Darlings, I received this e-mail the other day and all I can say is “WORD.”
>>Dear Peacebang,
I am writing this anonymously, because I don’t want to offend the many ministers and ministers-in-training in my circle.
My spouse is a young minister in the [major urban] area, and as such, we get invited to lots ordinations and installations. Lots and lots! [How lucky for you, Anonymous! I bet there’s nothing you’d rather do on a Sunday afternoon than watch clergy process around and hear overly-long and often inappropriate addresses! – PB]
While I’m excited to support our friends and connections in these important transitions and occasions, I’ve come to dread attending these services. [My hat is off to you for your patience and forbearance, friend! Most of us came to dread them long ago. For all the reasons you’re about to enumerate. – PB]
More often than not, ordinations and installations start late or run over, because of communication problems or unfamiliarity on everyone’s part with the particulars of the service or unforeseen problems. Add to that the services themselves which feel overly long, being an hour, two hours, or more (yes, really) with a reception following, and it feels more like a marathon to outlast tedium than a joyous occasion. [How right you are. It is the hosting clergy’s responsibility to make sure that there are no communication problems and no unfamiliarity with the particulars of the service. If the person is being ordained, they’re too inexperienced to be expected to attend to the details themselves and should be supported by a mentor. Sadly, this too often does happen. – PB]
I am truly happy for the individuals celebrating these occasions. Truly. [Me too! And for the Church! – PB] And cerebrally, I am thrilled to be present to recognize them and help celebrate. But for my more human side, after about an hour and a half of sitting on a hard pew bench I become uncomfortable and find it extremely difficult to remain present (a polite way of saying I’m bored out of my mind and am resisting temptation to check my phone). [Darling, you have my permission to play Candy Crush Saga with sound effects if the service goes over 90 minutes. This is the Word of PeaceBang. Seriously, how else are we going to change this culture of clergy indulgence? – PB]
I am asking if you would consider addressing this topic with your audience. I encourage those creating these services to show consideration for those attending [You have me in your AMEN corner, honey. Big time. – PB] Consider that for a wedding ceremony, 30 minutes is regarded as long, and 15 – 20 minutes typical. Condense. Don’t dilute the message or lose the momentum. While this is definitely about you, its more about God [YES!!! – PB], and also about the congregation and your community. If you cannot do without multiple performed musical pieces, have some those performances during the reception to spare your attendees from sitting through 10 musical pieces at the service (yes, really). I wonder if a rehearsal would be appropriate, to give those taking part an opportunity to rehearse movements and parts so everything flows smoothly day-of.
Sincerely,
A fan<< Yes, YES, Yes and AMEN. The time management of liturgy is absolutely essential in the ministry. That goes also for funerals and memorial services where mourners may be tempted to try to do the long work of storytelling and memory-cherishing of the deceased at the service itself, which is too small a container to hold such an enormous spiritual burden. Please, dear ones, help the grieving to understand that. Neither should weddings try to include everything under the sun that the couple finds meaningful, and you as the officiant need to learn to tighten the reins of liturgical planning in a confident and caring manner. It all depends on your tradition, of course, but most of the readers of this blog are not accustomed to three-hour praise services and should not inflict them on worshipers who consider an hour (more or less) to be an adequate time for a service of prayer, preaching and music. The additional liturgical elements of an ordination or installation do require extra minutes, but not HOURS. NOT. HOURS. An exhaustingly long ordination or installation does not mean that one is more important and worthy of such prolonged attention. What it means is that one has not developed sufficient discipline to edit the service to its most meaningful elements, to give all speakers a clear expectation of how many minutes they should take, and a Marshal to gather all of the participants beforehand and go over the Order of Worship so that they know where they fit in the traffic flow of the event. There you are, Anonymous. I hope this helps. For clergy who are wondering how they might trim or edit or manage a service that is bloating beyond a reasonable time slot, that's what your veteran colleagues are for. Give us a call. We are here for you, and some of us have planned enough such services as to have learned how to do them well. Some of us (and by "some of us," I include myself) have even studied liturgical tradition and taught it to seminarians. Just ask. We would so much rather spend the time helping you craft a beautiful 80-minute ordination than to be trapped on a pew for an hour and forty-five minutes during the hour we ought to be enjoying our post-church nap.
