Want the children in your congregation to leave with God's Word on their lips and in their hearts? This collection of The Revised Common Lectionary readings (Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament, and Gospel), are paraphrased for children to be read aloud in Sunday morning worship, will help kids easily read and understand the word God has for their lives. This collection of lectionary paraphrases is written in a child's speaking voice, NOT as an adult telling a story to the children. The psalms include a refrain for the entire congregation that closely parallels to the Book of Common Prayer's version.

The SPCK Lectionary provides a completely redesigned and clearly laid-out presentation of the Common Worship calendar and lectionary, with BCP readings on the same page. Sundays and major festivals are covered, as well as weekday

A classic and indispensable resource for public worship and private devotion that speaks to people across a range of traditions - both within and beyond the church. Composed in response to the desire for worship language of worship that's inclusive of women's experience yet deeply rooted in the words, stories, and images of Scripture, they have resonated not only with women, but with all who love the Bible and who want to pray with honesty and directness. This new edition introduces a fresh selection of material on themes of global justice, as well as a contemporary Eucharist and prayers that coincide with the Revised Common Lectionary.

The clergy today faces mounting challenges in an increasingly secular world, where declining prestige makes it more difficult to attract the best and the brightest young Americans to the ministry. As Christian churches dramatically adapt to modern changes, some are asking whether there is a clergy crisis as well. Whatever the future of the clergy, the fate of millions of churchgoers also will be at stake. In Who Shall Lead Them?, prizewinning journalist Larry Witham takes the pulse of both the Protestant and Catholic ministry in America and provides a mixed diagnosis of the calling's health. Drawing on dozens of interviews with clergy, seminarians and laity, and using newly available survey data including the 2000 Census, Witham reveals the trends in a variety of traditions. While evangelicals are finding innovative paths to ministry, the Catholic priesthood faces a severe shortage. In mainline Protestantism, ministry as a second career has become a prominent feature. Ordination ages in the Episcopal and United Methodist churches average in the 40s today. The quest by female clergy to lead from the pulpit, meanwhile, has hit a "stained glass ceiling" as churches still prefer a man as the principal minister. While deeply motivated by the mystery of their "call" to ministry, America's priests, pastors, and ministers are reassessing their roles in a world of new debates on leadership, morality, and the powers of the mass media. Who Shall Lead Them? offers a valuable snapshot of this contemporary clergy drama. It will be required reading for everyone concerned about the rapidly shifting ground of our churches and the health of religion in America.

The twin concepts of kinship and pilgrimage have deep roots in Protestant culture. This cultural anthropological study, based in part on the author's own fieldwork, argues that in Reformed Protestantism, the Catholic custom of making pilgrimages to sacred spots has been replaced by the custom of "reunion," in which scattered members of a family or group return each year to their place of origin to take part in a quasi-sacred ritual meal and other ritual activities. Neville discusses open air services and kin-based gatherings in the Southern United States and Scotland as examples of symbolic forms that express certain themes in Northern European Protestant culture, contrasting these forms with the symbolic social statements in the Roman Catholic liturgical world of medieval Europe and traditional Mediterranean Catholicism. According to Neville, Protestant rituals of reunion such as family reunion, church homecoming, cemetery association day, camp meeting, and denomination conference center are part of an institutionalized pilgrimage complex that comments on Protestant culture and belief while presenting a symbolic inversion of the pilgrimage and the culture of Roman Catholic tradition.

Jerusalem has long been one of the most sought-after destinations for the followers of three world faiths and for secularists alike. For Jews, it has the Western (Wailing) Wall; for Christians, it is where Christ suffered and triumphed; for Muslims, it offers the Dome of the Rock; and for secularists, it is an archeological challenge and a place of tragedy and beauty. This work concentrates on Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular pilgrimages to Jerusalem over the last three millennia, drawing from over 165 accounts of travels to the ancient city. Chapters are devoted to ghostly and other pilgrims, the significance of Jerusalem, the beginnings of the pilgrimage in the time of kings David and Solomon, pilgrimages under Roman and Byzantine rule, Christian and Muslim pilgrimages in the early Islamic period, pilgrimages in the First Crusade and its aftermath, more crusades and pilgrims during the Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties, pilgrimages under Ottoman rule, pilgrimages under the British and Israelis, and the unity among pilgrims and the symbolism of the journey.

