Our diocese underwent a big merger process several years ago. My home parish merged with a much larger parish nearby about three years ago. My home parish stems from a very OCP-heavy music repertoire, and from what I’ve gathered (no pun intended here), the other parish was GIA-heavy with the different iterations of Gather through the years.
Since merging in 2022, our newly combined parish has had two music directors, one at both sites. Each site has also used two separate music lists each weekend and holy day since each site knows different songs and hymns.
Is having two different music programs for one parish odd? Is it preferable for both worship sites to have the same music for every Mass? Should there be differences like this in a parish?
I'm in charge of one of these Area Faith Communities for music, and the divide is as you'd expect: traditional vs. Haugen/SLJ sacro-pop from the '70s/'80s vs. as contemporary as possible. What has worked so far is "can we agree on a unified Mass setting?" and "let's keep the antiphons, choose your style of music for them." What's currently in use are chants, the Richard Rice Simple Choral Gradual, and whatever OCP offers for contemporary antiphons. Again, it's a step in the right direction, if not what I would desire!
I even mentioned in a parish magazine for this AFC that "our beloved" hymns would not be affected by introducing introits/communios. It doesn't answer the question of R+A/GIA psalms and alleluias, but it's a start. After that I let them go with their hymn selection. Were I to pick hymns for all 4 of the parishes my head would be on a plate. You may be able to get away with one similar weekly hymn between them.
Thanks, tandrews. I think the common Mass setting is going to be the first step for us. Fortunately, this doesn’t really require learning a new setting for each church, as both seem to know the same settings. Might be one or two that either one doesn’t know, but it seems that that is a good first step.
Our pastor is a good man but doesn’t seem to care what either music director chooses to do, as long as it’s appropriate for Mass. Lack of guidance seems to be the issue. One of the questions that has come up is: is it inappropriate for each church to have a separate lineup each weekend? I venture to say no, it’s not, but maybe some commonalities each weekend would be a good thing to have.
Unless the pastor wants to push both of them toward the ideal, or one MD is being laid off, I’d leave it alone. Two sandwiches of 4 hymns from Gather and 4 from Breaking Bread are going to be equally suboptimal.
I know a cluster where there was a deeply traditional parish (fully sung NO every weekend with Gregorian proper). It got merged with two small, MOR, fading churches, which had themselves already been coupled up. After the three were clustered, the status quo continued while the pastor built trust at his new churches. When the MOR musician retired, he was replaced by adding an assistant organist, and the whole cluster of three churches went over to Source and Summit.
So if the pastor has a vision/desire for a clear change like that and the skills to catechize everyone, great. If not, I wouldn’t think it worth antagonizing volunteers and parishioners who are probably already feeling worried their church will close or their “special traditions” will be lost.
It is odd, but I don't think it's a problem in itself. Maybe you feel some subtle extra anxiety about community because of the merger, but our unity isn't primarily in musical selection.
Aligning on ordinaries would be nice, but if one of the music programs is simply better than the other I think a forced compromise should be opposed.
It’s not inappropriate and in many ways, if they are basically unobjectionable programs, allowing them to continue as much as possible as they have could allay a number of fears and anxieties people may be feeling around losing their canonical identity as a parish.
Sometimes, if the closure of one of the churches is in the cards, I have heard the argument made that it’s good to bring programs together to foster a sense of unity, and to smooth the transition to togetherness.
Whereas, I have always felt, that if one of the churches was definitely going to go away, then it is best to respect their uniqueness and attachments as much as possible, letting them grieve and take leave of it on their own terms.
Particularly where vitality is given as a measure or a reason to keep or to close a parish — or a worship site, in this case — changing too many things before the axe falls can really lead to the blame game.
People will say, well, we could’ve remained vital, but you forced us to do all of these things, you forced us to consolidate, you forced us to change beloved modes of worship — in short, you robbed us of everything that we felt was uniquely attractive or attaching about our church —, and so the people gradually left and then you used that excuse to take everything away from us.
Whereas if you genuinely cultivate them, help them, support them, and try to make everything as favorable as possible for them to flourish, if they still fail, who is to blame? That’s a more acceptable loss, I think, for folks.
I forgot to mention that our pastor did have us take up Gather for about seven months before many of the parishioners at my church complained about it. As stated earlier, we were a Breaking Bread parish until COVID and then switched to worship aids. The other parish had a surplus of Gather and sent them down to us when Gather was placed back in their pews in summer 2023. I believe the pastor wanted us to use a common hymnal at that point. The biggest complaint was the weight of it. That’s not my biggest complaint with Gather, but after using BB for 25 years and then a worship aid during the COVID years, it didn’t surprise me that the weight would be an issue for my parish. When we switched to worship aids, it was so freeing not being tied down to one hymnal/missal.
We tend to lean more traditional at my home church, and the new MD at the other church seems to like the contemporary a bit more, which is why I’m not crazy about doing the same stuff. Ultimately, all I can offer are suggestions to my MD, but I’m not sure where it’s going to end up. I fear we’re going to end up back with Gather since we “already have it.” UGH.
Our community underwent one set of parish consolidations and closures in the 1980s and another three years ago. The most recent consolidation reduced three parishes to one parish with services at two sites.
Both sites offer Masses in English and Spanish. The English Masses use Gather at one site and OCP at the other. Right now, finances do not allow for buying matching English language books. The Spanish Masses use the same OCP songbook at both sites.
There is a principal, overall music director who speaks only English and a bilingual music director who works with the Spanish-language Masses. The song selections are consistent within each language group at both sites, with an occasional difference when an English song appears in Gather but not in OCP.
If it is just an administrative clump, and not an actual merger (with people physically attending at a new site) the idea that it’s “one parish” is a complete canard. It’s two struggling parishes sharing one priest and a reduced staff overhead. As long as people are entrenched at church A, and others at church B, you just have two small parishes. If the pastor wants things to come closer together just because he is pastor of both, that’s one thing, but it always seems such a joke to me when people pretend it’s all “one big happy family”. Sorry to be a Debbie downer… but that’s just now how people operate in reality. And even after one of the sites officially closes and people migrate, there are bitter feelings and a sense of in-group identity from the cohort who come to the new place who feel like exiles or immigrants in a new home, and there will be those at the parish that didn’t close that make it known that “this is how we do it around here (I should know; I’ve been the sacristan for 30 years!)”.
Serviam, this is how I feel. There are some that want to make it the “big happy family” and will tell you that to your face, but then behind closed doors that’s not what they want at all.
The two churches are both very different demos with one being very much a “wealthy” group and the other not so much. The wealthier church is also much younger. The way the diocese envisioned this new “parish” still puzzles me.
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