100 minutes. Sigh. Of course, it didn’t feel long to *me*, but then, as you state so eloquently, it’s not necessarily about *me*. I will say that one of those elements was a well-crafted presentation of gifts from our children, and that I had a great tech rehearsal with the marshal that helped a lot.
Yes and Yes again. Also re-affirm the ordinand should NOT organize the service and the details. A good emcee or presider and a verger (the one who makes sure all do what they are supposed to do in the right place and time!). I saw one exhausted ordinand who tried to manage everything. No way to begin one’s priestly life.
Ordinands, and ministers in general, are over-functioning by taking the lead in creating and organizing these services. An ordination is an event in the life of the church: the governing body of the church should set the tone, time, and content of the service. The UUA and the UUMA should collaborate on a standard order of service for these ceremonies so every church and fellowship knows what’s to occur. If a congregation is so uninterested in ministry that the ordination ceremony is on the level of the RE teacher commissioning done on a fall Sunday morning, then so be it. That problem will not be solved by the ordinand cajoling everyone into an expensive extravaganza in the late afternoon. Giving a party for yourself generally does not enhance the respect that others have for you.
I think it would be good for the ministers of a given area to have one big annual “Right Hand of Fellowship” Ceremony, hosted by the senior ministers of the area, to which all ministers and laypeople of the area are brought together to celebrate the ordinations, the installations, the retirements, and the deaths of ministers– a mini-SLT, if you will. It could be a great stand-alone event. It would raise the visibility and stature of community ministers. It might be combined with a District or Regional Assembly, or a separate event.
Finally, we have to find some way to celebrate the completion, for the moment, of our ministerial formation. It is an important moment in our lives. But the ordination ceremony and reception, which is so often imposed on the congregation (and then hijacked for the purpose of celebrating colleagues), isn’t appropriate. We should be more mature than that. There is a great joy in the lobby of the convention center after the SLT as the newly fellowshipped meet and greet their closest supporters and then go off to dinners and parties afterwards. Do we need more? [I agree with a lot of what you say here except for two important things: 1. As much as we might wish it, the day when lay people have a working relationship with Rites of Passage such as ordinations and installations is long over and they should not be put in a position to plan the liturgies of such events. The hospitality, absolutely. The worship service? They would be entirely at a loss as to where to begin. I have this on good authority from all the lay people I have ever known in this century. 2. We “need more” in that the congregation itself ordains and installs, so yes, they need to do this as an independent, covenanted community. – PB]
Another yes to the ordinand not managing the details. I was left to handle it on my own with very little guidance. What a gift an hour of someone’s time – and a simple checklist – would have been in the days leading up to the service!
To follow on Tom Schade & PB’s conversation a little bit :
Another challenge inherent in handing ceremony of the church over to layfolk (or the ordinand, or the ordinand’s best clergy friend who was ordained a couple of years ago) is that outside places like [Major City With Several Divinity Schools] where you can’t swing a hymnal without hitting a [specific denomination] seminarian, you’d run a strong chance of turning the organization of the event over to people who have never seen it done before, or maybe participated in one once, years ago and have only a vague idea how such things are structured. That’s not exactly a recipe for “on time and under budget.”
Congregational polity not withstanding, a set of centrally developed and maintained templates for this sort of thing would probably ease some of the headaches, especially in remoter areas where these rituals don’t happen every week (or even every year.) There are lots of planning books for weddings; a pamphlet on “How to craft an Ordination or Installation Service” would probably have a welcome if limited audience.
Oh, and I think I like the title ‘Verger’. It has more gravitas than “Chief Cat Herder.”
As a seminary professor who cannot attend all the services I’m invited to but does go to far more than most non-seminary-faculty clergy, Amen and Amen. Even in services in denominations for which 2-hour worship is the norm, 3 and 4 hour ordinations are exhausting.
This is all very timely as I sit with a document open trying to make decisions about my own ordination service details. (A service, mind you, that is not scheduled until August.) I am lucky that my denomination has a nice booklet with a sample service and guidelines for everything from scripture suggestions to who should pay for what. I am currently trying convince myself that is indeed okay to not have a communion hymn, especially since I get to sing one every Sunday in my context. The issue is very much time and with 2 special music slots (anthem and guest musician) plus 3 hymns in other places, adding a communion hymn is too much.
