When the Vicar disagrees with the Pastor...

Today, we had a meeting of the Worship and Music committee. The chair brought up an idea to introduce the 'common cup' idea to our communion practice. The 'common cup' (cc from now on) is the cup from which people will directly drink from during communion instead of dipping their bread/wafer into the wine (intinction) or getting a little cup of wine (shot glass style). Now, it seems that there are only a few ways to implement this in a community that already has two cups offered at communion for intinction, one with grape juice and one with wine. There are some health concerns that many people have, some for good reason (I am pretty sure that I got 'mono' from the cc) and others because people still do not know how AIDS is actually spread (I wish I was kidding...), so we came to the conclusion that we needed to add another cup into the mix that would be solely for people to drink from directly.

The pastor had two ideas, one was to have a kind of "Last Call" type of situation where most people (those who will prefer intinction) would come up to the rail when they felt like it and then at the end the last group at the alter up would be given the cc. As I imagined this in practice I had visions of chaos and people not know when exactly they should approach the table and potentially going at the wrong time or maybe even not at all which is not what our goal is here. Her other idea was to have one side of the communion rail offer the cc and the other side have the intinction cups with wine and grape juice. Another idea that while sounded good in theory (in her head at least) might not be as effective in keeping the confusion down and not distracting from the sacrament we are trying to focus on. I kept picturing "Dippers" and "Sippers" signs over the alter directing people to their correct water fountain, OH I mean communion wine, my bad.

Well during this lovely discussion I was feeling a little ballsy and decided that I would actually voice my opinion about this situation from my experience in the last 6 months at this church. I basically told the pastor that both of her ideas were not going to work logistically, but in a tone that was supportive and not to harsh (we learned to be smooth in seminary). Well, she looked at me as if I had 3 heads for a) disagreeing with her and b) thinking that I might actually understand the people in a different way than she does. I then suggested that it might be more helpful and less disruptive to the ritual if we added another person to carry the cc and have it available for those who wish to use it. Well then she said that my idea drew too much attention to the American idea of materialism and how we have so many choices and options in our world and that was not how we should present the holy meal of Jesus. I then wanted to point out that we are already talking about offering another option for wine and that how we offer it does not make it any less of a choice for the people, there will still be 3 options! But I bit my tongue (that was another class in seminary).

Those on the committee ended up agreeing with me for the most part and I felt as if it was a moral victory for myself as a Vicar who will no longer just nod and smile all the time when the Pastor speaks her mind and I disagree. There has been many an occasion for which I have wished to confront her decisions and there are many battles for which I choose not to fight but when you start messing with worship, and changing the experience in a distracting way for the people, I have to speak up. So while today was not an overwhelmingly excellent day I have resolved to take my small victory as just that, small, and do some yoga - never knew my legs could bend that way.