Sunday, September 19, 2010

Speaking of Praying . . .

I goofed big time today during Divine Service.  I just skipped right over the Prayer of the Church.  I had the prayers in the Altar Book ready to go, but completely forgot about them.  Never done that before.  I've made other goofs (one time I drew a complete blank when it came time for the Benediction and had to turn around and get the Altar Book to get the words; another time I forgot to prepare the altar for Communion and had to hurry through it during the Lord's Prayer), but I've never forgotten to pray.  Talk about embarrassing.  And, to make matters worse, I didn't even realize I had forgotten until Larry, the elder on duty, whispered to me during the singing of the closing hymn, "Pastor, did we forget the prayers?"  Even then, I wasn't sure.  I feared that he might be right, but couldn't remember if we had prayed or not.  It wasn't until we had recessed out of the nave that it fully hit me that he was right.  And it was confirmed by a number of members as I greeted them on their way out, all of whom were very gracious and forgiving toward their idiotic pastor.  It was too late to do anything about it at that point, so we prayed the prayer of the church before Bible Study.

I know exactly what happened to me.  I was in DS 1 and 4 mode, but we were doing DS 3.  In DS 1 and 4, the prayer of the church comes right after the sermon.  Then the offering/offertory, then the preface, etc.  In DS 3, the offertory/offering follows the sermon, then the prayer of the church , then the preface, etc.  So, after I had gathered the offerings, being in DS1/4 mode, I just turned and chanted the preface and went forward.  Knowing now what I did explains a few of the odd looks I noticed when I began the preface. :)

If I wasn't such a fan of having different settings of the Divine Service, this would be a good occasion to make the argument for having only one setting.  But, being a fan, I won't. :)  Besides, even were that the case, this pastor would inevitably goof something up once in a while anyway.

Lord, have mercy!    

6 comments:

William Weedon said...

You dork. ;)

Don't feel badly. I remember still the day that I somehow - I haven't a clue how - forgot the Verba. I waited and nothing happened. I said: "We will now sing the Agnus Dei" and the organist was shaking her head at me. And pointing to the altar. And then I remembered. "Time out!" I shouted. "No sacrament of Jesus without the words of Jesus." Lord, have mercy!!!

Or the time, at St. Paul's when I stood patiently waiting for the offertory to begin. And when nothing happened I announced: "We will now sing the offertory." A brief pause and then a voice floated down from the balcony. "Well, alright. But we usually don't sing that during Matins." OOPS. Told the folks to sit down and we'd collect the offering instead...

Rev. Luke T. Zimmerman said...

Tom:

Nothing like the deer in headlights look after being told something got skipped!

Do you print out your Divine Service texts or the ordo of the Divine Service for the people in a service folder? They can be placed in some handy locations (altar book, pulpit, sedalia) for timely reminders......I know well. :)

Another benefit of printing out the ordo was to establish consistency in the sequence of the Divine Service. Though my parish utilizes different settings of the Divine Service, we use the same sequence of parts, thus avoiding the Sermon/Creed/Prayer/Offering vs. Creed/Sermon/Offering/Prayer conundrum that you described. Except for special occasions when the entire ordo is printed (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, or prayer services), we still have people pray the liturgical texts from the hymnal. However, we follow the sequence established in the service folder. [I'm sure that will bring some strange looks from certain friends, but it works.]

Scott Diekmann said...

Don't feel too bad. You're not alone. This Sunday my pastor started out DS4 by skipping the invocation and reading the second line first. He figured it out and had to back up.

Andrew said...

Isn't being flawed great? At least you did not say alleluia during lent!

Pastor Peters said...

After the service one Sunday a member (university professor) said to me "that was a great device, skipping the Gospel lesson and going right to the sermon. I saw nearly everyone reading the Gospel lesson quickly because they figured that something was up..." And I answered, "Whaaaaaa?????"

Rev. Thomas C. Messer, SSP said...

Thanks for sharing, guys. It is helpful to hear about others experiencing that "deer in the headlights" feeling at times, too. :)

Luke,

No, we do not normally print out the Service, but include a detailed outline of every element and its page number in the Service bulletin. On special occasions, we will include the whole Service and hymns in the bulletin (e.g. Reformation, Christmas Eve), but normally just the outline. We do keep the Creed in the same location for all settings (after the Gospel, per the Common Service), since that is an option given in the hymnal, but we follow the order in each setting for the Prayer and Offering/Offertory, which, except for this past Sunday, has never been an issue. I'm hesitant to change that, since the hymnal doesn't give that option, but I certainly wouldn't be as adamantly opposed to it as I know some would be. I do think it would have been wise to keep the same sequence throughout each setting, but it is what it is and, as I said, with the exception of me being a big time dork this past Sunday, it has never posed a problem.