Compline & Couches

Every Sunday evening, a group of high school and college age young people gather on a set of couches at Messiah Episcopal Church in St. Paul. They catch up on each other’s lives, say the nighttime service of Compline from the Book of Common Prayer, engage in lively Bible study, and thoughtfully pray for each other. We call this Compline & Couches.

Messiah has had a long history of healthy youth ministry stretching back at least to the 1990’s. When I became the youth director several years ago, one of my main concerns was what happens after youth group. For so many middle and high school students the Wednesday night youth program, with its own close relationships, opportunity for worship, and engagement with scripture and prayer, is an extremely important part of their spiritual lives and continued growth in discipleship to Jesus. Then, when they graduate from high school it vanishes. If they don’t move away or join a college with campus ministries, they have limited opportunities
for the same kind of formative fellowship.

In order to address this need, I started Compline & Couches as a new little worshiping community that could include high school students and also extend to those in the early years of young adulthood. We start with a half hour of unstructured time with refreshments. Participants can just hang out or some choose to work on homework. Then we open the Book of Common Prayer and say Compline together, pausing after the Psalm and response for Bible study, which for us means slowly engaging whole books of the bible and not skipping any of the hard stuff. While I try to give some helpful background information to the text, the discussion really goes wherever the participants want it to go. After we read a short passage I like to ask if there are, “any observations, questions… objections, refutations?” Any questions or viewpoints are ok and encouraged. While we’re seeking to learn what the Holy Spirit is saying through the text, we don’t have to all end up agreeing with each other about every point. I might give my best shot at explaining how I understand a passage, but make sure everyone knows it’s ok to disagree with me.

While most young people who come are quite enthusiastic about their faith in Christ, our culture of prioritizing relationships with each other over uniformity of opinion has led to Compline & Couches being a place where young folks come who might not desire to engage otherwise with the church. Maybe their doubts are too big or their hurts are too fresh, but the couches can still be a place for them to find friends and share whatever they’re thinking and feeling. If intellectual questions and doubts are a challenge for them, the liturgy of Compline gives them a way to participate that engages more than just the mind, and liturgy has a subversive way of getting truth inside of a person.

When we have finished with Bible study, we get back to the service of Compline and only pause one more time before the Song of Simeon to share prayer requests and pray extemporaneously for each other. Of course sharing prayer requests is optional, but most do. I’ve found that even young people who profess absolutely no belief in God often will share what is on their hearts and ask for prayer. One of the most beautiful parts of Compline & Couches for me is this prayer time. I simply open and close it. The participants all remember what has been shared and spontaneously pray for each other. It’s a wonderful tangible expression of care for each other as they lift up one another's burdens to the One who cares for each of them. And then we close the liturgy together:

“Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.”