worship aid or distraction

By Lauren Bierer, Pastoral Support - Community Life & Worship

As we have been propelled into a digital world over the past 3 decades, many churches around the globe have had to face the debate of screens or no screens. It is a challenging balance to maintain reverence in a place of worship, display hospitality to newcomers by helping the congregation with responses and being able to embrace the introduction of new liturgical music and not be bound to an aging hymnal in the pew. There are valid pros and cons for the use of screens and other worship aids.

In our Diocese here in Adelaide, you may find a church that is using hymnals printed over 40 years ago, which would mean the hymns Open My Eyes, Lord by Jesse Manibusan and Bernadette Farrell’s Christ Be Our Light hadn’t even been written yet. The barrier to updating church hymnals is usually a financial one and we find liturgical music feeling stale if a community has to use the same worship aid for this long. In contrast, another church is using screens and projecting lyrics for a song that was written last year and many Parishes are handing out the Parish newsletter before Mass with the Liturgy of the Word printed in it for people to follow. Their intention is to clearly communicate and increase the potential for participation but it can sometimes be a distraction. 

The preparation of the Sunday Mass PowerPoint and the newsletter is usually done by a Parish volunteer to which we are very grateful. My encouragement is to keep it simple, to aid the worship by following these suggestions:

• Set all backgrounds of the PowerPoint to black and type in white font.
• Adopt a minimalistic projection during Mass where only lyrics of songs and necessary responses are displayed.
• Insert a plain black slide before and after hymns and responses,  to give the impression that the screen is off and the focus can be on the altar or the lectern.
• Resist the urge to display the entire Liturgy of the Word on the screen. The congregation does not need to read along in unison.
• All prayers proclaimed by the celebrant from the Missal can also be omitted from the PowerPoint.
• No clipart, liturgical art or google images are necessary for the PowerPoint display during the celebration of the Sunday Mass.

 These suggestions can be discussed with your liturgy team and Parish Priest.
Admittedly, it is easy to be distracted while sitting in the pews amongst the Body of Christ. From the rustling of newsletters and shifting bodies to upset children and coughing in the back – we all find our minds wandering. Our liturgy invites us throughout, to respond and make new postures and lift our voices in song which are all valuable moments for refocus. It is ok to use our ears and our posture to listen to the Liturgy of the Word during our Sunday worship. Even if we only catch a few lines, those are the words that can sit in your heart. Maybe the newsletter could be handed to people as they exit so that hands are free and people can be encouraged to have a meditative experience with the Word rather than a read-along experience. Parishioners can also read the Sunday readings ahead of time which can be extra helpful for those who struggle to understand the proclamation of the Word during Sunday worship due to hearing impairment or the accent of the reader.
If your Parish has not adopted the use of screens and they don’t have the funds for updated hymnals, you could brainstorm ways to put together a weekly, monthly, or seasonal lyric booklet with some reliable favourites and maybe some new hymns for your Parish community to learn. This would require copyright annotation to include the Parish OneLicense details and it could be a way to help your worshipping community engage in liturgical music that is continuously being created. To be of the mindset that we have enough liturgical music and new music is too hard to learn, is to be closed off to our current artists and expression of faith for our future generations. If we listened to that kind of mindset in the 80’s & 90’s, we would never have introduced the songs that have now become the old favourites like Dan Schutte’s City of God, Kevin Bates’ Our Supper Invitation, Monica O’Brien and Trisha Watts’ A New Heart for A New World or Bob Hurd’s Gather Your People. It is important to stay open to introducing new music or reimagining the way older hymns can sound with different music leaders and instruments. By creatively thinking of ways to communicate song lyrics and keeping the focus on worship and participation, we can grow as a faith community.