Come, Lord Jesus invites readers to enter more deeply into the mystery and wonder of the Incarnation of Christ. For each day from the first Sunday of Advent to the Feast of the Epiphany, readings, prayers, and suggestions for daily devotions help readers interact imaginatively with the reactions and feelings of the biblical figures involved with the story of Jesus' birth. Rowell and Chilcott-Monk focus particularly on Mary, her "yes" to God at the Annunciation, and her own journey from Bethlehem to Calvary. The title of the book is a translation of a New Testament prayer, Maranatha , an expression of the longing, hope, and unity of purpose among the first followers of Christ. At a time of year when commercial pressures threaten to obscure the child in the manger, Come, Lord Jesus will focus hearts and minds afresh on the miracle of love at work among us.

In his thirteen years as Vicar, popular author David Adam welcomed over 1 million pilgrims to the Holy Island of Lindesfarne in Northumberland. Each pilgrim had a story to tell and each came for a different reason. Some radiated a sense of God's presence, and others were simply too hurried to do anything but look around quickly and move on to the next site.

Using the stories of pilgrims Adam encountered on Holy Island, he explores how we can approach our own lives as pilgrimage, without ever leaving the comfort of our homes. How can we move beyond what is safe in our world and encounter the Mystery? How can we learn to disconnect from all the technology that keeps us multi-tasking all day and all night? How can we rediscover awe in the world around us?

In the wonderful prose and poetry for which he is so well-loved, David Adam helps us get on the road of life, even when we don't have time to travel to distant lands.

The proper role of art in worship and spirituality is a topic of lively debate. There is a wide range of opinion, for example, concerning what types of artistic productions are appropriate for inclusion in a Christian worship service, or whether certain popular Christain images should be deplored as "kitch". Brown addresses both practical and theoretical questions regarding Christian taste: What is the relation between church and the rest of culture? What is wrong (or right) with importing into a house of worship various kinds of music and media that are worldly in origin? By exploring the complex relation between taste, religious imagination, and faith, Brown hopes ultimately to offer a new perspective on what it means to be spiritual, religious, and indeed Christian.

“A welcome remedy for the increasing number of lay Christians who have rediscovered the daily offices. Tickle puts each day’s prayers, psalms, readings, and refrains–everything you need–in one place. The rhythm that Tickle’s book establishes gives one a stronger sense of participating in an ancient, worldwide but very personal liturgy.”
–Nora Gallagher, beliefnet.com, and author of Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith

The third and final volume in a trilogy of prayer manuals compiled by Publishers Weekly religion editor Phyllis Tickle as a contemporary Book of Hours to guide Christians gently yet authoritatively through the daily offices.

The Divine Hours is the first major literary and liturgical reworking of the sixth-century Benedictine Rule of fixed-hour prayer. This beautifully conceived and thoroughly modern three-volume guide will appeal to the theological novice as well as to the ecclesiastical sophisticate. Making primary use of the Book of Common Prayer and the writings of the Church Fathers, The Divine Hours is also a companion to the New Jerusalem Bible, from which it draws its Scripture readings. The trilogy blends prayer and praise in a way that, while extraordinarily fresh, respects and builds upon the ancient wisdom of Christianity.

The third and final book in the set, Prayers for Springtime, provides prayers, psalms, and readings for this season associated with rebirth. Compact, with deluxe endpapers, it is perfect for those seeking greater spiritual depth. As a contemporary Book of Hours, The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime heralds a renewal of the tradition of disciplined daily prayer, and gives those already using the first two volumes the completion they are seeking. With this volume, the series culminates with three prayer manuals encompassing the liturgical and calendar year with the offices for every day.


