For the next couple of seasons of the church year we will be adding a liturgical feature to the beginning of our 10:30 service, an introit. Introits have a long history, and you can read more about them by clicking on the link below. In the most basic sense, though, introits are simply a piece of music sung at the beginning of a worship service, often after the prelude and prior to the opening hymn in procession.
One of the things I have noticed about our amazing open worship space is that once you’re in, you’re in. What I mean by that is that there’s no sectioned off foyer or narthex where folk can talk quietly and catch up upon arriving. Instead this naturally happens at the open narthex to the side and at the open space at the back of the church. As my liturgics professor used to say in seminary, the space always wins – and in our case the space can make it hard to center and transition into worship.
Here is where I hope that introits will help give us space to take a breath and get ready. At the end of the prelude the choir will fan out around the congregation and teach and then lead us all in singing a simple chanted introit. We will use the same introit for all of the season after Epiphany, and then a different one for the whole season of Lent. The repetition is an invitation for us to be still, switch out of the morning rush mode it takes to get us and our families here, wrap up our conversations and check ins, and breath in the Spirit as we come together as a community in worship.
Let me know what you think in the coming weeks, I’d love to see if it changes the texture of your experience on Sundays!
In peace,
Kristin+