This service is planned with a predominantly English-speaking congregation in mind. The average attendance in this hypothetical congregation is somewhere around sixty, including some members whose origins are in non-Western cultures. There is no choir, and more often than not, there is no pianist/organist available to assist in leading the music. Even so, all the music included in this liturgy may easily be learned and sung, unaccompanied, under the leadership of a song leader.
One joyful reality of the twenty-first century is that, in almost any gathering of believers, there will be people for whom English is a second language, or who have studied a language to some level of fluency. When a congregation is radically multicultural, a multilingual order of service, done in parallel columns, often works best. In a predominantly English-speaking congregation, a simple indication of the language that is intended to be spoken at any given point in the liturgy is all that is necessary, with the full text of the service presented only in English.
This article on World Communion Sunday originally appeared here, and is used by the author’s kind permission.
