All Saints Gazette: Praying Together
Greetings from All Saints! This week:
Monday t/m Friday, 9:00 and 18:00: Morning and Evening Prayer on Zoom
Sunday, 15 June, 17:30: Eucharist at Vrijburg (or join on Zoom), potluck to follow
For online events, see church calendar for link (note: Sunday is the same link as morning and evening prayer)
On June 13, there is a minor feast in The Episcopal Church commemorating the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. Each Anglican church, including The Episcopal Church, has its own version of the Book of Common Prayer or other liturgy, but they are all rooted in the heritage of the English prayer book from 1549 and its successors. At the risk of over-simplification, the Protestant Reformation in England was different from the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformations in that it was expressed mainly through conversations (and fights) about how Christians worship together instead of about doctrines. Don’t make too much of this: worship practices presume and shape doctrines. But we as Anglicans tend to both express our unity and negotiate our differences in how we worship.
Our worship at All Saints could be called very progressive and experimental (owing in part to the fact that we use a Remonstrant church’s space and equipment). But it could also be called traditional, orthodox, or even conservative. It is done in conscious respect to (a sometimes liberal interpretation of) the wisdom of our ancestors and our global Anglican community as expressed in the prayers and rubrics (instructions) of our prayer book.
This expression of that wisdom allows for a lot of flexibility. Our worship looks different from that of our our cathedral in Paris, or our Church of England friends at Christ Church, Amsterdam. Or Trinity Wall Street, Holy Trinity Brompton, or Westminster Abbey. The diversity in practices expresses and shapes a diversity in belief, and you contribute to both the unity and diversity of Episcopal and Anglican liturgy and theology through the way you engage our worship, whether you enthusiastically follow every rubric, cringe inwardly at a line here or there, or find a creative way to embody parts that seem out of place (most of us do all three at least some of the time).
And from time to time, we decide the prayer book needs to be revised. In The Episcopal Church, we have a process for revision that is deliberately long and requires a high amount of consensus. The first Episcopal prayer book was authorized in 1789. It has been revised three times, most recently in 1979.
Praying together in this way forms us individually and as a church, and cultivates the mind of Christ of in us. Rather than sticking to ways of praying that we each understand and find meaningful, we engage with a vast array of images and acts that may sometimes do little for us consciously at that moment. But God uses this process to transform us and draw out the insights of each of us to discern, articulate, and sometimes have a loving fight about what we believe and how we should live.
Today’s commemoration of the first prayer book is a very minor feast. But perhaps we can cultivate this attitude of critical yet reverent openness to mystery in our worship as we gather for one of the Principal Feasts of the Christian year this week. The Sunday after Pentecost is Trinity Sunday. Please come! Bring some food to share, if you can. Even better, invite a friend! And if you can’t come in person without hardship, consider joining on Zoom.
Clergy Away
There will be no newsletter next week, as one priest will attend the Convocation’s Clergy Day and the other is going on vacation.
Have you installed Signal yet?
Now would be a good time. We’ll move our church group texts over there soon.
Episcopal and Anglican Media of Note
There was an interesting article in the Church Times shared among the Convocation clergy about taking numbers seriously, but not too seriously, and giving a theological interpretation to secularism and what it means for church plants like us. Take a look if you’re up for a longer read. Our Presiding Bishop has also written a pastoral letter to the church on recent developments in the United States. We are not an American church, as you will tire of hearing me say, but it is where most of our members are located (it being my country, I ask you to remember it in your prayers).
Support All Saints!
There are countries where churches receive a fair amount of support from their governments, or where the government collects a “church tax” from members and passes it along. There are (or historically have been) churches that can depend on the philanthropy of a few rich people to support their lives. While there are definite advantages to these models, neither is an option for us. So we make a virtue of a necessity! All Saints is what we make it, and what God makes it through us. Can you give something this week? How about every week? Try on a practice of regular giving and see if God doesn’t bless you and us through it!
Use the QR code or this link, or make a transfer through your banking app (the latter saves us a few cents). Please consider making your offering recurring, and pray about what you are called to pledge when we have our winter pledge drive.
Bank details
All Saints Amsterdam
IBAN NL32 TRIO 0320 8657 62
BIC TRIONL2U
Now Thank We All Our God
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote several cantatas for Trinity Sunday, including the incomplete Nun danket alle Gott (BWV 192), the chorus of which is here performed by the Netherlands Bach Society. The hymn text is familiar in English as “Now thank we all our God” (396 in the Episcopal hymnal).
That’s all for Today! Want to talk to a priest? We want to talk to you too!
Website: https://allsaintsamsterdam.church
Mpho: mpho@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Kyle: kyle@allsaintsamsterdam.church
General: info@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Instagram: @allsaintsamsterdam.church
