articulates the liturgical principles that guided the whole project. “Sunday Evenings at St. Paul’s” was made possible by careful leadership, but the process was not imposed upon the parish. At each juncture, everyone was invited to study the issues at hand, ask questions and express concerns about what was happening, and join in the actual work of creating a third liturgy.

This project could be a starting point of reflection for other congregations who are contemplating the gifts, opportunities and challenges of their own communities. The Rev. Joseph Hickey-Tiernan, chair of the diocesan Commission on Liturgy and the Arts’ Liturgical Theology and Catechesis Subcommittee, said, “This new start at one of our parishes is clearly based on the principles that make Anglican liturgy both so rich and so adaptable. Any congregation interested in refreshing its worship or its worship space could take this as an invitation to plant the seed of a renewed experience of liturgy for themselves.”

Seeing this as the fruit of congregational development efforts at St. Paul’s, Skelton added, “This has come about through the careful and intentional release of the parish’s energy for an expanded expression of its identity—I call that ‘congregational development!’”

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Stephen Crippen, a member of St. Paul’s, serves on the Diocesan Liturgical Theology and Catechesis Committee. Photos by Crippen and John Hill.