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Presider

The Role of Presiding

Presider

Along with the decline in Anglican common prayer in New Zealand is confusion about liturgical leadership. All too often liturgical leadership is comparable to a Television presenter, the continuity person on a show, the interviewer on a chat show.

Add to this New Zealand’s tendency to divide the Eucharist into “two parts” – with the “first half” led by a lay person, the “second” led by a priest. Rather than enhancing lay ministry, this diminishes both lay and priestly ministry. Lay people appear to not be really fully participating in a eucharist unless they are “up the front” vested. Priestly ministry is reduced to that of a sort of magician who “absolves” and “consecrates”. Lay ministry as primarily out in the home, world, and workplace is completely lost.

The origin of this aberration which clericalises and devalues lay ministry is complex. It includes training of clergy at St John’s College – where those being trained, rather than practicing using “dry masses”, did everything they possibly could except that which absolutely required ordination. Having for a number of years seen few other models than this daily eucharistic leadership, they naturally translated this into their parishes. Furthermore, the 1966 NZ eucharist revision was specifically designed so that the Liturgy of the Word might be used independently for Morning or Evening Prayer, including on Sundays – led by a lay person. This leader was titled “the minister” – there was no overarching understanding of presiding and hence, following these 1966 rubrics meant a lay person could lead the Liturgy of the Word with the priest picking up in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

In healthy common prayer there is actually surprisingly little for the presider to do. The greeting establishes the community, a collect concludes shared silent prayer. One of the saddest results of lay “co-piloting” a service is once robed and up the front they need “something to do” and the brief dynamic gathering of the community in preparation for the readings becomes a re-cluttered vestibule with prayers, sentences, commentary until the de-energised community is saved from further depletion by reducing the number of readings sometimes even to one. The bloated tail now wags a tiny miniscule Chihuahua.

Chapter 2 of Celebrating Eucharist attempts to give a better understanding of presiding. Should a shared leadership be sought for a service it recommends trying a priest and deacon model. But this is not the only way to have shared leadership with integrity.

Participation in a monastery’s morning combination of Mass and Lauds (Mauds?) gives some ideas – not, obviously, to be cloned in quite different contexts (how often do I have to say the days of cookie-cutter liturgy are over?) – but as a paradigm, a model.

Monasteries have a Hebdomadary (the weekly leader of the Office from Hebdomada, Latin for week), and a Cantor who starts intoning the hymns, psalms, and so on.

The Hebdomadary begins Lauds* – all join in, the Cantor then starts the Hymn – all join in, the presiding priest greets all (the Lord be with you…) all respond. The psalms of Lauds follow in the usual manner participated by all. The Gloria may be sung. The presiding priest bids all to pray and we pray in silence collected by the presider’s verbalised collect. Readings and psalm follow in the usual manner with different readers and all participating in the psalm. The presiding priest might reflect briefly on the readings. The Prayers of the faithful follow. The presiding priest leads the Great Thanksgiving. After communion the Benedictus is started by the Cantor and participated in by all. The presiding priest leads the prayer after communion, the blessing and dismissal. All conclude with a hymn.

The service flows with shared but clear leadership. Nothing has been added to the liturgy just to give a leader something to do – something to shine in. It is common worship – all are equal participants – all are celebrating together. In fact, one may not have noticed even the relatively recent addition to our cluttered vestibule of confession and absolution are not present.

The Church of England’s Alternative Service Book 1980 gave instructions on how to combine Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer with Holy Communion Rite A. Because of NZ’s history noted above, this was never included in our Prayer Book. Such an adaptation is still possible of course. My primary point, however, is to think through leadership principles carefully, to renew common worship in which ALL see themselves as fully participating and not needing to “be up the front” to have that perception, and not to clutter the service with inessentials and reduce the important aspects – as I cannot stress often enough – the best starting point for liturgy (even if it does not end up being the ending point) is “may use” means “leave it out”.

