Planning and Leading Worship for Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost

Course Syllabus

Planning and Leading Worship for Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost: The Doctrine of Christ and the Services of the Christian Year

This course is helpful for seminarians, pastors, elders, worship planners, worship team members, musicians, artists, and worship committee members.

The course examines how Christian worship both expresses and shapes our understanding of the life of Jesus Christ, with particular attention given to how celebrations of Advent, Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost reflect assumptions about the doctrines of incarnation, atonement, and ecclesiology. The course is designed to inform both worship leaders who don’t use the lectionary and Christian Year and those who do. One goal of the course is to expand the theological imagination of worship planners, so that we can help our congregation experience the meaning of these events in Christ’s life more profoundly.

Books

Course Textbooks

1. Laurence Hull Stookey, Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996, 189 pp., pbk., ISBN 0687011361)

2. Hoyt Hickman, et al, The New Handbook of the Christian Year (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992, 304 pp., ISBN 0687277604)

3. Sing! A New Creation (pew edition) (Grand Rapids: Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2001, 319 pp., ISBN 1562128116; leader’s edition also available).

4. Any major denominational hymnal.

5. One book on the life of Christ, such as:
Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus: The Man Who Lives (New York: Harper & Row, 1975, 191 pp., ISBN 0060660392)
OR
Tom Wright, The Original Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996, 160 pp., ISBN 0802838375)
OR
Fleming Rutledge, The Bible and The New York Times
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998, 228 pp., ISBN 0802837786)

6. One book on the visual arts and the life of Christ, such as:
Madeleine L’Engle, The Glorious Impossible (New York: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1990, 64 pp., ISBN 0671686909)
OR
Kenneth T. Lawrence, ed., Imaging the Word (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1994-, v. 1, ISBN 0829809708)

Other Recommended Books

7. Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991 (2nd ed.), 255 pp., ISBN 0814660754)

8. Normand Bonneau, The Sunday Lectionary: Ritual Word, Paschal Shape (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998, 175 pp., ISBN 081462457X)

9. Fritz West, Scripture and Memory (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997, 228 pp., ISBN 0814661572)

10. Maxwell Johnson, ed., Between Memory and Hope (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000, 454 pp., ISBN 0814660258)