Organized Religion is Overrated

Or, welcome to Resurrection.

I got a call last night from our Senior Warden (comparable to the President of the congregation, I guess) that while our rector was on vacation this week, we did not have a supply priest. A case of “Did you do it? No, I thought you did.”  And so – one of us had to do Morning Prayer.

Well, the Senior Warden is also our piano player, so guess where that left me?  Long ago, one of our bishops told me I was what she referred to as the D.E.A.N. of the congregation: Doing Everything As Needed. I put on my alb, and soldiered forth.

Any layperson can lead Morning Prayer, and one of the best things about the Book of Common Prayer is that everything is all laid out for you. No guess work. I am currently the secretary for another parish, so I cranked up the computer and used their template to run up a bulletin for Ron to print off this morning. I also dug around in my pile of “stuff” and found one of my dad’s sermons that I was able to adapt to use this morning. It was a Christmas Eve service, so very little needed to be changed. I always enjoyed MP when we used it in the past, so it was a treat to be able to do this today.

I got a lot of nice comments – what else could they say? – but one person did shake my hand and tell me I did a very nice job – for a woman.

Yeesh.

Tags: Book of Common Prayer, D.E.A.N., mass confusion, Morning Prayer