Make Preparation: Liturgy Planning Notes By Paul Gibson (free download).
Thank you so much to David who, in a comment on this site, alerted me to this wonderful new (free) online resource.
The Canadian Anglican Book of Alternative Services (BAS) came out in 1985. It was a significant new Anglican prayer book. Contemporary, renewed liturgy has significantly different in concepts, spirituality, and approach than the inherited Book of Common Prayer. So often worship leaders, it seems to me, as well as worshipping communities have not been given/taken opportunities to be enriched by understanding the shifts involved. Some (many?), it seems to me, have brought a Book of Common Prayer approach to the new texts. [Others, of course, have abandoned a liturgical approach altogether – but that is another story]. David Holeton, Catherine Hall, and Gregory Kerr-Wilson’s in 1991 produced a wonderful introduction called Let Us Give Thanks: A Presider’s Manual for the Bas Eucharist
My own book, Celebrating Eucharist (also free), was a New Zealand response to the same need. I was grateful for what Let Us Give Thanks
Now Paul Gibson provides this new resource, building on 25 years of experience of the BAS. Paul has served as the liturgical officer of the Anglican Church of Canada and was on the group that shaped the BAS and its companion the 1998 hymn book, Common Praise. What he writes in Make Preparation provides principles that can be applied well beyond the Canadian context.
Here is one suggestion:
Have your community’s worship committee read a chapter from
Make Preparation
and the related chapter from
Celebrating Eucharist
and then meet to discuss these, how they apply in your context, and what changes you might make.
You can, of course, do this individually also. Remembering one of the important insights: community worship is owned by the whole community, it is not the possession of the worship leader. Worship works best when the whole community sees it as a shared event – but that is not merely pragmatism, it is also principle.
Your link to Paul Gibsons book seems only to go to a picture of the front page and not to the pdf file
Thanks for letting me know. I hope it’s fixed now?
Padre, may I direct you to a new resource from our Jewish brothers and sisters. A new prayerbook from the Conservative movement for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
It is a beautiful work of liturgical publishing. The English translations of the prayers are divinely beautiful. And it is gender neutral.
It is US$30 directly from their Bookstore. It was double that on Amazon! Be sure to watch the trailer video about the book’s production.
http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/mahzor.html
Wow! David, WOW! I’m putting my order in.
I thought that you would find it beautiful. It is just stunning. And I love the little rubrics: We rise; We are seated. I see the touch of inclusiveness in the use of rise, because it includes those who perhaps cannot physically stand, but who can rise in spirit! I also liked the alternative Hebrew texts where they have added the Matriarchs and the congregation has the choice of the two side by side. So even the dyed in the wool patriarchalists cannot help but be influenced, with the text right there.
I ordered mine last Friday.
What surprised me was the prices at Amazon. There is a pulpit version that is 23 cm x 30 cm that is US$60 at the Bookstore, but I could see no evidence that the ones being sold on Amazon were that edition.