A SETTLED ROUTINE

In Methodism, as the years went by, practices did differ slightly.

Conscientious ministers and local preachers would prepare beforehand for their services and when they took their appointments would vary in delivery, using no notes, some notes, fuller notes or a complete manuscript, from which to utter their prayers and sermons. Usually the only books used were The Methodist Hymn Book (1933) and The Authorised Version of the Bible (1611). The Lord’s Prayer was said, using the fixed, familiar and traditional form, although some churches sang it. Services had become settled into a tried and trusted routine.

Such a situation prevailed until well into the 1950’s and was experienced by this researcher as a youth. Worship services followed the regular pattern of the ‘hymn sandwich’, as follows:

46 Call to worship

Hymn (usually a hymn of praise with a familiar tune)

Prayers of Adoration and Confession and the Lord’s Prayer (In a morning, a children’s address if required, see below) Hymn (usually one of penitence and assurance of forgiveness)

Old Testament Lesson or Psalm (if possible linked to the New Testament lesson and the sermon)

Hymn (one which reinforced the importance of the Bible or related to the lessons)

New Testament Lesson (linked with the sermon)

Prayers of Thanksgiving and Intercession (often known as ‘The Long Prayer’) Notices read by the Society Steward (sometimes at great length)

Offering and Dedication

Hymn (related to the subject of the sermon)

Sermon (perhaps lasting half an hour to forty minutes)

Hymn (one which gave opportunity for response to the word by way of commitment or re-consecration)

Benediction

All the above were usually delivered by the one appointed minister or local preacher. Inevitably the quality varied. However, by and large people attended their church or chapel and were content with this kind of arrangement. If Communion was once a month, there could be seven or nine services following this pattern over four or five Sundays, three quarters of them led by local preachers, unless ministers monopolised the pulpits, as in the larger churches. Whenever there was Communion it would be ‘tagged

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on’ to the end of the preaching service, with members of the congregation having the option of staying for it or otherwise. In some ‘high’ ex-Wesleyan churches the 1936 Book of Offices was used regularly. This contained a full order of Holy Communion, the Order of Morning Prayer and the Collects, Epistles and Gospels.

Sunday Schools were also a feature of church life. Children were usually present for the first part of a morning service, before leaving the main congregation and going to their classes in other rooms on the premises. A children’s address, situated between the first two hymns, was expected from the appointed minister or local preacher. It was often said, wryly, that the adult congregation listened more attentively to these than to the later sermon!⁶³

The five hymn sandwich type of structure was reinforced by the content of the Local Preachers’ textbook for Worship and Preaching at the time (pub.

1956) which provided a rationale for its continued use. The logic underpinning the order of service was a simple one.⁶⁴ The congregation began with adoration and praise of God, leading to feelings of their unworthiness and hence prayers of confession. The experience of forgiveness

63 N.B. Children’s addresses still persist today in those churches fortunate enough to have Sunday Schools/Junior Churches/Younger Churches/Sunday Clubs etc. and where children are still expected to be present for the first part of worship. Some churches have parallel services, i.e. a preaching service/communion service purely for adults with another more informal child/family orientated service led by local people as an alternative.)

64 See Morrow T.M. Worship and Preaching, London, Epworth, 1956, chs. 1 & 2.

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led to thanksgiving for this and indeed all God’s merciful blessings. A desire that the whole world should know such a salvation meant that prayers for the needs of humanity could be uttered. The congregation, in order to be sustained and to grow in their faith, were then addressed by the word of God through the exposition of scripture with a challenge to a change of life and a renewed commitment to effective witness and service.

Such an act of worship flowed naturally from one element to another and led to the sermon as the climax of the service, in which God, through the Bible and the preacher, addressed His people who then through such an encounter were led to live as His servants in the world.

The local preachers’ study guide which helped to encourage this supposedly extempore ‘liturgy’ was ‘Worship and Preaching’ by Thomas M.

Morrow, Warden of the Wesley Deaconess Order. The book, published in 1956, was perhaps the beginning of a process whereby local preachers began to pay more attention to the whole of the content of the acts of worship which they conducted.

The notion of the sermon as the significant culmination of an act of worship was also reinforced by Rev. Dr. W. E. Sangster’s best selling publications relating to preaching, especially the art of making sermons. These were ‘The Craft of Sermon Construction’, ‘The Craft of Sermon Illustration’, ‘The Approach to Preaching’ ‘and ‘Power in Preaching’ published between 1945 and 1958. These books enjoyed a wide circulation amongst Methodist

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preachers both ordained and lay, largely as a result of Dr. Sangster’s own fame as an orator and preacher at Westminster Central Hall. Because he was so popular and in such great demand at services and rallies all over the country it was natural that preachers should regard him as an ideal and as a model for their own modus operandi for pulpit ministry.

But in effect what had gradually taken place over time and up to about the end of the 1950’s had become the very negation of that freedom of worship which, in theory, was still espoused.

It is the freedom of spontaneity which is open to the extempore guidance of the Holy Spirit: and it is the freedom of a particular worshipping community to respond to the reading and preaching of scripture addressed to them as God’s living word.⁶⁵

Methodist free form worship had become almost as fixed as any printed liturgy, following the same pattern, almost without exception, Sunday by Sunday, both morning and evening.

65 Ellis C J. Gathering, A Theology and Spirituality in the Free Church Tradition, London, SCM, 2004, p.27

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CHAPTER 3