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Teri Peterson

Liturgy Link Does Ash Wednesday

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Many of you know that LiturgyLink began as an idea tossed around at Unconference and then developed on Twitter…and then funded by the S3 Project at Columbia Seminary (thanks to the Lilly Endowment). Well, the original four liturgylinkers were all together at Columbia last week and we decided we would try to write an Ash Wednesday prayer together.

The first thing you need to know about us is that we all serve in very very different churches, ranging from an urban congregation with 25 people in worship to Southern small-city churches, to a suburban midwestern church with over 200 people in worship. To say we have different contexts and different expectations for this kind of special service would be an understatement. After an hour of discussion (some of it heated) we realized that at least one of us was looking to write a long prayer that could be the backbone of the entire service, another was looking for something about the length of an average Sunday’s prayer of confession. One of us was hoping to focus on the otherness of God, while one wanted to focus on the closeness of God. Etc.

You can see where this is going, right?

We know that everyone who stops by here has a unique worship context–and that means you have something unique to contribute! We hope you use what is useful here, and we hope you’ll offer your creativity, even if that comes in the form of one word, or one phrase that you haven’t developed yet but might spark the imagination of someone else. In that spirit, we offer you what we did manage to put together–a list of phrases and ideas that we didn’t end up putting into one prayer that would work for all of us. But we suspect these phrases will appear in each of our prayers as we finish them up this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

Take these seeds (posted after the break!), add your own in the comments, and let’s see what this might grow into!

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Sunday’s Coming: working toward February 26

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Lent is upon us. This week we’ll enter the journey, some of us, on Ash Wednesday. We’ll come face to face with mortality and sin, then turn our faces and our lives back toward God, seeking a new relationship with God, God’s people, and God’s world. Throughout Lent we continue seeking both the truth of our own lives and the Truth of God’s desire for us…and this Sunday is the first time we get to explore that fully.

So maybe you’ll be working with God’s rainbow covenant. Maybe, along with the psalmist, you’ll be pleading “Teach me your ways.” Maybe you’ll be contemplating Paul’s call to Be prepared to suffer for doing good, and connecting baptism and the Flood… or maybe you’ll enter the season with the traditional story of Jesus’ baptism, and you’ll follow him out into the wilderness.

Do you have a theme for the whole season, or will you work week by week? Are you planning to follow one set of readings (all old testament, all psalms, all gospel, etc) throughout the five Sundays, or are you mixing it up? Are you following the lectionary or working on a series off-lectionary? Share your ideas in the comments!

Perhaps you have just one word or one phrase so far…if you put that in the comments, you can inspire others and we can begin bouncing ideas around. Who knows, we may even end up with a brand new piece of liturgy we can share!

Other…

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The bulletin is probably printed, but there’s always more, isn’t there? There are children’s sermons, calls to confession, prayers of dedication, blessings, prayers for illumination…what images or words or phrases are you working with in the Other Parts this week? What theme are you hoping to carry through even when it’s not printed in the bulletin?

This week our call to confession and declaration of forgiveness are mountain-toppy. What do you have to share?

So often we think we understand, we think we know what God should be doing. But when we let our guard down and speak the truth about our confusion, God’s grace enters in. So we take this time to be honest about our limitations and our failures. Let us pray.

(prayer of confession)

On the mountaintop, Christ shows us who he truly is, and it is dazzling. On the mountaintop, Christ shows us who we truly are—children of God whose lives are made new by God’s grace and by the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Friends, believe and live this good news—in Jesus Christ, we can shine light for the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sunday’s Coming: working toward T-Fig!

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Transfiguration Sunday is finally here. We had some interesting discussion in the brainstorming post, but now it’s time to do the real work. What are you thinking about for T-Fig (or, as one of my friends calls it, “t-figgety”)?

Perhaps you’re going with Mark’s sparse storytelling on the traditional Peter-James-and-John-were-with-Jesus-in-that-place. (You’re welcome for the earworm, by the way,)

Perhaps you’re taking a day to talk about the passing on of the mantle from Elijah to Elisha.

Maybe you’re going for the short-but-sweet shiny-but-veiled gospel.

There’s also some powerful poetry exhorting us to remember God in the psalm.

What images, phrases, or words are the seed you’re starting with this week? What music do you have in mind? How would you like people to encounter the living Word this week? Put your starters or ideas in the comments so we can bounce things around together!

The unprinted parts

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Many of us probably have the bulletin done already…but there are always those things that don’t need to go in the bulletin that we wait to do until later. What words will we use to introduce the scripture reading? What words will we use to call people to confession? How will we introduce the offering? What prayer of dedication will we come up with this week? What children’s sermon ideas are floating around out there? Will the charge before the benediction be different this week?

I confess that the prayer of dedication I almost always use is this: “God, you have been so generous to us. You have filled us to overflowing with every good gift. We return these gifts to you and ask for your blessing–use these gifts, and use us, to do your work in this place and around the world. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen.”

Yeah, I could use a new one. What’re you thinking this week for those unprinted parts?