Following on from the Lent, Holy Week and Easter and Advent, Christmas and Epiphany volumes, Together for a Season: Feasts and Festivals provides a practical travelling companion for the journey through the Church’s year. It offers a rich array of creative material for anyone planning worship for children and adults.
Complete with a CD of illustrations, templates, service texts and photographs, Feasts and Festivals draws on the worship material offered in Common Worship: Times and Seasons and Common Worship: Festivals.
The section on Celebrating God’s Providence is full of creative ways to explore the wonders of the agricultural year throughout the months and seasons. The roots of Harvest Festival are laid out with a service celebrating the Revd Robert Hawker’s innovation in the 19th century. Anyone who still thinks food only comes plastic-wrapped from supermarkets will wonder at a pageant of the seasons celebrating the fruits of the earth that each month brings.
Remembering covers the season from All Saints, through All Souls to Remembrance Sunday with fully worked services, while Following God’s Call provides material for feasts and festivals including Mary, the Evangelists, John the Baptist and St Paul.
Each section includes an introduction, fully-worked examples of all-age services and material for use with adults and children.
“This book goes much further than a ‘how-to’ guide,” says Tim Lomax, worship leader, author of ‘Liquid Worship’ and member of the Liturgical Commission. “By providing a liturgical theology for all-age worship, it does the Church a great and much-needed service.”
On the web:
Together for a Season: all-age resources for Feasts and Festivals of the Christian Year, priced £24.50 (ISBN 978-07151-4064-2), is available from Christian bookshops, or by mail order via the web at www.chpublishing.co.uk.
Gill Ambrose, editor of Together for a Season and member of the Liturgical Commission, discusses the new material in a recent Church House Publishing podcast at: www.cofe.anglican.org/podcasts/wp-content/uploads/churchhousepodcastallageworship.mp3
