I don’t know if you got to see the recent movie Of Gods and Men, about a group of Trappist monks stationed with an impoverished Algerian community. Once again I was struck by the place that a liturgy can play in a spiritual life of a community. With proscribed readings and songs it brings an order to the devotional life. Many younger Christians raised in individualistic and non-liturgical churches are now being attracted to community and liturgy as a setting for spiritual development.

As the book states in its introduction, “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 be a gathering of folks in a public housing unit or dorm room, in your village or cul-de-sac.”

It continues, “Folks are bound to ask if this prayer book is for Catholics or for Protestants. Our answer is, ‘Yes it is.’ We want the fire of the Pentecostals, the imagination of the Mennonites, the Lutheran’s love of Scripture, The Benedictine’s discipline, the wonder of the Orthodox and Catholics. We have mined the fields of church history for treasures and celebrated them wherever we’ve found them. We’ve drawn on some of the oldest and richest traditions of Christian prayers. And we’ve tried to make them dance.”

One of the original purposes of a common liturgy was so that Christians everywhere in the world were united at one time in worship. Sometimes in our Sunday congregations it is easy to forget that we are part of something far larger and more diverse than we could ever dream of. Using a book like this can serve as a good reminder.

By S. Clairborne, J. Wilson-Hartgrove, E. Okoro
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2010
ISBN 978-0-310-33094-3

– David McLeod-Jones