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Also referred to as the “Service of the Table” or the “Eucharist”, the celebration of this sacrament is both something that sets Christianity apart from its Jewish roots, and builds on those roots.   Traditional emphasis existed in the Jewish faith for partaking of food together in temple, synagogue and home.  At the time of Passover, the [...]

The Liturgy (or “service”) of the Word can be traced back to the Jewish exile following the destruction of the first Temple.  By reading the scriptures, God’s chosen people could maintain their identity even in exile.  With the Temple gone, these scriptural readings evolved into synagogue worship. Because the earliest Christians were predominantly Jewish, it [...]

This writing is from “A Guide to Prayer for all who seek God”.  I wanted to share it with you all. “We begin the seasons of the church year with anticipation, and we end the seasons of the church year declaring a certainty.  In Advent we waited for the needed and longed for definitive and [...]

This is even harder to define than the term “High Church”.  Both have very subjective connotations to different people, but I have to say I was surprised at how difficult it was to pin down specifics on just what would constitute emerging worship.  Let’s see what some emerging worship oriented websites say: The Presbyterian Church [...]

Since you’ll probably want to get your tailgate tents out and set up on the church lawn so you can get a sanctuary seat, please be advised that the First United Methodist Church Chancel Choir’s Christmas program is scheduled for Dec. 9. This year’s program — as is usually the case with the Divine Miss [...]

It’s hard to pin down a real definition of these terms.  In the original sense of the term High Church, what was meant was a preference for the liturgical ritual and ceremony of the Roman Catholic service — particularly the Tridentine Mass, a solemn liturgy which originated following the Council of Trent and involved a deacon [...]

I asked this question a couple of weeks ago . . . the response was not overwhelming. But, as we head into our last week of our hastily constructed study of worship, liturgy and the church year (and, not coincidently, the last week of the church year — at least by the reckoning of the [...]

If we had time, we could consider transitional days and the Sanctoral Cycle in separate posts.  But in the interest of giving you time to consider these before class on Sunday, I’m going to combine them into one post. Certain occasions in Ordinary Time (remember . . . counting by “ordinals”, e.g., First Sunday After [...]

We discussed Christmas, Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord (Dec. 25, Sunday before or on Jan. 6, and the following Sunday) in our last class.  There are five other feast days that we observe through the year that relate to, or are dependent on, the date of Christmas.  They are: The Anunciation — March [...]

What about the rest of the week?  In the early church there were daily morning and evening services in the larger cities — generally limited to a cathedral.  These services, which were attended by people going to and coming from their daily occupations, came to be referred to as “Cathedral Prayer”.  In addition to this [...]