Essential Ingredients in Christian Liturgy: Ensuring our Services are Faithful to the Witness of the Church

Description

Liturgy is the technical term for what we commonly refer to as “worship services.” Though literally it means “the work of the people”, functionally liturgy concerns the various elements that comprise a service. Depending on your tradition, there are as few as five and as many as nine essential elements in order for something to “count” as liturgy (as opposed to being incomplete, reckless, or immature). In this piece, we’ve selected only those elements which are common to all branches of the Christian faith that have codified their liturgical design (mainline Protestant, Catholic, and some high church Evangelicals).

This curriculum will help you provide liturgists with a basic framework for service planning; help non-liturgical leaders design meaningful services that move past good music and good feelings into spiritual transformation and connection with the timeless witness of the Church; and assist Church leaders with evaluating the longitudinal effects of their liturgy and what kind of disciples they may be forming unintentionally.