Sundays and Seasons supports comprehensive week-by-week planning with content and ideas for liturgy and music, preaching and visuals, shaped by the Revised Common Lectionary, the church year, and the assembly gathered around word and sacrament.
Worship planners and leaders, preachers, presiding ministers, worship committees, musicians, visual artists, sacristans and altar guilds, and those who create congregational worship folders, will find an indispensable companion in Sundays and Seasons as they prepare for worship each week.
A diverse group of more than 50 contributors from across the church has provided:
WEEKLY HELPS
- Day and reading introductions
- Propers: prayer of the day, gospel acclamation, scripture texts, preface, color
- Examples of prayers of intercession for each Sunday and major festival
- Exploration of images in the readings
- Ideas for approaching the day and its texts in preaching and worship
- Ideas for deepening children’s engagement with worship
- Assembly song suggestions from a variety of resources in a wide range of musical styles
- Choral, children’s choir, keyboard/instrumental, and handbell recommendations
- Notes on commemorations
SEASONAL HELPS
- Seasonal introductions
- Reproducible worship texts for the seasons, including texts for the observance of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation
- Reproducible rites for days and occasions, including a midweek Lenten series based on Luther’s Small Catechism
AND MORE
- New cover art by Christina Saj and interior art by Gertrud Mueller Nelson
- Helps and suggestions throughout the publication that will prepare your worshiping community for the observance of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation
- Introduction to the year of Matthew with an eye to this 500th anniversary year
- Suggestions for Reformation-inspired praying for the whole church in 2017
- Reflections on the hymn of the day as a Reformation inheritance
- Extensive bibliography
