Worship

There are many varieties of worship within the Episcopal Church and even more within the worldwide Anglican Communion. In one American parish you might find a highly trained choir singing ancient hymns (not always in English) of the Church accompanied by an elegant pipe organ, clergy wearing fine vestments, and the air pungent with incense. In another you might find a band, complete with drums, leading the congregation in singing contemporary songs from the supplimental hymnal: Wonder, Love, & Praise with the words projected on the wall so everybody can clap along. The term high church is often used to refer to the former and low church the latter. The ones in between, and they are many, are usually referred to as either broad church or mid-church. New York City's "Smoky" Saint Mary's, Times Square, has a reputation for being very high church, hence the incense related nickname, while Uptown @ Incarnation, Dallas is about as "low" as you'll find in the Episcopal Church. Then there are the emergent congregations, like Church of the Apostles, Seattle, that well, emergent is hard to briefly explain, so just put "emergent" and "worship" together in your favorite search engine.

As you can see about the only completely common element, aside from the Eucharist and the Creeds, would be that we gather in silence before worship to talk with God and we wait until after worship to talk with each other. Many parishes host a "coffee hour" following Sunday morning worship during which the people gather and drink coffee (or tea or some other beverage) and maybe munch on baked goodies while chatting away. The "coffee hour" is also often when the clergy get asked all sort of interesting questions. Questions like "Why did we sing that?"

The answer as to why that was sung, is rooted in the fact that in the Episcopal Church, the rector of a parish has final say over the music. Usually the music picked for a worship gathering is connected to the season of the Church year or the Lectionary texts for the day. Music is only a part of our worship.