“And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

Hebrews 10:24-25

Since I first took seriously the practice of my faith these words have always stayed with me. In times when I have felt cold, or detached, or bored, or doubtful, they have urged me back to worship, and to the disciplines of participation in the Christian community. And they have been life-giving, indeed life-saving words, echoing across nearly two millennia from an unknown early Christian writer.

For much of my life I have had a professional obligation to worship because I was in parochial or chaplaincy ministry and was therefore preaching or leading worship. But since I retired as a lay clerk a year ago, I have no contractual obligation at all obliging me to be in church. 

In fact, because I live close to the church I am part of. I am often there for Morning Prayer at 08:30 or Evensong at 17:30. My childhood churchgoing and my evangelical student days were shaped around services of the word, and Holy Communion was something that I found hard to integrate into my spiritual path. I attended regularly and communicated often, but for a long time the sacrament was honoured in my mind but had not truly entered my imagination and soul. 

But, after many years of ministry, seeing a church on the brink and a society indifferent to it, and now deeply sceptical of the direction of church policy faced by its many challenges from within as much as without, I have felt more and more the need to return to the roots of Christian worship, and to incorporate myself more fully not only into the apostolic teaching and the prayers, but also into the breaking of bread. I don’t think I had appreciated until recently why the eucharistic assembly is so utterly central to all Christian worship. As a student, eucharistic worship in my college chapel and with the Jesuits at Campion Hall had drawn me into a deeper appreciation of the sacrament. I knew how vital it was, I understood why it was; but appreciating it, being absorbed by it, dwelling in this reality? Not so much. For some of you this will be Worship 101, but as a late blooming catholic I am still finding my way. 

On holiday in an ecclesially unfamiliar and very rural part of the country I had Hebrews in my mind. I did my homework, and discovered that the parish we were visiting was part of a largish group of parishes, whose Sunday service rota was, to say the least, quite complicated. Eventually I worked out where there would be a eucharist on Sunday. It was not where we are staying, and would require a drive. Not a problem. I set my alarm, got up, and set off leaving myself lots of time.

The very charming ancient church had three people in it: an organist, a welcomer and a Reader. I was a bit surprised, but I assumed that we must be going to have Communion by extension. I settled down to pray and prepare myself. The tradition of the parish was clearly noisy chatter as a preface to worship, and about five or six minutes before the service was due to start I had realised, from what was being said around me, that we were not having a service of Holy Communion, but one of Morning Prayer. Something to do with a shortage of priests, though I did gather that the vicar was taking another service of Morning Prayer elsewhere. 

I was really upset by this. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was. I had done my homework, made the effort, driven 20 minutes to be at the most foundational act of Christian worship – and all to no avail. And the parish priest somehow couldn’t see the importance of providing this service in the group. And I am a priest, but of course I couldn’t do anything to help. And the way the change was communicated was so offhand, as if changing the one for the other was not a thing of moment.

I left. I drove another twelve miles to a town where there was a church with a eucharist, and arrived twenty minutes late. The service was a little idiosyncratic, but the eucharist was joyful and dignified, and the small choir sang their communion motets most sensitively. And I felt thankful and glad and truly a part of everything, built into being part of the body, by sharing in the body and blood. 

So what do I take from this? I discovered later that there was an 11:00 communion in one of the other churches – not really a substitute, but something. I discovered how much I needed to be part of the eucharistic community. I was concerned about the patchiness in rural parishes of services of Holy Communion – it was hard to manage in rural Cambridgeshire in the noughties, I can only guess what it must be like now. And I felt angry and frustrated that I am barred from leading the eucharistic community, and therefore could not help.

All of this also played into deeper and wider concerns about church polity. Are new initiatives in cities and estates building eucharistic communities? Sometimes, perhaps, but it is a very long way from Fresh Expressions to The Prayer of Humble Access. And how do you go from a messy church group to a community celebrating holy communion regularly? How often is that journey managed with all the passengers still in the boat? 

Again, when I am a visitor what I look for is the parish church. I know that it is unlikely to be open for Sunday worship if I am in a rural setting – and I am happy to travel. But if people travel for a particular purpose that should be honoured. The redirection of energy and initiative away from parish ministry in its common forms, both sacramental and catechetical, has weakened the basis of Christian presence in our land. 

I began with Hebrews, and the apostolic exhortation to keep on going to worship. The other context which emphasises the enormous importance of this kind of behaviour is Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step fellowships. Those newly trying to get and stay sober will be urged by longer sober members to go to a meeting every day to begin with (“ninety in ninety” – meetings/days), and always to keep returning (“Keep coming back!”). As a non-alcoholic, who has only been a visitor at open meetings, I have been struck by the quality of the collective spirit of all those gathering to support each other on the road to recovery. There is no judgement, but a great deal of straight talking love. There is endless support, but no enabling. There is much that Christians could learn from the persistence and steadiness of AA meetings: from their common foundational liturgies, which contain many local variations.

Next Sunday I will be back in familiar circumstances, but I won’t forget this Sunday and its frustrations, puzzlements, joys, gifts and questions.