Are you at home for the Easter Vigil? We have created an webpage with a guided tour of the Great Vigil of Easter, BCP 2019, with music links for streaming. You can learn more about Holy Week and the Easter Vigil here. Visit the Great Vigil of Easter Page The liturgy normally assumes a church…
Online Worship Ideas for Holy Week & Easter (Webinar Recording)
Earlier this week, the Evergreen Project hosted a panel of Rectors from Anglican churches in the US and Canada to talk about how they are navigating online worship and plans for this coming Holy Week & Easter. The webinar began with greetings from Archbishop Foley Beach who prayed for our Rectors and joined us for…
Here Are the Holy Week Liturgies from the 2019 Book of Common Prayer
We recently received a question from a reader looking for “Good Friday liturgies that would work well for home worship,” given the global COVID–19 pandemic. The 2019 BCP’s Good Friday service could easily be adapted for use at home. If you’re looking for liturgical materials for Holy Week and Easter, you should know that you…
The Heart of the Prayer Book Burial Rite
In 1549, Thomas Cranmer faced the difficult task of drafting a reformed rite for the burial of the dead. The rite could not be a requiem mass. However, it could not be something like a modern memorial service either. It would have to be a celebration of Holy Communion with a burial rite. He provided…
How to Read the Psalms for All They’re Worth
The Psalms are the single best guide to the spiritual life currently in print. Ellen Davis, Getting Involved with God The Psalms are inexhaustible, and deserve to be read, said, sung, chanted, whispered, learned by heart, and even shouted from the rooftops. They express all the emotions we are ever likely to feel (including some…
Living in Liturgy: My Anglican Journey
We first enter through the bright red doors of an Anglican church, a preteen and two teenagers in tow. Questions permeate my thoughts, how will our children endure this shift, especially at this stage of their spiritual development? Is this even the right choice for our family? We have all grown up within the Church;…
(Why) Are Priests and the Liturgy Necessary for Holy Communion?
Many people coming into the Anglican tradition from other traditions have questions. Quite often, these questions center on the sacramental nature of the Church. This pattern makes sense. After all, the Anglican Church emphasizes sacraments more than some other branches of the Christian Church. All churches have preachers of the Word. Not all have a…
3 Emergency Tips for Lay Readers of Scripture
Those of us in the Lay Reader Ministry love God’s word. We love to share the life-giving message of the Lord to his people in the context of Sunday worship. And when everything goes well, we have plenty of time to prepare our readings so that we are equipped for whatever the lectionary throws at…
The Prayer of Humble Access: A Rookie Anglican Guide
The Prayer of Humble Access is a traditional part of the Anglican service of Holy Communion. I recently learned how beloved the Prayer of Humble Access was to so many Anglicans when I posted about it on Twitter. I posted what I thought was a slightly humorous tweet poll that indicated some questions I have…
And With Your Spirit? And Also With You? What Are We Supposed to Say?
If your church has adopted the ACNA’s new Book of Common Prayer 2019, one change probably threw everyone off. And it was a change of only two words. For those who learned liturgy, even just a little, from the 1979 Prayer Book or in the Roman Catholic Church from 1970 to 2010, it was nearly…
Finding a Place for Lament in the Anglican Church
Born a little on the melancholy side, I was always attracted to the bleaker parts of Scripture. You know, the parts where a prophet would cry out to God for help, or where God would lament the betrayal of His bride. Or the psalms of lament where the psalmist feels desperate and horrifically abandoned. These…
Baking the Body: How to Make Homemade Communion Bread for Your Church
For the past ten years, I’ve made homemade Communion bread from the same handwritten recipe on a molasses-stained scrap from a yellow legal pad. A team of volunteer bread-bakers in my small church plant now shares this recipe. They follow it each week to bring homemade loaves to our Communion table. I’ve got absolutely nothing…
