Worship, rites, ceremonies and rituals Books

The essays in Psalms and Practice explore how the notion of practice helps contemporary readers understand psalms in a new way. Practice, according to the authors, happens as faith seeks understanding through spiritual disciplines. These practices...

Read the Way You Talk offers instruction for lectors. It presents guidelines for making oral reading meaningful and believable. Three lessons give detailed instructions in eighteen different areas including parallelism, repetition, and pronunciation...

For much of Christian history the church has given no place to Holy Saturday in its liturgy or worship. Yet the space dividing Calvary and the Garden may be the best place from which to reflect on the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection. This...

Restoring The Future challenges readers to a deeper Easter faith by opening unexpected treasures in the first lesson lectionary passages from Genesis, Exodus, Samuel, the prophets, and the book of Acts.Drawing upon thoughtfully mined biblical insights...

Many of today's growing churches are turning to drama to convey the biblical message. These visual portrayals are used for sermon emphasis, general interest, and greater membership participation -- with exciting results. Add life to your congregation...

Prepare everyone in the congregation for a meaningful Lenten season with this worship guide for Reconciliation. Designed to be used each weekday during the season of Lent, it encourages individuals to read short sections from the Bible, then reflect on...

Elaine Ward passionately believes that it is vital for children to hear the good news of God's love through the Lenten stories of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. In this companion volume to An Idle Tale Becomes Good News (also available from CSS...

Through these contemporary and easy-to-perform dramas the message of Easter walks off the pages of the Bible and becomes a living, life-changing reality in the lives of people. They are written to introduce people afresh to a living Savior.Included...

O Lord, thank you. Thank you, for delivering the baby safely. I was afraid we would not make it to a place of shelter. I am so grateful that Mary can now find a few moments of rest. These last days have been so difficult for her.-- from "Joseph Ponders"...

Lutheranism 101: The Lord's Supper examines what Scripture and the Confessions have to say about Jesus' gift of His true body to eat and His true blood to drink. What Lutherans believe and teach about the Lord's Supper makes us distinct from all...

A wellspring of prayer and praise for thousands of years, the Psalms give voice to every human emotion from intense joy to anger and disorientating sorrow. They are eternal soul songs that lift our hearts and address the same concerns and questions we...

SCAM OF JESUSJesus, acting as Son of God and as a Jew, turned out to be a Greek character, making the story of Jesus a scam of the West, mainly of the British. Jesus left the footprints of the scam everywhere Jesus walked.SCAM OF THE CHURCHThe...

Tenali Raman was a court jester, an intelligent advisor and one of the ashtadiggajas (elephants serving as pillar and taking care of all the eight sides) in the Bhuvana Vijayam (Royal Court) of the famed emperor of Vijaynagar Empire (City of joy) in...

Religion is the author of bondage. It speaks to human effort that is focused on an unattainable goal established by man. It keeps you tied to performance rather than to relationship with God. It keeps you stuck in the first century laws that were...

Worry, despair, insecurity, fear of death ... these are our daily companions, and even though we attempt to ignore them or try to crowd them out, they are there, waiting for us in our quieter moments. It is precisely where we hurt most that the...

In the study of Christian liturgical music, the first three centuries of the Christian era are foundational. Seldom, however, does this period receive serious attention from scholars. One of the reasons for this oversight is the fluid auditory...

""Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly"" (Col 3:16). Regain the art of meditation, aided by simple versification of Scripture and hymnody that is firmly based on the word of God. Aptly suited to enrich private or family devotions, Gospel Musings:...

""Grabreden Und Gebete An Grabern"" ist eine Sammlung von Reden und Gebeten, die von Gustav Adolph Dietzsch im Jahr 1862 ver������ffentlicht wurde. Das Buch enth�����lt eine Vielzahl von Texten, die f�����r Beerdigungen und Gedenkfeiern verwendet werden...

Teens Guide for Holy Week highlights the most crucial and important events of Holy Week. It is a simple yet detailed description of the day-by-day and night-by-night events that took place during the final week of Christ's life, giving relevant...

