Planning Worship Around The Church Year

The church year provides a ready-made pattern for worship. The key seasons are Advent and Easter, which not only mark important events in the life of our Lord, but also inform the church's responses to these events in outward and inward worship. In addition, the church year puts the congregation in tune with a great body of Christian tradition that stretches across the world and back through the centuries. The church year, also known as the Christian year or the liturgical year, not only has a venerable place in Christian tradition, but is an excellent framework around which to organize and plan worship over its course. In many churches today, the celebration of the Christian year is facilitated by the use of a three-year lectionary. This lectionary, indicating Old Testament, psalm, New Testament, and Gospel readings for each Sunday and festival, not only makes possible the regular systematic reading of substantial portions of the Scripture but provides a biblical framework for the p…