ZONDERVAN Common Prayer Copyright © 2010 by The Simple Way and School for Conversion This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook. Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks. This title is also available in a Zondervan audio edition. Visit www.zondervan.fm. Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Author LName, First. The title of the book : the subtitle, if any / the Author’s Name. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index [if applicable]. ISBN 978-0-310-00000-0 1. Subject one. 2. Subject two. I. Title. AA000.0.A00 2004 000.00 — dc20 200800000 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. 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Cover design: Name goes here Cover photography or illustration: Name goes here Interior illustration: Name goes here Interior design: Name goes here Printed in the United States of America 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 /DCI/ 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Introduction | 009 Midday Prayer | 548 Evening Prayers | 027 Occasional Prayers | 553 Sunday | 028 House Blessing | 554 Monday | 030 Workplace/Office Blessing | 558 Tuesday | 032 Major Life Transition | 000 Wednesday | 034 Before or After a Meal | 000 Thursday | 036 Welcoming the Sabbath | 000 Friday | 038 Death of Someone Killed in the Neighborhood | 000 Saturday | 040 Healing | 000 Adoption | 000 Morning Prayer | 043 Baby Dedication | 000 December | 045 Commissioning/Sending Out | 000 January | 085 Celibacy Commitment | 000 February | 127 Celibacy Ceremony | 000 March | 000 Blessing of the Land or a Garden | 000 Holy Week | 000 A Litany to Honor Women | 000 April | 000 Prayer for Communion/Eucharist | 000 May | 000 June | 000 Songbook | 591 July | 000 Credits | 000 August | 000 September | 000 October | 000 November | 000 INTRODUCTION If you love liturgy, this book is for you. If you don’t know what liturgy is, this book is also for you. Whether you are over-churched or under-churched, a proud evangelical, a recovering evangelical, or not evangelical at all; whether you are high-church, low-church, or no-church, a skeptic or a Pentecostal; whether you have found a community or have burnt out on community; this book is for you. This is a different kind of book. It’s not a book you try to pick up and read straight through. In fact, this book is not designed to be read alone. It is a book filled with songs, prayers, ideas, and memories that are meant to be spoken aloud and shared together in some form of community. That “community” may be your biological family or a small group of friends. It could mean gathering folks in your public housing unit or dorm room, in your village or cul-de-sac each morning or evening for prayer. For the early Church it meant meeting in homes and as congregations in local assemblies. Whatever the case, this is a book about “we” not “me.” “They met daily in each other’s homes.” Common Prayer There are so many different divisions of Chris tian ity — Greek, Russian, and Serbian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist and Anabaptist, African Methodist Episcopal, Pentecostal and Non- denominational, Mennonites and Quakers. By one count,there are over 38,000 thousand Chris tian denominations. Many people have said that the greatest barrier to becoming a Chris tian is all the division they see within the Church. God’s deepest longing is for the Church to be united as one Body. Jes us’s longest recorded prayer is that we would be “One as God is one.” As one old preacher said, “We gotta get it together, because Jesus is coming back . and he’s coming for a bride, not a harem.” God only has one Church. 9  This prayer book has been a collaboration of people from many different Some liturgical types smile when evangelicals “discover” the miracle of the streams of Chris tian ity, which all converge into one river . if you look back liturgy. But it is a miracle nonetheless. So lean in and listen as you pray these far enough up-stream, at least. prayers. Sometimes it may feel like you can hear the Church’s heart beat as you pray in a way you never have before. Folks are bound to ask if this prayer book is for Catholics or for Protestants. Our answer is, “Yes, it is.” We’ve drawn on some of the oldest and richest The readings of the Church are arranged in a three-year cycle so that we hear traditions of Chris tian prayer. And we’ve tried to make them dance. the entire biblical story — creation and fall, the exodus, the captivity and return, the promise and advent of Messiah, the coming of the Holy Spirit, Our prayer-life is a way of connecting ourselves to the rest of the body of and the promise of the coming kingdom. These cycles are repeated all over Christ around the world. Any hour of any day many of these prayers are the world (so Chris tians in Africa are reading the same texts as Chris tians in being prayed in some corner of the earth. It is a way of connecting ourselves Latin America). Since Common Prayer is designed to be repeated each year, to the past, present, and future and recognizing that these prayers go all the we have done our best to honor these cycles, though we’ve squeezed them into way back to Jesus and beyond. How many things do we have in our treasure one year of readings. chest that are over 100 years old? We’re not just talking “best hits” from the 60s, 70s and 80s, but from the 1800s and the 300s. Many of these prayers and Participating in the liturgy of the worldwide Chris tian community, whether songs are over a thousand years old. on a Sunday morning or at another time, is more than attending a ser vice or a prayer meeting. It is about entering a story. It is about orienting our lives around what God has been doing throughout history. And it is about A Word about Liturgy being sent forth into the world to help write the next chapter of that story. Wandering the world in search of meaning and purpose, we may not even Liturgy comes from the Greek word leitourgia meaning “public worship”. realize how we desperately need a story. But we know we’ve found something When we hear “public” many of us think of large meetings like Sunday priceless when we find ourselves in God’s narrative. morning ser vices, and, while it can be a big group, it doesn’t have to be. After all, “public” shares the same root word as “pub”, and it really just refers to a Liturgy is not about getting indoctrinated. Doctrines are hard things to love. gathering of people to share life (and maybe a drink) — a get together that’s It’s not even really about education. Liturgy at its core is not about learning always open to having another stranger join in. Jesus promised that wherever facts memorizing phrases. The imagination of the liturgy is about soul two or three of us gather in his name, he’ll be there with us. That’s enough of wisdom — it is about nourishing our souls just as we do our bodies; it is about a “pub” for Jesus to join in (whether there is wine or not). disciplining our spirits just as we exercise our muscles. For those of us who are new to liturgy, it’s noteworthy that, though there It’s sort of like family dinner — hopefully you get some nutritious food, but are some variations in different traditions, there is an overall structure to the more than nutrition, family dinner is about family, love, community. Liturgy liturgy that is very similar and consistent around the world among a majority is kind of like family dinner with God. We will probably have a good meal, of the Chris tian Church — especially Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, but it’s about more than just eating. Liturgical theologian Aidan Kavanaugh Presbyterians, Methodists and others.* It has been said that if the covers were says it well: “The liturgy, like the feast, exists not to educate but to seduce removed from the major worship books of the late twentieth century, it would people into participating in common activity of the highest order, where one be difficult to tell which book belongs to which church body. The major is freed to learn things which cannot be taught.” traditions pretty much follow the same Script. Certainly we are learning as we pray, as we listen to Scripture, as we When we first discover that there is a very organized cycle of readings — a learn the songs and stories.