Help for the Liturgical Calendar

In the past year I have begun attending a church that follows the liturgical calendar. If you are in a church that follows such a calendar (most commonly Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran, Catholic, or Orthodox), you will be familiar with my context. I have previously written on the selection of hymns according to topic and to their placement in the service in this post. Most of those principles still apply in my new church (beginning with a hymn of praise, introducing new hymns one at a time alongside old favorites, etc.), but there are now additional considerations for selecting hymns appropriate for the theme of the worship service each Sunday.

In our historic tradition, the texts for each Sunday are prescribed in the lectionary and repeated yearly (some churches have recently adopted a 3-year calendar to include more readings; however, I see great benefit to repeatedly studying the readings included in the historic 1-year calendar, and to returning to those texts once a year to delve deeper into them, rather than forgetting what I have learned by the time three years have gone by).

Regardless of which liturgical reading schedule your church uses, you can benefit from being organized in the way you approach your music selections throughout the year. I have just recently taken over selecting the music for my church. Before that, I accompanied the hymns, but the priest used the same hymn schedule that our previous organist had selected, until I became familiar with the hymns our particular congregation knows, and became used to a new (to me) hymnal.

Now that hymn selection is my responsibility, I have determined to help myself out by keeping my own records of hymns that I select throughout the year. The easiest way to do this is to make a note right in my prayerbook, on the page for that Sunday. For each week (e.g., Trinity Sunday), I write in the numbers I selected, right next to the scripture texts for that Sunday, so that I will have a record for future reference. This is also a good idea if there are more appropriate hymns for the occasion than you have need for in a single service. The next year, you may decide to change it up and include a different one instead, or perhaps you will even be able to use it the next week, if a similar theme continues--for example, the First and Second Sundays after Trinity both have readings from 1st John with themes of God’s love for us and the love we should have for one another. It will help, too, if you discover the perfect hymn for a certain text later in the year--you can just make a note on the Sunday you want to use it, and have it right there for next year!

In addition to getting used to a different hymnal, I also faced a new problem I did not expect: no topical index! The table of contents provides a little assistance--if it happens to be Advent, Christmas, Easter, or another particular holiday. There are also special occasion hymns for baptisms, weddings, etc. Those are good guidelines, except when you are in a different season, as we are now! Trinity Season (also referred to as “Ordinary Time”) is a wonderful time to learn the great hymns of the church that are appropriate year-round. The difficulty is that there are so many great hymns to choose from! In the future on this blog, I intend to record the hymns from each Sunday along with themes from the texts, to create my own thematic index here, for my reference and for yours. Each week, feel free to comment with your own ideas and selections. Within the church, fellowship with other believers is a way we grow and learn more about the Lord, and so should our fellowship also be for mutual benefit among those of us entrusted with the responsibility of guiding our congregations in the worship of our Lord.