The ‘New Normal’ in a Liverpool Anglican City Centre parish
A reflection from Pam Bishop on the ways the pandemic has changed our worship in the parish
It’s June 2020 and we sat in our study at home on a Sunday morning, having joined in a Facebook streamed Eucharist service from the Rector’s garden and afterwards, by Zoom, enjoyed a coffee and chat with some of the church congregation. I spoke to one person whom I had seen for the first time at a Zoom parish quiz earlier that week and asked where she was living. Joan replied that she was new to the church and that, amazingly, she was in Devon. Joan had been feeling lonely and distressed particularly during the lockdown and had failed to find solace and appropriate support in her home church. She had searched online and found us here at St Bride’s in Liverpool city centre which was providing not only a Sunday communion service but additionally daily morning prayer. These services had enabled Joan to feel connected with a group of like-minded Christian people and to experience and benefit from some creative and contemporary liturgy. A little later I discovered another participant from N London; she was shielding, and through friends in Liverpool had also linked up with St Bride’s. There was, it turns out, a further significant group of others who were now joining the virtual church weekly but who had not attended a service at St Bride’s before the pandemic.
We, who are regular members of the congregation, initially considered the online services as filling a necessary gap but were missing the singing of hymns and live music, sharing the Peace in real terms, the familiarity of church space and format of service. But we were also discovering some of the joys of different opportunities for worship: ease of access, informality, more opportunity for personal response and reflection and wider participation in intercessions. We were not able to partake physically of the consecrated sacrament but the act of sharing our own simple food/drink at the same time was nonetheless proving to be a meaningful community experience. Importantly we were prompted to consider the ways in which the ‘enforced’ move to online worship provision had attracted new faces, some drawn from a wide geographical area, had supported them to feel welcomed but not overly challenged or trapped, and had provided a truly spiritual experience within the comfort and safety of their own home. New technologies had allowed this to happen and it became clear that more could be done to build on the initial tentative planning.
As the PCC went on to consider opening up our churches for worship, some interesting ideas emerged, for the short to mid-term at least. Of the three churches in the Team parish of St Luke in the City, St Dunstan’s is to be reserved for specific occasions such as funerals, St Bride’s is to house and further support social justice and inclusive church outreach activities and the third, St Michael’s, is to be used for parish worship. This is the smallest church, most modern of the three, easier to heat, and with good kitchen and toilet facilities. We are playing to the strengths of the buildings and their locations and trying to use our accommodation and human resources as safely and effectively as possible. St Dunstan’s is a huge and impressive Victorian building, refurbished as a wonderfully dramatic worship space. St Bride’s is a Georgian building, in need of extensive conservation work but acting as a busy and centrally located venue - for the Micah Food Bank serving mainly asylum seekers, for a weekly Red Cross drop-in centre, as a support hub for refugee women, a centre for a weekly supper for the homeless, a venue for a choir supporting those with mental health problems and significantly as home to an LGBT worshipping community. The current plan for St Michael’s is to provide regularly one service on a Sunday morning as well as a mid-week communion service, encouraging the three congregations to come together in one place for worship. Significantly however, the intention is to continue with the online worship services for those who prefer this model, for those living further afield or those who do not feel confident as yet to join larger gatherings. Is this the ‘new normal’ and how do we sustain and develop these initiatives? It is work in progress but with the advent of a newly appointed ordained priest and a curate this summer, there will be resources for experimentation. The return to old ways of working seems unlikely and maybe the pandemic has been further stimulus for looking critically at ourselves and thinking afresh about mission and ministry in this city centre parish.