Would you like to have a creative resource that offers form and freedom for worship planning? Do you have a desire to weave more Scripture into your worship services? Would you like to follow the cycles and seasons of the Christian Year? If you can relate to these questions, Lectionary Journey is a great resource for you! Following the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), this resource provides integrated, Scripture-based calls to worship, prayers, and affirmations of faith for each Sunday and for special days in the Christian Year, over the three-year lectionary cycle. This resource is of great benefit even if your church does not follow the RCL in its preaching. Lectionary Journey ensures that we are being called into worship, praying, and affirming our faith through the word. It allows Scripture to be woven throughout our corporate worship services, letting its language, narrative, metaphors, themes, teachings, truths, and paradigms form and shape us, week after week. Worship planners will find this resource to be of benefit as an annual guide for stewarding God’s story, a weekly guide for planning corporate worship, a regular source of spiritual formation, and an ecumenical resource that fosters community within the body of Christ.

Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105 NRSV) Coming up with fresh, meaningful worship material each Sunday that illuminates scripture and preaching themes is a pressure-filled responsibility. That's why busy pastors and worship leaders will love this all-new edition of a perennial CSS favorite. It's an easy-to-use reference offering several prayers relating to the assigned scriptural passages for every Sunday and major observance in Cycle B of the Revised Common Lectionary. For each First Lesson, Second Lesson, and Gospel text there's a call to worship, a collect, a prayer of confession, and suggested hymns. Supplemental material includes alternate verses for several familiar hymns, as well as an anointing service, a communion and feetwashing service, and a lamentation service for the anniversary of 9/11. This complete collection offers a wide selection of practical aids for creating sincerely reverent, thematically unified worship experiences in which hymns, prayers, and scripture all work together to dance in and around God's Word. Lord, listen to your people praying. Your faithfulness is evident all around us, in the green of the hill, in the rushing of the rivers, and in the life that surrounds us. The birds who eat the seeds we leave out, and the birds who plunder the fruit we thought we would save for ourselves, are both yours. The bears who forage in the woods and who rummage through our trash are yours, also. Lord, this is your world and not ours, and surely your presence is in this place, whether or not it suits our purposes. We praise you, Lord, for who you are, and not what we would have you be. We love your world for what it is, and not what we would make it do for us. We praise you for your people as you made us, not by whom we would exclude, condemn, or deny. God of glory, your wisdom is sufficient for us this day. Amen. (sample prayer from Proper 10) Frank Ramirez is an author and pastor in the Church of the Brethren who has written numerous books, articles, and short stories. A graduate of LaVerne College and Bethany Theological Seminary, Ramirez has served congregations in Indiana and California, and is currently pastor at Everett Church of the Brethren in Everett, Pennsylvania. His other CSS titles include Partners In Healing, A Call To Worship, He Took A Towel, The Christmas Star, and Coming Home.

Preparing to lead a congregation in worship each Sunday is a formidable and pressure-filled responsibility. That's why busy worship planners will love this all-new edition of a favorite CSS reference. It's a handy, easy-to-use resource with several prayers and a worship theme relating to the assigned scriptural passages for every Sunday and major observance in Cycle C of the Revised Common Lectionary. For each First Lesson, Second Lesson, and Gospel text there's a call to worship, an invocation/collect, a prayer of confession, an offertory prayer, and suggested hymns. This complete collection offers a wide selection of practical aids for creating sincerely reverent, meaningful worship. The creative task of a worship leader requires useful resources, both practical and spiritual, for use in public worship as well as personal devotions. Lectionary Worship Aids provides a source for meditation, prayer, and fellowship with God and the people of God. The genius of the book is couched in the connection Kirkland makes between his own spirituality, the poetry of the biblical texts, and the spiritual quest of the worshiper and the worship leader. Ernest S. Lyght United Methodist Bishop Every busy pastor appreciates well-organized and theologically sound help when planning worship each week. Kirkland's vast pastoral experience and deep spiritual commitment can greatly enhance worship in our congregations. Lectionary Worship Aids will prove to be a very useful tool in every pastor's study. F. Herbert Skeete United Methodist Bishop Emeritus During more than fifty years in the ministry, H. Burnham Kirkland served as the pastor of eight local congregations and as a missionary in the Philippines, as well as district superintendent, conference program director, and treasurer of World Missions of the United Methodist Church. A graduate of the College of the City of New York and Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Dr. Kirkland also holds honorary doctorates from Philippine Wesleyan University and DePauw University (Greencastle, Indiana). Now retired, he lives in Lakeland, Florida.

