Finding time for prayer can be really difficult. I’m an Anglican priest (which means I pray for a living, right?), and I know that as well as anybody. It feels like, as our culture of work takes over our lives more and more, we have to fight tooth and nail to spend time with the Lord in Scripture and prayer.
But […]
Prayer is far more common than we realize, that is, if we take the meditations of the Book of Psalms as a guide. There we encounter the Bible’s own prayerbook but what we discover often are meanderings and ponderings of the one praying. We might call these […]
What do Pioneers, Native Americans, a strange stick figure called Sparkie, Little bear Cubs, and Scripture memorization have in common?
AWANA!—at least if you grew up in some churches in the early to late 90s.
AWANA indelibly shaped my experience of church and early Christian formation. Every Wednesday night, I would […]
Whenever I’m with my family and I make a dumb joke, my parents like to roast me by saying that they look forward to eventually writing in my baby book the first time I tell a good joke. If this mythical baby book that has been dangled over […]
“If you want to understand what a particular verse of Scripture means you have to stop reading it. In fact, you should never read a Bible verse.”
This is how I have opened virtually every talk that I have ever given to would-be Bible students. The Bible is a collection, not […]
In 2008 Phyllis Tickle made the important observation that about every 500 years, a significant transformation takes place in the Church. She points to the arrival of Jesus in the first century, the collapse of the Roman empire five-hundred years later in the late 5th century, the Great Schism five-hundred years after that in 1054, and finally the […]
Many folks accustomed to reading Bible-in-a-year plans are delighted to find out that the Book of Common Prayer (2019) has a Daily Office lectionary that leads the faithful Anglican to read through the whole Bible in a year—at least, most of it. Those same folks are sometimes a little dismayed to then find out that a number of books are […]
In the shadow of a global pandemic and the uncertainty it has brought to every aspect of life, I have found myself drawn again and again to the Compline service in the Book of Common Prayer. I have especially found deep comfort in the service’s collects and prayers, which deftly blend a realism about the contingencies of life with an […]
Family Prayer, sometimes called Family Worship, is a cornerstone activity of the Christian family’s life. In it, we come together to sing, read Scripture, and pray. Yet, this activity can feel daunting and unfamiliar. What do we read? What do we pray? How long should it be? How often should we do Family Prayer?
My goal is to help you make […]
Jesus teaches us how to pray by example and by explicit teaching. Embedded within the Sermon on the Mount written in the Gospel according to Matthew, there is an instruction from Jesus that seems to speak directly against repeating our prayers to God.
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray […]
Now that the family is together every day and worship is virtual, families begin to wonder how to keep their children growing in the faith. Family devotions begin to seem more necessary. But how to begin? How to keep everyone’s attention? Maybe you’ve tried before, but things didn’t seem to work. You want family devotions to be a joyful family […]
The following is an excerpt from the Anglican Church in North America’s catechism, To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism (Crossway, 2020), pp. 81–87.
You can download a PDF of the entire catechism here.
A rule of prayer is a regular discipline by which […]
My family was going to do something new that year. Every night, we were going to sit down at the dining room table and do Advent devotions together.
I could already see how the night was going to go in […]
It was J. I. Packer who made an Anglican out of me.
Although I had attended a student-led Anglican service when I first became a seminarian at Regent College, it wasn’t until I moved to the Anglican church that Dr. Packer attended (and at which he sometimes led liturgy) that I was struck by the beauty and majesty of Anglican […]
Several years ago I was discerning a call into Anglican Holy Orders, and as part of that, I wanted to immerse myself in Anglican spirituality.
What better way to do that, I thought, than commit to a season of praying the Daily Office, Morning and Evening, from the Book […]
I recently heard someone on the radio say that we (Americans) live in a “post-religion” nation. The radio personality went on to describe how America has become a land void of virtue, no longer giving spiritual matters much thought. In other words, America has become increasingly secular.
This is, in my opinion, untrue.
Allow me to suggest that the exact […]
In case you didn’t already get the news or the booklet through our email list, I wanted to let you know that Volume 3 of our Daily Office Booklet is out!
If you’d like to chant the Phos Hilaron, I recommend the following setting from The Hymnal 1982.
It’s not exactly the same, but you the following rendition(s) of the Phos are clearly based on the setting above by Thomas […]
Whether you’re a Rookie Anglican or just “Angli-curious,” perhaps you’ve heard of this new Book of Common Prayer 2019 (BCP 2019) and are asking yourself, “What is this thing?” or “How do I use it?”
We’ve put together a “Rookie Anglican Guide” to the BCP 2019 for more information. However, if you’d like to dive […]
(NOTE: Read our Rookie Anglican Guide to the ACNA’s 2019 BCP here.)
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has released its 2019 Book of Common Prayer!
I asked Fr. Ben Jefferies (who worked on the Liturgy Task Force as has written about the 2019 BCP’s typography and Daily Office Lectionary) what features of the new Prayer Book […]
If you’re familiar with Anglican Pastor, you’ve probably seen the Daily Office Booklets I produce in order to make Morning and Evening Prayer more accessible. However, our Daily Office Booklets are (currently) PDFs designed to be printed and assembled at home.
For our readers who are interested in purchasing physical booklets similar to the […]
I’ve just finished putting together the latest Daily Office Booklet! This booklet will take you from May through August 2019.
You’ll notice a new front and back cover, featuring the new Anglican Pastor logo.
I’ve also tried to integrate a simple way of abbreviating Morning and Evening Prayer if you’re rushed for time. Simply do the sections with underlined headings.
Other than […]
(Read our Rookie Anglican Guide to the ACNA’s 2019 BCP here.)
The Daily Office Lectionary (DoL) went through several layers of development during the five years of its existence in trial form. The final form as it appears in the Book of Common Prayer (2019) will look quite different to those who are accustomed to the 1979 DoL.
