Prayer Book Rubrics Expanded

A liturgical manual that discusses each service of the Church according to shape, theology, past practice, and varieties of local expression. The book contains helpful material not only for clergy and worship committees, but also for church musicians. (248 pp)

Episcopalians consider themselves to be people whose individual and corporate lives are shaped by the Book of Common Prayer, but aside from worship on Sunday morning, few know what fills its nearly 1,000 pages. John Westerhoff, Episcopal priest and Christian educator, walks readers through the ways in which the contents of the Prayer Book can (and should) shape the life of those who call themselves Episcopalians. An excellent resource for parish study or reading in advance of seminary training, Westerhoff explores a brief history of the Prayer Book, and the ways in which it shapes us as pilgrim and prayerful people. How Episcopalians live into their baptism, live a Eucharistic and reconciling life, as well as a life of wholeness and health are explored in detail. All of this, as Westerhoff writes, helps us lead a holy life, and one day, to a holy death. John H. Westerhoff is an Episcopal priest, the former professor of theology and Christian nurture at Duke University, the author of many books about Christian education and life. For the last decade he has been theologian-in-residence at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Opening the Prayer Book introduces us to the history and liturgies of The Book of Common Prayer, and helps us understand why the prayer book is such an important aspect of Anglican self-understanding.

An Ecofeminist Perspective on Ash Wednesday and Lent develops a conversation between classical historical Lenten practices and contemporary Christian ecofeminism. Building on David Tracy's definition of a religious classic, it includes a historical examination of the development of Lent and the Ash Wednesday rites beginning from wellsprings in the early church traditions of penance, catechumenal preparation, and asceticism through medieval and reformation expressions of the rite to their twentieth-century Episcopal iteration in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. In the discussion of ecofeminism, women's death experiences and current ecofeminist writings are used to develop an ecofeminist hermeneutic of mortality.

What words from our Christian vocabulary would you miss if you could no longer use them? If you pronounced them and no one understood? If you spoke and people gave them a meaning at odds with your conviction? What words do you fear are falling into misuse? If you could save some word or phrase from disuse or misuse what would it be? Saving Words is a collection of personal, provocative essays by lay people, clergy, poets, theologians, musicians, and scholars on words they want to preserve and proclaim, urgent and important reflections on the language we need for the facing of these days. Open this volume and find saving words that matter.

Deepen the lay minister's knowledge of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the various duties of this ministry with this guidebook to lay participation in the Eucharist and Offices of the Church.

A book aimed at assisting liturgy committees, celebrants, lectors, musicians, lay readers, and other liturgical ministers to understand their own work and to collaborate more fully in carrying out a common task. This is an invaluable resource in leading a congregation toward steady growth and improvement in its worship.