Looking for bits and pieces of liturgy as I prepare my weekly Sunday Service Sheet, I am struck by how wordy liturgy has become. I prefer liturgy to be concise, but, in any case, breivity is essential here for a few reasons:

First, I now produce a weekly sheet which contains the whole of the Church of England communion Service on two sides of A4, folded into an A5 ‘booklet’ (and the first side is the cover, so essentially everything is on 3 sides of A 5)

Secondly this is a poor parish and some of my congregation do not have high literacy skills – this is a generalisation, but I try to use language which is accessible to everyone, but which retains a poetic edge. This isn’t the place top bombard people with too much imagery, too many metaphors.

Thirdly, we are still trying to keep our services short because of the ongoing Covid situation.

My intention is to publish short pieces of liturgy for everyone to use, under this heading of ‘Liturgy with Few Words’.

Here is the first – a scrap really:

Words at the breaking of the bread:

‘The body of Christ broken for us: the Bread of Heaven for the life of the world’.

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