This past Sunday after my adult education class on the Seven Deadly Sins I changed my routine at the Church of the Incarnation. I went to the Uptown service that they hold there at 11:15. The simplest way to describe it would be as the “contemporary” service. It seems unusual to me that this worship group would be so distinct as to have it’s own apparently separate identity from the rest of the church – including it’s own website – but no one that I’ve met at Incarnation makes any mention of it.
I wasn’t sure how I’d like the Uptown service, but I wanted to give it a try. If I liked it well enough I thought it might be easier to meet people there. As I’ve noted before here, Church can be a place which creates a sense of isolation for a single person. Almost everyone that attends in a traditional setting is married, has children with them or both. I don’t think that anyone intends for it to be this way, but the simple fact is that it’s harder to be included in that setting when you are single. I figured Uptown might be different in that sense, perhaps having a younger and less married-with-kids crowd. It was, but not uniformly so. I was surprised to see what looked like an even mix of all ages and family statuses there, though certainly more young people than in the traditional services.
The service was very different from the traditional services at any Episcopal church. While the traditional Incarnation services have a choir with old-school hymns, the Uptown services had a band that played songs. There was even a sound guy up there with his Mac. Where traditional services do the “Episcopal shuffle” (lectionary / prayer book / hymnal / repeat) the Uptown service instead had everyone read the prayers and songs off of plasma screens. Traditional services have announcements referencing their newsletters. The Uptown service made mention of their Podcasts and YouTube. Traditional services are very quiet and solemn in the pews, bit the Uptown congregants bring their Starbucks right on in and mill around a bit. Where traditional services have sermons with an almost academic presentation, Uptown sermons are more plain spoken though no less substantial. More on that in my next post.
Despite being someone that likes the very traditional aspect of the Episcopal church, I liked the service. Despite the clear modernity of the service, the liturgy was still distinctly Anglican. That’s the thing I find that I really need in order to feel at home. While I don’t think I’d be happy without attending at least an occasional service in the traditional format, I could easily see myself attending Uptown services on a regular basis.
As for whether that might result in making more friends and acquaintances, only time will tell.
