How many albs does your church have?

[mVitus]

So on my usual morning walk to a bus stop I pass by this Lutheran church. In one of their hallways they have a coat rack filled with albs from small size for a smaller child to larger sizes that I’d guess fit adults. (Side note: It’s clearly visible from the street. I’m not going ninja or anything.) So this got me wondering how many albs a church will usually have for its altar servers given that children do tend to fill a large range of sizes.

 

[1ke]

Those may have been choir robes.

 

[His_helpmeet]

IME (being a server and having siblings who served as well) we did have many different sizes of albs. Originally we attended a very small rural church where servers took individual responsibility for ensuring they wore an alb that fit - the parish had a small number of albs in different sizes; since we only had one Sunday Mass and usually only about 3 servers would serve it wasn’t a big deal. (In our whole parish I think we had about 6-8 kids who served total.) Later we started attending a larger city parish after our rural parish closed. This parish had numerous albs of different sizes and the sizes were labelled. They kept track of which servers needed which size of alb. Keep in mind that this parish had 3 weekend Masses (vigil Saturday night plus two Sunday Masses), the Knights of Columbus served Mass one weekend a month, and there were a number of servers who served each Mass. (Usually they would have 3 to a Mass and there would be 3 or 4 groups who would alternate over the course of a month for each Mass.) Having been in the sacristy I suspect they had ~30-40 albs or so.

 

[HeDa]

About 15 in adult sizes not including the priests’ and deacons private albs. Childrens’ sizes about 15 where 5 are too small and 3 of the old, warm, heavy and thick material that makes the kids pass out due to a very well visited church. Some of the taller children can use the adult sizes now but we need more of the larger children’s sizes and smaller adult sizes. There are more altar servers now than in previous years and also more children that need albs in sizes that we only have a couple of.

We have just ordered more First Holy Communion albs as there are more children receiving FHC this year compared to last years.

My parish is growing to I guess this is a good problem to have. Another problem is expanding the church building itself.

 

[pianistclare]

We have 10 of each size they make

 

[Roseeurekacross]

No idea.

We do have some very interesting garments in one of the rural churches…

 

[semper_catholicus]

Same here. We only have four (used to have five, but apparently one went missing) red cassocks with surplices, but we seldom ever use them. I’ve only ever worn them once.