How The Practice Of The Christian Year Affects Congregational Life

The way Christians keep time is a way of remembering. In communal worship we remember and celebrate the events that make us who we are. Consequently the celebration of the Christian year forms us into Christ's body in the world. Among the most remarkable aspects of the twentieth-century reform and renewal of Christian worship is the rediscovery of the church year. Twenty years ago no one could have predicted the extraordinary impact that the scholarship and the theology and practice of the church year would have on our preaching and worship. Every Christian tradition, except for the most narrowly sectarian Protestant churches, has established or proposed a version of the ecumenical new calendar and lectionary. The liturgical churches, of course, have always used calendar and lectionary to order the worship life of the people. What prompts our reflection here, however, is an unprecedented convergence across denominational lines-including "free churches" and "liturgical churches"-on a …