I am lucky that I have a senior minister and am being ordained at the church that I have served as a seminary intern. I am trusting that she will take the reins when it comes to making sure there is a rehearsal time and people are appropriately arranged.
I had never been to an ordination service before last year, when I was able to attend my classmate’s. Then I had the benefit of attending another one just last month (at the end, the regional minister gifted me with the booklet mentioned above). There were two very different services but have helped me envision my own service much more clearly. I would suggest that ordinands who have not been to a service contact whatever regional body they have and find out if there are any happening near by that they may attend prior to their own service.
Amen and amen. As I was ordained to two sets of orders (Deacon and Priest) there was a rehearsal the afternoon of. It made things run much more smoothly. In my Denomination we do have someone whose job it is to make sure everyone knows what they are doing. It takes an army of people who are all capable in their positions, and makes things run smoothly.
I am a big fan of rehearsals, especially for things like weddings. It makes sure everyone who needs information is in the same place, and everyone hears the same message at the same time.
Well said as always Rev’d Dr. Peacebang.
I agree with the poster WHOLEHEARTEDLY, and I add another liturgical pet peeve that has been alluded to in the conversation, but needs to be underscored with double lines.
In all services, ESPECIALLY ones that have multiple clergy participants, MUST have a worship leader. Someone to sit in the chair behind the pulpit if there is one. Someone to be in charge of managing the transitions, hymn announcements, etc., and a decision maker who can act as cruise director and give instructions or make changes if something doesn’t go as planned. Even if you have experienced clergy in the individual roles, it is sloppy and disconcerting to be without a presence to hold the whole thing together. It helps avoid the awkward moments when the ordinand realizes s/he forgot to ask the person doing the opening words to announce the processional hymn.
It seems minor, and I can hear the cries of, “I can’t possibly add another role to this who’s who of area clergy and laypersons” or “oh, please, that’s too complicated, the speakers know how to do this and they can just wing it!” BUT if you don’t have this person holding the sacred space, it feels as if you are riding a bus with no driver. And it isn’t worshipful or acceptable for the congregation or participants to feel as if they are sitting with Sandra and Keanu in Speed.
Lisa hit the nail on the head… no one should ever have to feel like their being ordained BY or WITH Keanu Reeves. I can add nothing more to this conversation.
When I was planning my ordination, I showed a mentor the list of ALL the people I wanted to include – and he wisely said “FIRST plan your order of service, then invite people to fit into those pieces, rather than try to find things for all these people to do.”
It was such wise, helpful advice! There were so many people I wanted to include, but wasn’t able to … and that made for a shorter (though still on the long side) ordination.
This is a great topic, so glad you are writing about it.
and can I add? you do not need to include every liturgical action ever invented. I have been to far too many “liturgiful” ordination services, in which every thing including the kitchen sink for a remembrance of baptism was included- one, just to prove God has a sense of humor, also had a homeless person who wandered in off the street, got in line for communion, and then loudly expressed his disapproval of communion bread that contained yeast. That at least woke us up as we approached hour 3 of the service…..
In the UUA, there is a manual for ordination services, if a bit outdated: http://www.uua.org/documents/raiblepeter/ordinationmanual.pdf
I’ve been honored to be on the planning committee for several ordinations, and have found most of the information here to be quite valuable. I especially am mindful of Rev. Raible’s admonition that the service length should be 1 hr, possibly 15 minutes more. The only reason for longer services is ‘sloppy planning or a failure to give participants strict time limits”
I don’t remember any over 90 minutes and usually the ones I am at are shorter. I tend to enjoy them but really don’t like made up, sloppy, rituals to be included. I always feel awkward when someone wants an impromptu “laying on of hands” where clergy are suddenly called up (and sometimes the whole congregation) without warning to lay on hands in a messy mass.
Long ago I learned the phrase “the mind can absorb what the seat can endure” and I have taken it to heart ever since; this would be one of many applicable situations.
Re: lay people planning/coordinating. There are some with the gifts and knowledge for doing this–I know several in my own Episcopal diocese–so don’t automatically rule them out, but be very sure that they possess those qualities!