Welcome
The Church Service Society was founded in the (Reformed) Church of Scotland in 1865 with the intention of improving the quality of worship in its day. Originally particularly concerned with Reformed principles of worship, it is now, from the same base, ecumenical in outlook and membership. There are members and associated groupings in other countries.
Central to the Society’s work was the publication, from 1928 onwards, of journals which explored the history of liturgies and of places of worship and sought to promote the recovery of good practice and the encouragement of appropriate new forms.
The Church Service Society Annual was published from 1928 until 1970, the Liturgical Review from 1971 (the first one was called Liturgical Studies) until 1980, and the Record (which continues) from 1982 onwards.
These journals continue to be an indispensable record of the study of worship in Scotland, at once Reformed and Catholic, but they are not easily come by. This site provides summaries of the contents of each article so that researchers can identify where to look for topics in which they are interested. A search facility is included.
It is hoped in the long run to mount the complete contents of these journals. In the meantime, complete sets may be consulted at the following locations:
the Society’s own library in Greyfriars’ Church, Edinburgh (pictured above) ; New College Library, the National Library of Scotland, some other Scottish university libraries as well as Oxford and Cambridge; Westminster College, Cambridge; St. Deiniol’s Library, Hawarden; Worship and Doctrine library, Church of Scotland Offices, 121 George Street, Edinburgh.
To access the summaries, click on the journal name, the issue number, and finally the title of the article. The search facility scans all summaries of the three titles simultaneously.
REPORT OF THE CUMBRAE CONFERENCE: October 25-26, 2010
To have a two-day residental conference was a departure for the Society; to have it in the tranquil setting of the Cathedral of the Isles, Cumbrae, was also an innovation. Entitled A Walk Through the Worship Mall, the conference set out to answer this question:
For the postmodern generation, religion and spirituality compete with other lifestyle choices. Not born into established faith communities, many do not have a tradition against which to measure what they are offered. Churches are responding by 'going beyond the walls', seeking 'fresh expressions', offering opportunities for new patterns of ecclesial community to 'emerge'. Local churches are also part of this, embracing new texts, tunes, forms and media. But is what we are doing all that worship can, or should, be?
Featured was a Skype conversation with Professor Bryan Spinks, now of Yale University, a former President of the Society, who had just published the book which gave us our title (The Worship Mall, Alcuin Club Collections 85, SPCK 2010, 978-0-281-06025-2), who answered questions arising from his book on the emergence of ‘consumer choice’ as a factor in the construct of worship. Matters relating to alternative worship, seeker-sensitive worship, and the ‘emerging church’ were discussed.
The main ‘terrestrial’ speaker was Rev Dr Doug Gay, Principal of Trinity College in the University of Glasgow, who spoke from the background of his recent lecture in the Chalmers series to mark the 450th anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland. Gay suggested that the church today had a ‘divided liturgical mind’ and that the fastest growing churches are the progressive or charismatic evangelical churches, challenging the idea that ‘common order’ still maintains.
The conference also heard from the Warden of the centre, David Todd, and from Graham Fender-Allison, the new worship development officer for the Church of Scotland, while Ian McCrorie and Douglas Galbraith presented a participatory evening on four centuries of Scottish psalm singing. In conclusion, Arthur Barrie, from his perspective of President of the Scottish Church Society, offered a summing up in which he opened a discussion on the Church Service Society’s contribution at the present time.