United Church Of Christ Worship
Worship life in the United Church of Christ (UCC) exhibits both continuity and variety. A journey on any given Sunday to congregations across the country would reveal substantial similarities. The Sunday service is fundamentally a preaching service; only the Lord's Supper and baptism are celebrated as sacraments; the Lord's Supper is celebrated occasionally, at high points of the church year or, in some congregations, monthly. Yet it is the structure of these services that defines the UCC worship tradition most clearly. In the past worship services used to climax with the sermon, but over the past thirty years a more balanced tripartite structure of gathering, Word, and offering has evolved.
The Basic Pattern
Gathering. The gathering serves to orient the congregation toward God. Beginning with a prelude and opening prayers or call to worship, this section may also include an act of adoration, a corporate confession, a pastoral prayer, an anthem, and a hymn. When celebrated, baptism most often falls in this section.
Word. The reading of Scriptures and the preaching of a sermon lend this section its defining character. One might find here a children's sermon, an affirmation of faith, an anthem, and a hymn. If baptism is celebrated at this point in the service, it is understood to be a response to the Word.
Offering. The offering celebrated is twofold: what God has offered us and what we have to offer to God. This twofold understanding has always been present in the ritual which surrounds the giving of money for church and mission. Through the use of the Doxology, the money is interpreted as a symbol of those many blessings that flow from God; the prayer of dedication takes the giving of this money to be an indication of our willingness to commit our lives to God. The Lord's Supper, which invariably falls in this section, celebrates the full Christological import of this mutual offering. Aspects of it also can be conveyed through a pastoral prayer, announcements, and a dismissal or commissioning. This section may include an anthem and a hymn; it always concludes with a benediction and a postlude.
Commentary
Theologically speaking, UCC worship is structured as a dialogue between God and the world. After gathering from the world and turning toward God, worshipers are moved through God's Word to offer themselves to the world.
While this basic pattern remains constant, its execution is varied. Although UCC worship typically contains an act of adoration, that act may be expressed as a psalm, a hymn, a dance, a prayer, or an anthem. Communion may be celebrated using a common cup, instinction, or individual Communion glasses; it may be received standing or sitting or kneeling. The eucharistic prayer may be a full one, complete with sung parts, or a lean one comprised of barely more than the Words of Institution. A person may be baptized by sprinkling, pouring, or immersion, according to the traditional Trinitarian formula or "in the name of Jesus." This diversity of worship is guaranteed by the polity of the UCC, based as it is on the autonomy of the local congregation.
The particular UCC character of this worship is created by the pushes and pulls felt between three dichotomies: (1) order and freedom, (2) tradition and practice, (3) culture and community.
The contrast of order and freedom in the worship of the UCC has its roots in the denominations that merged to form it. The Congregational Christian churches (CC) valued freedom in worship. Both the Puritan and revivalistic sects of the Congregationalists held fixed prayer and ritual in suspicion, valuing instead free prayer and simple ceremony. Whenever a book of worship was published by an agency of the CC, it was de rigueur for the authors to acknowledge its optional status.
In contrast to the CC, the Evangelical and Reformed (E & R) brought a significant liturgical tradition into the merger. Through the influence of the Mercersburg Liturgical movement and under the leadership of its national synod, this denomination had moved beyond the particular liturgical traditions of the German Reformation. Specifically, it developed an appreciation for liturgical forms from the Catholic tradition: the church year, a lectionary, and the prayers and symbols of the church. This was an act of evangelical freedom, an attempt to balance Protestant subjectivity with Catholic objectivity, to breathe a Protestant spirit into Catholic forms.
While striving to create its own liturgical tradition, the UCC has continued to honor the tradition of the denominations that merged to form it. These liturgical strains still can be discerned as one moves from one congregation to another.
Worship in the UCC also lives in the tension between tradition and practice. Along with other American denominations, both mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic, the UCC participated in the ecumenical liturgical convergence that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century. Aspects of this ecumenical liturgical tradition include an acknowledgment of the service of Word and sacrament as the norm for worship, an understanding of baptism as a sacrament of the church, the use of the liturgical year, the adoption of a lectionary, and a greater sensitivity to the rituals and symbols of the church. In the UCC this commitment to an ecumenical liturgical tradition stands in some tension with the local liturgical practice of individual congregations. Former E & R congregations found it more amenable than former CCs. Yet throughout the denomination the encounter with this tradition has given rise to an appreciation for the presence of God in symbols as well as words. This accounts for the introduction of banners for sanctuary decoration, the celebration of the liturgical year, the use of the New Revised Common Lectionary, and an attentiveness to sacramental symbols and ritual life. On Pentecost Sunday, for example, some congregations offer an assortment of breads used for communion in order to symbolize the oneness of all peoples in Christ: pita bread from the Middle East, matzo from Israel, croissants from France, black bread from Russia, and hard rolls from Germany.
Lastly, UCC worship unfolds in the tension between culture and community. The UCC was formed just as a number of social developments challenged the ascendancy of WASP culture: the civil rights movement, the rise of black power, the controversies over the Vietnam conflict. These developments called into question the traditional WASP belief in the compatibility between American cultural values and the Christian faith. Whereas before 1960 it was understood that a faithful Christian could affirm traditional values, after that time a strong element in the UCC held that Christian faith demanded a critical reappraisal of these values. For this group, God was present not in the mainstream of culture but in that community called by its faith to witness against problematic cultural values such as racism, sexism, ageism, and militarism. In recent years this sectarian vision has been forcefully articulated by the women's movement.
The tension between culture and community has impacted worship in a variety of ways. Most significantly, it has influenced the way many members of the UCC talk about God. Those critical of older cultural norms seek to find a God language that is neither gender-biased nor hierarchical. In the UCC Book of Worship God is referred to as "Father" in only two instances: The Lord's Prayer and the Trinitarian baptismal formula. Those who see a compatibility between faith and traditional American culture hold to the traditional language. Those affirming this view would dress the altar with the American and Christian flags; those critical of traditionalism are offended to find American flags in places of worship. Adherents of cultural change prefer a relational worship which seeks God in the world, while those of a more conservative bent embrace a clergy-centered worship whose God orders the world for good.
A concept large enough to embrace all three of these dichotomies is to be found in the writings of the UCC theologian H. Richard Niebuhr. He suggests that a full understanding of the church must contain within it two principles, the Catholic and the Protestant. With these terms Niebuhr was not referring to the two Western traditions of the faith known to history, but rather to those inner principles necessary for all Christian communions. The Catholic principle is the principle of incarnation by which the faith must become enfleshed in historical forms, be they the church or saints or symbols. By the Protestant principle he meant an attitude of protest which warms at every turn against the danger of confusing the penultimate with the Ultimate, the finite with the Infinite, the symbol with the Holy. Within the dichotomies of order and freedom, tradition and practice, culture and community, the UCC seeks a worship life which can hold these principles in a balanced tension.