Another time of changes

Sunday was my first time to encounter the "new" Order for Holy Communion. I'll be honest and say my initial response is mixed, but I also think it will be fine.

Moving the Gloria to early in the service... I tend to be a "straight-28" (BCP) Anglican, especially after seeing and living through the changes that led to the Episcopal 1979 "BCP" and beyond, but this is one I can live with. It still doesn't seem to me to be a perfect fit in its new place, but it's much better there than near the end of the 1928 BCP liturgy.

I've said it before and I will continue to say it though I'm not going to make a big fuss over it: "Thanks Be To God," especially after the Epistle, grates on my ears in a big way. That was a '79 innovation (not in the '28 at all) that really requires its prefatory statement, "(This is?) The Word of the Lord," to give it sense. "Here Endeth The Epistle / Thanks Be To God" (we finally made it to the end of the Epistle and are still alive/well/whatever) is IMHO just wrong. But whatever -- this is in many ways simply adiaphora and I guess I'll live with it. After all, I have in previous posts remarked on a church choir that most accurately named itself "A Joyful Noise." A little painful to listen to, until you knew their hearts; they were offering the musical equivalent of the widow's mite, and they knew it. But they were making the offering regardless.

The changes in music on Sunday seem to be a bit more difficult; without bulletin references to the appropriate settings in the Hymnal all I could do was listen. But we will get there in short order.