Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year
A Theology of the Christian Year
The resurrection of the crucified Christ is the point on which the weekly and annual cycles of the Christian calendar turn. In fact, it supplies the clue to the whole history of salvation and indeed the cosmos. Every Sunday and every Easter day is a commemoration and celebration of the resurrection of Jesus and an anticipation of the day when the same Lord will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and finally establish God’s universal kingdom.
The Origins of the Christian Year
In the first centuries A.D. the cycle of Christian time grew out of the conviction that all-time finds its meaning in the death and resurrection of Christ. Thus the early Christians, beginning with the paschal event, extended the Christian calendar forward to Pentecost and backward to Lent and Holy Week. Later, in the fourth century, Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany were developed to complete the cycle.
The Problem of the Civil Year in Worship
Many churches that have rejected the practice of the Christian year follow the secular way of marking time. This article describes some of the “calendars” that churches use to mark time and points out some of the problems with the observance of civil occasions in particular. It is written from a Reformed perspective but will be useful to churches in any tradition.
Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod
The growing interest in liturgical renewal and the Christian year in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod is reflected in the recent publication of a new hymnal and companion volume. These publications follow, with some adaptations, the lectionary, and calendar proposed by the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship in 1973.
Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in Wesleyan Churches
A part of the Holiness movement, the Wesleyan Church has never followed the full church calendar. However, aspects of the Christian year have been introduced incrementally in many congregations, enabling them to enjoy some of its benefits without abandoning their non-liturgical worship tradition.
Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in United Methodist Churches
Methodism began as a movement led by John Wesley (1703–1791), a priest of the Church of England who followed the Christian year as set forth in The Book of Common Prayer. When the Methodists in America set up the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784, Wesley sent them an adaptation of The Book of Common Prayer, entitled Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. In this work, he simplified the Anglican version of the Christian year to include: Sundays of Advent (four), Nativity of Christ (Christmas), Sundays after Christmas (up to fifteen), Sunday before Easter, Good Friday, Easter Day, Sundays after Easter (five), Ascension Day, Sunday after Ascension Day, Whitsunday (Pentecost), Trinity Sunday, and Sundays after Trinity Sunday (up to twenty-six). Every Sunday was, of course, the Lord’s Day, and all the Fridays in the year (except if one fell on Christmas Day) were “days of fasting or abstinence.”
Worship and Sacred Actions Throughout the Year in Southern Baptist Convention Churches
Historically, Southern Baptists have observed parts of the Christian calendar, including Sunday as the Lord’s Day—the Christian Sabbath set aside for the worship of the risen Lord, and Easter Sunday. Special seasonal services, mostly of a musical character, have been customary at Christmas time, but there was no set liturgy for Christmas services or for a season of Advent. Another annual tradition was the spring revival—preaching services with evangelistic intent.