Worship in a “united and a uniting church” properly reflects the rich traditions of the four major denominational streams of the United Church of Christ (Congregational, Christian, Evangelical, and Reformed) and of the many ethnic communities within its membership. These traditions hold in common the Reformation understanding of the centrality of Jesus Christ in God’s redemptive action in history. They also affirm the integral relationship between faithful congregational worship and prophetic ethical witness in society. Guided by the Holy Spirit, the entirety of the church’s life and every individual Christian’s life is worship offered to God.
Reformed and Always Reforming
In recent years, the United Church of Christ has sought to recover, in relation to congregational worship specifically, the Reformation conviction that “the only church truly reformed is the church always reforming.” This has led the denomination to reexamine its rich worship history, and not to enshrine developments in the last century as more normative than roots that penetrate through the sixteenth-century Reformation to the patristic era and the primitive church of the New Testament.
This liturgical reformation is characterized by a willingness to encourage worship that is truly more participatory and socially prophetic. This includes increased congregational sharing in leadership, the recovery of the singing of the Psalms, a more full reading of the Scriptures (through the Common Lectionary), the use of the sign of peace, encouragement of movement, gestures, and the arts that show regard for our sensate nature, and the restoration of more frequent Holy Communion.
The reform of United Church worship is also shaped by a growing sensitivity to the power of language to hurt or heal. Consequently, great care is given to avoid words that exclude or judge others on the basis of gender, race, class, or some disability. For example, although it is acknowledged that in the past “man” was often used as a “generic” term inclusive of the human race, this usage is now seen as unjust. It leaves women, in their dignity as persons also made in the image of God, “out of sight and out of mind” in ways that contribute to their exploitation. In a similar way, the worship resources of the denomination seek to move beyond the exclusive use of male metaphors for God by recovering the biblical texts in which the feminine character of God is affirmed. In one instance this is expressed in a prayer of invocation by the phrase, “Gracious God, … you have brought us forth from the womb of your being and breathed into us the breath of life” (see Deut. 32:18, Hebrew text).
Word and Sacrament
Although no one order of service is mandated in the United Church of Christ, there is a growing appreciation of the historic pattern of Entrance, Word, Table, and Dismissal. The denomination is becoming more aware that in each of its historic streams the “ideal” set forth by the founding reformers was that full worship on the Lord’s Day should include both Word and sacrament. There is also a growing consciousness that the Lord’s Supper, in too many of our celebrations, was exclusively centered in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and had become a “death” meal cut off from the reality of Christ’s resurrection.
The reclaiming of the Emmaus Road testimony to the sacrament has begun to transform the meal into a solemn but joyful feast that is as much an anticipation of the “coming again” of the Risen One as it is a proclamation of Christ’s death. The orders for Holy Communion, with two full musical settings, seek to express this unitive wholeness of the salvation story. This has contributed to a shift from a quarterly celebration of Holy Communion to an almost universal minimum of monthly Holy Communion. In some local churches the weekly “ideal” is now a reality, at least in an early or alternate service.
The Book of Worship
The question of “forms” for use in worship has also been reexamined. The nineteenth-century aversion to most fixed forms in the Congregational and Christian parts of our heritage is well known. Current scholarship, however, shows conclusively the “free church does not translate simplistically into a church free from all forms. Rather, it denotes a church that includes within the parameters of its freedom the uninhibited liberty to use whatever forms prove to be consistent with its understanding and practice of the gospel” (Book of Worship [New York: United Church of Christ Office for Church Life and Leadership, 1986], 12).
This understanding of the balance between freedom and order is reflected in the action of the general synod to provide for a Book of Worship that is a resource and guide. Published in 1986, its only authority is its usefulness as local churches seek the continual reformation of their worship in response to the Scriptures and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The production of the Book of Worship was the responsibility of the Office for Church Life and Leadership, which carries responsibility for most worship concerns. The process involved broad consultation with the entire denomination and with ecumenical partners, and disclosed a great interest in far more than orders for Sunday worship. Sections were added on the liturgical year, the use of the lectionary, services of anointing for healing, and full orders for Holy Week, including footwashing, Tenebrae, and the Great Vigil of Easter. Orders for individual or corporate reconciliation, times of farewell when pastors or church members relocate, rites for celebrating the adoption of children, and a penitential order for the acknowledgement of the dissolution of a marriage were included in the final publication.
A unique mark of worship in the United Church of Christ is that each local church is a steward of its own liturgical life and cannot be compelled to conform to any one standard. At the same time, in this freedom, there is, in fact, not only rich diversity but a bond of unity expressed in forms common to all. This is apparent in the use of the Book of Worship, in the intense interest of the denomination in a new hymnal scheduled for publication by the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries in 1995, and in the increasing care given by their seven seminaries to liturgical theology and practice.