Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Using the Revised Common Lectionary in Contemporary Worship
During the past couple of months, I have had the pleasure of assisting in the planning and leading of a time of worship for the Knollcrest East apartments on Calvin College’s campus. The residents are Calvin students who have summer jobs either at Calvin or in the Grand Rapids area. There is a small group of people who faithfully come together every Sunday at 7:00 o’clock to praise God the best that we can and enjoy each others fellowship and the occasional brownie. But how does the Revised Common Lectionary fit in with a group of college students looking for more contemporary worship?
Well, this is how.
I plan worship with the help of the Resident Assistant, and we don’t always have a certain idea of what purpose or idea we want to focus on for the week’s service. So I look in the back of my Worship Sourcebook (which I have also gleaned a few prayers and an occasional response from) to see what the Lectionary has to suggest for Scripture passages. We look to see if we can “connect the dots” between the passages and lay out a purpose for our gathering. So far we have planned services on Following the Path of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, and Remembering God’s Works with the help of the lectionary.
The selection of music is limited to familiar songs to Calvin students (and also that I am capable of playing). I try to have a good mix of both hymns and praise songs that share a similar purpose of the text and flow well into each other. We follow a simple liturgical plan of Gathering, Confession, Thanks/Praise, and Departure.
So there you have it, attempts at contemporary liturgy thanks to the lectionary.
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