A couple of questions..

[setmefree]

Hi again.:wave:

I have a couple of basic questions.:help:

The Episcopal church I attended on Sunday also has mid week services.

What if anything is different about these services compared to the Sunday service?

Do they adhere to the same format with readings , offering and communion?

Also the Healing Rite part of the service. Please explain the details of this Rite.

Thanks:thumbsup:

keith

[ContraMundum]

Hi again.:wave:

I have a couple of basic questions.:help:

The Episcopal church I attended on Sunday also has mid week services.

What if anything is different about these services compared to the Sunday service?

Do they adhere to the same format with readings , offering and communion?

Also the Healing Rite part of the service. Please explain the details of this Rite.

Thanks:thumbsup:

keith



Hi Keith and God bless you.

Each parish is different. It's probably best to call up the priest and ask him these questions yourself. It's really up to the congregation to do things as seems right for their situation and this will vary from place to place. :thumbsup:

[IowaLutheran]

I attend a weekday service at an Episcopal church. It is about a 40 minute service instead of one hour, and there is no music. The introductory liturgy is said, then the priest reads the gospel and gives a short homily, then the creed, the prayers, offering/exchange the peace, communion, and dismissal.

[Father Rick]

According to the BoCP, the creed is omitted and only one reading plus the Gospel for weekday services... other than that pretty much the same...

[pmcleanj]

'Way back when I was a girl, which was from her reports very similar to when grandma was a girl, the norm was to have Communion on Sunday, and weekday services were Morning and/or Evening Prayer. Sometimes, we even had Morning Prayer on Sundays, although that was a rubric actually intended for parishes where clergy is sparse and on some Sundays the cleric is celebrating at a different church -- the chief weekly worship of the gathered community has always normatively been Holy Communion.

But in counterpoint, since Holy Communion is our defining act as a gathered community, our normative worship as a dispersed community was understood to be the Daily Office: Morning and Evening Prayer. Since most people don't attend mid-week services, the only midweek communions that were routinely held were "corporate communion" for a parish group: the Altar guild had a communion on their meeting day before getting to work on the linens, for example, and the Men's Fellowship had communion at their meetings.

Nowadays, Holy Communion is held much more frequently, sadly to the exclusion of the Daily Office in many places. The beautiful Canticles of the Daily Office are falling into disuse, and few congregations know the melodies well enough to sing them without an organist -- and organists are rarely employed for midweek services. The Daily Office doesn't rrequire a sermon either, as the Holy Communion service does.

Regardless of whether the service is Holy Communion or the Daily Office, there will be readings; but they won't normally be from the same lectionary as the Sunday services. If it's Daily Office there may or may not be an offering, but the offertory, at least in some form, is a part of the Communion Service.

Sound confusing? Your best bet, as ContraMundum suggested, is to call the parish and find out what's going on! :)