Liturgical Advisory Committee
Liturgical Advisory Committee News, February 2011
The Liturgical Advisory Committee met in Church of Ireland House, Dublin on 27th January. Reports from the sub-committees were received and discussed. The Hymnal sub-committee reported that, to their knowledge, both the full music edition and the melody edition of the Church Hymnal were now out of print. This was later confirmed by Janet Maxwell, who kindly attended the meeting to assist the LAC in considering this item. Concern was expressed at the unavailability of the full music edition of Church Hymnal 5 for organists and choristers, and the cost of a re-print was to be investigated with the publishers.
The Electronic Liturgy & Resources sub-committee reported progress with regard to Visual Liturgy. Following advice to registered users of Visual Liturgy 4 to continue using VL4 without an upgrade to VL Live whilst talks were undertaken with the new publishers (Hymns Ancient and Modern) we can report that an agreement has been reached whereby an updated Irish module calendar for Visual Liturgy is available. Those wanting information on how to access the update are invited to contact the Revd Alan Rufli revajrufli@gmail.com.
The LAC Report to the General Synod was considered and approved, as was the process for making available a Eucharistic Prayer which may be used when a significant number of children is present. The final draft of this prayer was presented to the House of Bishops following the November meeting of the LAC, and with slight amendment by the House, it was approved for a seven year experimental use from December 2010.
The Committee also received information from the Revd Canon Michael Kennedy of the completion of his work Commentaries on the 2004 Edition of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland. It is envisaged that this work will be made available through electronic publication, in a collaboration between the General Synod's Literature Committee and the Liturgical Advisory Committee.
Following the meeting, some members of the LAC met in the afternoon with Bishop Darling. It was felt by the LAC that Sing to the Word (now out of print) was too valuable a resource to be lost to present and future generations of clergy, organists and musical directors, so this meeting was arranged to discuss the possibility of Sing to the Word being made available to a wider audience through the Worship Pages of the Church of Ireland website. There was a good discussion as to how this might be undertaken and in what form, after which there was agreement in principle to the initial work going ahead, subject to the final electronic material being approved by Bishop Darling.
The next meeting of the Liturgical Advisory Committee is planned for May 18th 2011 in Church of Ireland House, Dublin.