The most impressive thing about Wayne Keller's body of ideas for worship through the Christian Year is his boldness. He is bold in demanding that we, his colleagues in liturgical leadership, plan worship which has to do with the reality of our congregations' experience in the world, rather than just lead people through a proper agenda of acts and words that have no bearing on what we do the rest of the week. He is bold in challenging us to bring that real world -- with its pains and its pleasures, its hungers and its feasts, its beauty and its ugliness -- to exposure before the living God. And he is bold in helping us shine the strong, exposing light of the transforming word on our real lives and on that real world, so that we may move beyond planning worship as a "nice," safe, feel-good routine from which we depart the same people we were when we arrived. We are thrilled by the seriousness and authentic reverence with which this author approaches the planning of worship. Thank God for Wayne Keller and for his deep respect for the central act of the Christian community: the blessed and life-transforming experience of the worship of God. Richard Avery and Donald Marsh
Port Jervis, New York
[Wayne Keller's] method creates not only a contemporary appeal, but effects a congregational involvement so necessary today within the liturgical context. His grasp of materials -- scripture, hymnody, sacred music, etc. -- makes this volume tributary to the demands of parish programs of today. His approach is fresh and practical and yet a reflection consistently of a solid liturgical and homiletical background. Donald Macleod
Professor Emeritus Princeton Theological Seminary
To make our worship services, so often moribund, staid and dull, once again alive, fresh and invigorating, is a basic challenge of our time. Wayne Keller has sought to do this very thing is his book. I believe he has succeeded in an exciting and immensely practical way in achieving this task. Richard I. Oman, Dean of Faculty
Vice President for Academic Affairs
Howard C. Scharfe Professor of Homiletics
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
The good humor of Wayne Keller's work helps us feel at home in our imperfect world and to feel more empathy for the rough edges of others and ourselves. Wayne's work encourages hope and faith with the way we are. Doug Adams, Professor of Christianity and the Arts
Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union
Berkeley, California
Wayne H. Keller graduated from Monmouth College (Monmouth, Illinois) and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and has served pastorates in Pennsylvania, Washington, and Oregon. He has also served as director of a halfway house for recovering mental patients and as a counselor in private practice. Keller has published several books, including
Achieving and Receiving Intimacy (CSS Publishing Company), and numerous articles, and has been a columnist for the
Bellingham Herald. He has appeared frequently on radio and television programs and co-hosted a call-in counseling program and call-in talk show. Keller says, "I have seen people bored to death in worship, seemingly because they come to worship as spectators, not as participants. For me no spectators are allowed! Soren Kierkegaard's analogy of worship as drama has guided my thinking and planning."