Continuing with her classic and easy-to-use format, Dallas Brauninger has prepared a handy worship tool which provides pastors and worship planners with a worship theme for each of the three scriptural texts for each Sunday and major observance in Cycle C. Also included for each First Lesson, Second Lesson, and Gospel text are: Call To Worship Collect Prayer Of Confession Hymn Suggestions An index lists hymn tunes, hymn titles, and the worship hymnals they are drawn from. Dallas A. Brauninger, a graduate of Albion College, received her Master of Divinity degree and an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Chicago Theological Seminary. A full-time writer, she has served churches in Colorado and Nebraska. She and her husband, both ordained ministers in the United Church of Christ, live in Friend, Nebraska.

Lectionary Worship Aids by Thom M. Shuman is a lectionary book based on Cycle A of the Revised Common Lectionary. Here are some of the topics covered in this lectionary book: - Worship - Worship resources - Worship services - Worship aids - Lectionary - Cycle A of the Revised Common Lectionary - Lectionary worship aids - Lectionary resources Preparing worship services for each Sunday can be very challenging -- especially capturing just the right balance between reverence for God and relevance to our everyday lives. In Cradled in God's Heart, the newest edition of CSS' Lectionary Worship Aids series, Thom Shuman provides a wide range of responsive and pastoral prayers that's sure to help busy pastors and worship planners strike the perfect chord in developing their own services. Shuman's poetic prayers are filled with vivid imagery that reminds us of God's all-encompassing love and forgiveness, and his penetrating sensibility helps link the holy with the mundane realities of modern existence. With a complete set of thematically unified worship material keyed to each week's lectionary texts, this is a resource that will be used again and again throughout the year to create truly inspiring worship experiences. Thom M. Shuman is the pastor of Greenhills Community Church, Presbyterian, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is a graduate of Eckerd College and Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. Shuman's poems and prayers appear in several journals, and his Advent devotional book The Jesse Tree was published in the fall of 2005 by the Iona Community in Scotland (www.ionabooks.com). He is a regular contributor to The Immediate Word on www.sermonsuite.com. Thom also ""blogs"" at: www.prayersfortoday.blogspot.com www.occasionalsightings.blogspot.com (observations/devotions) www.lectionaryliturgies.blogspot.com (lectionary books, lectionary liturgies and lectionary worship resources) Lectionary Worship Aids is a lectionary book based on Cycle A of the Revised Common Lectionary.

The resources in this one-volume library provide a variety of paragraphs and sentences, prayers and calls, and hymn suggestions based on all three Scripture readings for every Sunday of the year. For each Sunday in the lectionary there are: three responsive calls to worship, three collects, three prayers of confession and three sets of hymn suggestions.While most congregations keep the order of worship consistent from week to week, it is important to continually refresh the components and make them relevant to the day's lessons. This book makes it possible to focus worship on the same lesson on which the sermon is based, or it allows emphasis to be placed on one of the lessons the preacher has not chosen to preach about, or portions can be combined from all three to provide a unity in the lessons.

The next installment in the critically acclaimed lectionary series that focuses on women's stories. In this second volume of the three-volume Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, widely praised womanist bible scholar and priest Wil Gafney selects scripture readings that emphasize women's stories. Focusing especially on the Gospel of Mark, Year B of A Women's Lectionary features Gafney's fresh, inclusive, and thought-provoking translations of every reading, alongside commentary on each reading. Designed for liturgical use or scriptural study, this resource offers a new perspective on the Bible and the liturgical year. “Gafney's paradigm-shifting scholarship will influence biblical preaching and teaching for generations to come." —National Catholic Reporter