Morning / Evening Prayer - Centralize in One Parish?

My fellow blogger “bls” has a splendid suggestion (scroll down in the linked comments to Mon. 4/25 06:22 pm):  She correctly notes that people don’t come to Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, even though those are beautiful liturgies that don’t need priests.  She asks:

So why not convince one parish to do the services every day for all the others in the locality? Different people from different parishes could be responsible for leading them, so it wouldn't all fall on that particular rector or congregation.

What a brilliant idea!  It would have the added benefit of helping people from different parishes to get to know one another.  That would help promote my diocese’s slogan that we are One Church.

A possible variation might be to rotate the service among different parishes on a monthly basis -- in April it would be at Parish A; in May, at Parish B; etc.  But that might lead to confusion; bls's idea of rotating responsibility instead is probably better.

I have no idea who bls is, but the more I read of her stuff, and of her comments on this blog, the more I like and admire her.

Comments

[bls]

I'm glad you're interested in this, too, D.C. We'll make you Chief Counsel, of course.

But seriously folks, this is such beautiful stuff, and the uniqueness of the Anglican Church has always rested partly in the fact that it places equal emphasis on the Mass and the Offices. So I think we should work to preserve this heritage. And there's so much music already in place that we wouldn't really have to do anything but learn to sing it.

And I like your idea, D.C., that this might be a way for people in different parishes to become acquainted. I wasn't really thinking of that, but I should have been.

But if we had Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer offered daily, at times accessible to working folks, I think people would go. I know I'd go a couple of times a week. It's really a very good way to find some serenity, and to calm down a bit in a busy world.