The 2015 edition of “Sundays and Seasons: Guide to Worship Planning” (Augsburg Fortress) marks its 20th year of publication. Over those 20 years, the mission of “Sundays and Seasons” has remained constant, even as its form and content have adapted to meet the changing needs of worship planners.
“Sunday and Seasons” was introduced at a time when the ecumenical Revised Common Lectionary (1992) was being adopted by congregations and denominations and Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) was nearing its 20th anniversary. More than 20 years later the church’s worship continues to be enriched by this lectionary, and the ELCA and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada have a new principal worship resource, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006).
“Sundays and Seasons” has expanded beyond a single print volume into a family of resources, which includes an online planning tool, sundaysandseasons.com. Additional resources in the “Sundays and Seasons” family include “Worship Planning Calendar,” “Calendar of Word and Season,” “Church Year Calendar,” “Bread for the Day: Daily Bible Readings and Prayers,” and “Words for Worship.”
In this 20th-anniversary year, Augsburg Fortress introduced “Sundays and Seasons: Preaching,” an annual print resource that encourages and provides help for lectionary preaching, taking into account all the readings for the day, in addition to the rest of the service and the day itself in the church year.
The online worship planner, sundaysandseasons.com, has been a rich and reliable resource for worship planning since 2005. By mid-2015, the online planning tool will undergo some exciting changes, while retaining its trusted features and content breadth. Subscribers can look forward to a fresh, new look throughout, along with the ability to browse lectionary content more easily right from the home page. “Deluxe” subscribers will also have the option for two new content modules: “Preaching” and “Worship Videos.”
The preaching module is a new area available as an add-on for deluxe subscribers and includes all content from the new “Sundays and Seasons: Preaching” resource, along with content from newproclamation.com. Also included are selected day resources written by Gail Ramshaw for easy use in combination with the other preaching content.
Clip art that subscribers use will now be accessed through the new “Visuals” module, including – for the first time – art from the Evangelical Lutheran Worship Graphics CD-ROM. Worship videos, designed around the lectionary by The Work of the People, will be available as an add-on for deluxe subscribers.
Subscribers can rest assured that all users, plans, templates and preferences will carry over seamlessly during the new system changeover.
As it has from the beginning, the “Sundays and Seasons” family of resources continues to support week-by-week planning for Lutherans with content and ideas shaped by the Revised Common Lectionary, the church year and the assembly gathered around word and sacrament.