How can pastors help couples make a solid beginning as they launch out into the rocky waters of marriage? How can the pastor speak briefly but effectively to them when they approach the altar?John M. Braaten provides 21 well-crafted homilies for marriage...

In this accessible book, join Matt as he responds to God's invitation to pack up his family with just $2 in the bank, wait in airports for breakthrough, and overcome the odds to make it to 'The Call - New York City', to spend 12 hours in prayer with...

Maria A. Robinson-Smith presents and overview and genealogy of Revivalism in this work. She explores the role of the Revival iconography in building a culture of shared understanding among Revivalists and, by extension, African Jamaicans. The Watt Town...

Ceremonies from the Heart, offers anyone with loved ones ways to help families move through transitions. From birth to death, and every stage in-between, this book supports and empowers life's changes with rites that matter. Each chapter offers...

Christopher Idle's hymns are known to many people around the world. They are sung in thousands of churches every Sunday.Ten years on from Light upon the River, this new collection contains one hundred further hymn-texts written in the past...

This is a reprint of the classic 1920 edition of the St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book. This book is popular with traditionalists who either grew up in the pre-Vatican II era or those who are searching for hymns they remember from their youth...

When Luke Larson and his wife Evie embarked on a 500-mile pilgrimage across northern Spain, their purpose was to experience walking as a way of keeping company with Jesus and his companions, of both earth and heaven, such as Saint Ignatius of Loyola...

Keeping the Sabbath is the only commandment God called holy and said to remember. The moment the women light the Sabbath candle, we glimpse the boundless realm of the world to come as all work is put down and we meet with the Lord. The flame reveals our...

Liturgy is not a religious frill or Sunday morning ceremonial exercise. It is a communal response to the sacred. The liturgies, ceremonies, and rituals in our lives are the stuff of reality and have the power to heal and inspire us. From archaic times...

A Christmas Classic Celebration is a unique candlelight service that incorporates scenes of Christmas that are all around us. Popular Christmas songs such as "Silver Bells," "I'll Be Home For Christmas," and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" are combined with...

Lights, Symbols And Angels is a compilation of related worship resources that will enhance the Advent/Christmas worship life of any congregation, large or small."O Come, Blessed Light Of The World!" is ideal for raising awareness of the Advent season for...

This Christmas chancel drama, used by itself or incorporated into a worship service, uses seven speaking parts (from children to adults) and takes about 30-35 minutes to perform. It is designed as a readers' theater so that little rehearsal is needed...

This Christmas Eve service centers on the story of Leah, a young girl from Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth. It is a story of seeming tragedy, despair and restored hope -- of a loving daughter, her carpenter father, and the trials they face when he...

These resources were carefully selected from almost 100 manuscripts submitted. They were chosen for their creativity and content, but also for their adaptability to churches of any size. None of them require complicated props or settings, nor do any...

"Until relatively recently, vegetarianism was a dietary alternative for Christians—a mere option or perhaps, for some, a conviction. But the biblical tradition recognized that a plant-based diet isn’t more spiritual or moral than eating...

Christian worship is always undergoing change as it adapts to particular contexts and concerns. This collection of essays explores ways: 1) that liturgical change happened to address particular historical and theological concerns; 2) that worship and...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore,...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore,...

This monograph focuses on "Christian Goddess Spirituality" (CGS), the phenomenon of (mostly) women who combine Christianity and Goddess Spirituality, including Wicca/Witchcraft. Mary Ann Beavis's study provides ethnographic data and analysis on the lived...

In this concise and clearly written handbook, worship leaders from every denomination and musical style will find a wealth of information on how to develop their leadership skills and improve the effectiveness of corporate worship. Kevin J. Navarro...

If you want an intriguing resource that can help you bring a fresh, contemporary perspective to some of Jesus' most enduring stories, then Visualizing The Parables is just what you're looking for. Originally conceived as a Lenten series, this set of...

Trying to prepare a holiday children's program is often a stressful affair for both the youngsters, who worry about memorizing their lines, and for their directors, who tear their hair out trying to make sure everyone attends rehearsals, not to mention...