Worship

Worship lies at the heart of everything we do at Queen’s. It is the setting in which our community learns, celebrates and struggles. We seek to sustain a rich pattern of worship, not least:

• to provide a kaleidoscope of ways of enjoying God;
• to gather around the word and sacraments that always promise nourishment to Christian people;
• to enter into the ways of worship we love, delight in and offer to each other for our common enrichment;
• to affirm the strong bond between us as Christians called to a variety of ministries;
• to lean into the traditions of worship that sustain the churches we represent.

Corporate Foundation Worship

We gather each day for Foundation worship. These gatherings embody and express our corporate life and shared commitment, they celebrate and sustain our common life, and as such they are a priority for all those who are on the campus on that day. Staff and students who lead worship are encouraged to lead worship that is faithful to our varied traditions, that brings the best and richest of these resources for our delight, and that models best practice in using rites with common ecumenical shapes.

The weekly pattern

Week by week, we keep a pattern to our worship that provides structure for our common life. It allows all of us to be enlarged in our experience of our own and others’ traditions. So it balances services of the word and sacramental celebrations, corporate and personal devotional life. A small team of people will be given responsibility to plan and lead worship for a week. Each week follows this pattern:

Monday
8:45 am	Quiet time for daily devotions
12:20 pm	Foundation Worship – Normally service of Word and Table (staff led)
9:45 pm	Night prayer
Tuesday
8:45 am	Quiet time for daily devotions
5:00 pm	Foundation Worship – staff led with visiting presiders and preachers
9:45 pm	Night Prayer
Wednesday
8:45 am	Quiet time for daily devotions
12:30 pm	Foundation Worship – student led
9:45 pm	Night prayer
Thursday
8:45 am	Quiet time for daily devotions
12:30 pm	Foundation Worship – student led
9:45 pm	Night prayer
Friday
8:45 am	Quiet time for daily devotions
12:30 pm	Foundation Worship – staff or student led
When residential weekends take place all are welcome to join its worship, beginning on Friday evening until Sunday midday. A typical pattern for this worship is:
Friday
8:45 am	Evening worship
Saturday
8:45 am	Morning worship
5:00 pm	Evening worship
Sunday
8:45 am	Morning worship
12.15pm	Concluding worship (normally a service of Word and Table) to which partners, families and guests are welcome

An attitude

Whilst our weekly pattern allows for a rich experience of worship, it is principally the attitude we bring to our gatherings that ensures our own and others’ encouragement and growth. The approach that all in the Foundation are invited to embrace is that of delight in the ways of worship one loves, alongside willingness to respect and enter into the things that delight those who worship alongside us, with and for whom we pray. This will sometimes – perhaps often – mean yielding our preferences to others, with the expectation that others will be gracious enough to do the same.

Ecumenical graciousness

Our ecumenical setting sometimes brings differences between us into view, and this can be uncomfortable when it happens in the setting of worship. All of our traditions are wide enough to be unable to categorise in simple phrases like ‘Methodists do. . .’ and ‘URC people don’t. . .’. For in fact the traditions contain diversity within them, as well as between them. This is especially true when we worship with and learn from the world church. This can mean that a spirit of being willing to enter into our own denominational traditions, as well as the traditions of others, can be stretching.