*I am aware that traditionally the Hebdomadary would normally preside at the convential mass, a lot more variety, flexibility, and local practice is now current.
For Camaldolese Benedictines, however, Fr. Robert Hale OSB Cam writes:
“At least for us Camaldolese Benedictines, the Hebdomadary’s part is quite distinct from that of the priest presiding at Eucharist. The Hebdomadary, for us, offers the collect and prayers of the faithful and closing prayer at Vigils, Lauds, and Vespers. Then there is the Cantor, who intones the hymns and psalms, then the Reader, who, evidently, reads the first lesson at Eucharist, as well as all the readings at Vigils, Lauds, Vespers. Then the priest Presider for the Mass.”

Some nickname the Hebdomadary the Head Dromedary 🙂

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10 thoughts on “The Role of Presiding”

  1. I simply and straightforwardly disagree with you, Bosco, when you write, “Lay people appear to not be really fully participating in a eucharist unless they are “up the front” vested.” I imagine a thousand Anglican lay people agree with me and not you, and would be most surprised to find that liturgical leadership is better in the hands of either a priest only, or a priest and a deacon, but not in the hands of a priest and a lay worship leader. There is no contradiction between full participation of the lay people in worship and having one of them simultaneously share the role of leadership with the priest. On your argument here the laity ought not to read readings, lead intercessions nor administer chalice and, if required, paton.

    There are points you make which I agree with (e.g. that the priest ought to clearly be the presider over the whole event and not a kind of “pop up” character re absolving etc; that the “vestibule” be less cluttered) but I see none of those as requiring that we henceforth cease to have lay leaders share the leadership of eucharistic services with the priest.

    1. Thanks, Peter.

      A) You have torn the quote you disagree with out of the context of my opposition to cleaving the Eucharist into two events separated by the Intermission (called “the Peace”). Event 1 is lead by a layperson (with the guest appearance of the priest-magician at the absolution); Event 2 is lead by a priest… That you can only imagine a thousand Anglican lay people who agree with you should concern you. Are you suggesting the rest just don’t care (or do you think they agree with me)?

      B) Did you actually read the post? I pointed to further reading and, within the post, offered two ways in which priest and lay leader might lead Eucharist: the priest-and-deacon model; the Hebdomadary-Cantor-priest model; I do not think that exhausts models.

      C) I am trying to unearth the assumption which leads you to conclude from my post that “laity ought not to read readings…” All I can manage is that in your mind only those leading the service can read, lead intercessions, administer communion. My position is the exact reverse of this: I hold that leading the service is precisely about enabling and facilitation the roles and gifts of all present – the readers, prayer leader(s), communion administrators, etc. My model (explicitly) is of presider-as-conductor. I think it unhelpful to keep swapping conductors throughout a single piece, and I cannot follow your logic which says that my position, of having one conductor lead the orchestra, means that no one is allowed to play an instrument.

      D) It would help readers here to get further into your mind if you could list off specifically/concretely which parts of the liturgy you would assign to a lay person vested up the front rather than to the presiding priest, and why you see doing so enhances the worship. Please particularly include those parts beyond the priest-and-deacon model.

      E) I am interested in your view that lay persons “administer chalice and, if required, paton”. Why do you have a ranking for bread and wine? And why do you have a ranking that lay persons only administer the bread “if required”?

      Blessings.

  2. Hi Bosco,
    Yes, I have misread you. You wrote “Should a shared leadership be sought for a service it recommends trying a priest and deacon model.” I took that to mean a priest and deacon might lead the service if the priest wanted to share leadership of the service rather than a priest and lay leader might share leadership. (I got rather lost when you wrote: “Monasteries have a Hebdomadary (the weekly leader of the Office from Hebdomada, Latin for week), and a Cantor who starts intoning the hymns, psalms, and so on.” But I now see that behind the never before heard of technical terms, lies another model!) With that clarified I walk back my inference that you had raised a question whether lay people might take any part of the service!

    For the record, I do not think lay leaders of services need to be vested!

    Actually, I think thousands of Anglicans are comfortable with my priest-and-lay leader approach and thousands are comfortable with your approach: because, generally, in my experience, lay people do not understand that one way is better than another: they are pretty accepting of this and that or this or that happening.