From the Hardcover edition.

This text-only printing of one hundred of the best loved hymns is spiral bound for easy use. Designed in collaboration with the Episcopal Society for Ministry on Aging, Inc., this volume is a companion to The Book of Common Prayer, Selections in Large Print. (144 pp)

One woman's personal account of Saint Ignatius' Spiritual Exercisesin her own prayer life. This book is the result of an improbable friendship, she admits from the outset, Mine with St. Ignatius Loyola.The book grew out of a 30-day retreat the author took away from her busy life as a wife, theology student in pastoral education, translator and mother of two little boys. Yet nothing had prepared me for the experience. I had thought this would be a nice project for Lent. Lent began and ended, but the project went on, and radically changed my way of seeing things. In a sense I never finished them. They have become a part of me, the meditations being a kind of horizon against which I can see and reflect upon the course of my life, and to which I return again and again

This booklet contains the order of the General Moleben (or Service of Intercession), which may be served in any occasion to invoke the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Mother of God, or the saints; as well as the unique order of the Paschal Moleben, served during Bright Week. Also presented is the order of the Pannikhida (or Memorial Service) in which Orthodox Christians pray for the blessed repose and salvation of the departed. These texts were included in no-longer available editions of the Book for Commemoration of the Living and the Dead.

By the end of the 19th century, the ascendance of a naturalistic worldview had made it increasingly difficult for many educated Christians to believe in a God who intervened in the natural world. At the same time, many in the emerging middle-class culture saw themselves as too busy to practice the rigorous devotions of their ancestors. In this book, Rick Ostrander explores the attempts of American Protestants to articulate a convincing and satisfying ethic of prayer in these changing circumstances. Ostrander shows that, in response to the assault on petitionary prayer by naturalistic scientists, American Evangelicals articulated a highly supernatural ethic of prayer and co-opted the "scientific method" to defend their stance, recording and cataloging numerous answers to prayer as empirical proof of prayer's efficacy. Liberal Protestants, on the other hand, with their desire to adapt to modern thought, gradually abandoned traditional belief in petitionary prayer. The debate about the efficacy of petitionary prayer and other "alternative therapies" in mental and physical healing has taken on new vigor today; this timely and engagingly written work not only chronicles the history of that debate, but serves to illuminate the issues that are at stake.

From beloved teacher and bestselling author Dallas Willard, an exploration of Psalm 23 and the secret of living a life of contentment, peace, and security.

Psalm 23 begins with an astounding assertion: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." This describes the life that we all desire, one where we lack nothing. But how do we get there? How do we live so that we not only do "not want" but "fear no evil?" In this revelatory and profoundly pastoral new book, the late Dallas Willard shows us how by unpacking the 23rd Psalm to reveal what the apostle Paul and the psalmist before him knew: the secret of being content in any and every situation.

Life Without Lack introduces readers to God in a new way, demonstrating how to enjoy his presence as never before and how to be utterly caught up in his abundant generosity. The more we practice living in that presence, the more we experience the kind of peace, patience, kindness, and freedom from worry that is promised in the psalm. Based on a series of talks by the late author and edited by his friend and colleague, Larry Burtoft, and by his daughter, Rebecca Willard Heatley, Life Without Lack will forever change the way you understand and apply the most well-known passage in all of Scripture.

Illustrated devotions to enrich your understanding of the Nativity narratives. includes readings and prayers to help individuals and groups walk the Stations of the Nativity.

This is a comprehensive study of the impact of ritualism on the Church of England, other Anglican churches, and non-Anglican churches in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on an exhaustive study of archival and contemporary printed sources, Dr Yates presents a new and refreshing approach to this fascinating subject.

Why do people sing hymns? Are hymns poetry? What makes a good hymn? The author discusses the nature of hymns and their particular appeal, examines the English hymn as a literary form, and systematically describes its development through four centuries, from the Reformation to the mid-twentieth century.