October 2008

Celebrating the Eucharist — Children Welcome?

In February 2008 the General Synod of the Church of England voted to ask the House of Bishops to commission some Eucharistic prayers for services where significant numbers of children are present. Gill Ambrose, Editor of Roots worship magazine and a member of the Church of England's Liturgical Commission, encourages us to think deeply about how musical aspects of our Eucharistic services can help children to participate.

A number of years ago, when we had moved house, I visited the gas board shop to organize new billing arrangements. As I entered, a child was singing: 'There's water, water of life, Jesus gives us the water of life.' She was sitting on a high chair, alone beside the counter, swinging her legs, lost in her song and oblivious to all around her. It is a picture that has remained with me, not because I was surprised to hear a child singing — my own children had sung themselves to sleep on many nights and the only memorable rule at the family meal table when I was a child myself had been 'no singing' — but because of her self assurance and complete absorption.

While recognising that reminding readers of Sunday by Sunday that singing is good for you would be like carrying coals to Newcastle, we might nevertheless rejoice together in the assertion quoted in the Guardian newspaper on 15 April this year: Matthew Freeman, development manager of the government singing programme, said that 'singing helps children feel more confident and positive … releasing endorphins and Immunoglobulin A, which prevent you from getting ill.'

If we are seeking to draw children increasingly into the Eucharist, either through school worship or church celebrations which are more deliberately inclusive, singing is a key tool, for it facilitates engagement in the liturgy which is more than just words.

Writing about children and worship, Louis Weil, the great American liturgist, describes how obsession with text has meant that 'affective and intuitive powers are left with little, if any, space for realization within the liturgical context.' We know that singing has the capacity to bridge this gulf. We see this in the response and delight of choristers, and I observed it in the performance of the little girl in the shop, for although she was little more than five years old and had almost certainly learnt her song aurally, she knew all the words of all the verses.

So often in Eucharistic worship, however, we find children alienated from the worship and the text by indecipherable ritual and convoluted supplementary words. Their resort is to the children's corner, colouring in and, in the last analysis, bad behaviour. Singing has a capacity to reverse this. Presented in an engaging way, with music which is fresh and unpretentious, the singing of Eucharistic texts can draw children in, increase the accessibility of the words and make them memorable, so that they become simply part of our life. Weil reminds us of Tertullian's phrase 'the flesh is the hinge of salvation', which equates well with a contemporary recognition that 'play is children's work.' Weil goes on to explain that 'sacraments … are signs of the presence of the Holy One in our lives. Their meaning does not depend on our reason. First we are called to experience the reality of God's presence. Later there will be ample time to attempt our inadequate verbal descriptions.' Singing is part of that experience, contributing to the laying down of a treasury of experiences and texts upon which the Christian will draw throughout the rest of their life.

If we acknowledge and recognize this, the availability of Eucharistic music which draws in small children and facilitates their participation in Eucharistic worship - and their enjoyment of it — will be a high priority for us. (The quotations from Louis Weil are taken from the book The Sacred Play of Children, edited by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and published by Seabury Press, New York, in 1983.)

This article, first published in the June 2008 issue of the quarterly liturgy planner Sunday by Sunday, is copyright (c) 2008 The Royal School of Church Music and is reproduced by permission of the author and the RSCM. Sunday by Sunday is sent to affiliates and individual members of the RSCM; further details can be found online (www.rscm.com). 

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