    I get your point about the priest as conductor of the orchestra, and there is a lot to commend it. But there is also a lot to commend the shared leadership model, not least because it takes the load off a busy priest, perhaps with two or three services every Sunday morning, at the end of which, having presided and preached, the poor priest is knackered. In my (now distant, in the past) experience of being such a parish priest I was very glad that I had someone to share the speaking load.

    Now, it would be good to hear from a lay worship leader or three … and a busy parish priest … what are your views? (!!)

    (As for (E) I am only referring to the general practice in many parishes that the priest normally distributes the bread with lay assistants administering the chalice. Thus “when required” applies to those situations where, for one reason or another, the priest cannot distribute the bread alone.)

    1. Thanks, Peter.

      I think this conversation has been useful because it has clarified points.

      The tasks of the deacon I think are a good starting point for where lay leadership in a service might be appropriate. My own experience of the two-event-with-the-first-led-by-lay-co-pilot approach tends to have no clear rationale for who does what other than the ordained absolves, leads the Eucharistic Prayer, and blesses – there is no sense the priest is presiding; in fact, if a person came in, unfamiliar with Christianity, I think they would understand the lay leader to be presiding and the priest there as some significant guest appearances (lay leader = conductor; priest, in this case, = significant solo in the orchestra).

      I do not agree with your rationale of shared leadership “because it takes the load off a busy priest”. The ratio of priests to laity in NZ has never been higher. Parishes that have more than two services “every Sunday morning” with only one priest able to preside would be exceptional, and if presiding and preaching at a couple of services results in “the poor priest” being “knackered” there is an issue deeper than liturgical! Needing a lay person “to share the speaking load” comes back to a point I already made: there is a tradition of verbal clutter. The clutter is increased by the two-event-with-the-first-led-by-lay-co-pilot approach.

      Blessings.

      1. I once participated in a Eucharist with this kind of shared leadership during a retreat at a Franciscan Friary almost 40 years ago. The service was led by the superior, who was a layman. Another brother, who was a priest, performed the parts of the service that are reserved to a priest.

        In the context of a community of people who live, work, eat, and pray together, this arrangement seemed very natural. I don’t think it’d work that well in other contexts.

        1. Thanks, Paul. This sounds to me like an Anglican rather than a Roman Catholic Franciscan community. It sounds a bit akin to my “Mauds” description in the post. Anglican Franciscans have a strong tradition of being a lay vocation – once in the community, I understand, you normally could not go on to ordination – you remained lay or ordained as you arrived in the community. As you indicate, it may be unhelpful to generalise from such an exceptional example. Blessings.

          1. You are correct. It was an Anglican friary. It was also almost 40 years ago, and I don’t know whether they still use this pattern today. I guess in a sense they had “mauds” each morning. They used the daily office in TEC’s BCP: Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and compline.

  3. Peter Carrell

    I shall leave it to a busy parish priest to comment on your last paragraph!

    I think the “co-pilot” concern could be met by the presiding priest saying the first words of greeting and introducing the first hymn, and remaining seated in sanctuary, with lay leader leading through remainder of service to the peace.

    But, it really would be good for this thread to have the views of others! I may be a minority of 1 …

  4. Dear Bosco,

    I think that your reference to Anglican Franciscan communities may now be rather out of date. Granted, when I was a Lay-brother in the Anglican Society of Saint Francis in the 1970s, there was no prospect of ‘promotion’ of a Lay-brother to the priesthood.

    However, more recently, this practice has been up-dated. If the Community believes a certain brother has the vocation, he may be recommended for training through the appropriate diocesan channels.

    This does not alter the fact that all members – even the Minister-General – are addressed as ‘Brother’.

    1. Thanks, Fr Ron. That’s why I used the past tense. In RC communities, generally, a lay brother could not be superior of a priest – which is the opposite side of the coin of this issue so that monasticism, which was essentially a lay movement, has, through such regulations, become clericalised. Blessings.

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