Sundays and Seasons 2005/Year A [antikvár]

With this edition of Sundays and Seasons, we begin a new three-year cycle through the lectionary. And the coming three years promise to be momentous ones in Lutheran worship. If all goes as planned, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly will, in August 2005, consider a proposal to approve a new generation of worship resources, the culmination of the fiveyear Renewing Worship process. New final resources would, pending approval, begin to appear around Advent 2006. Congregations have had, and continue to have, plenty of opportunity to try out the shape of liturgical forms and resources being developed for the future. Trial resources began appearing in 2001 and continue to be published even intő 2005. A complete listing can be found in the bibliography at the back of this publication, under Renewing Worship. There still is time for your community to test these materials and provide your feedback. Those who would like more information about Renewing Worship may turn to the introduction provided by Michael Burk, ELCA Director for Worship, on p. 10. His essay not only points to what resources are "out there," but more importantly communicates the ways in which Renewing Worship is much more than resources-it is an attempt to involve the whole church around that which is central to our life together. So these are exciting times for all of us who care deeply about worship. And for that subset of us who produce Sunday s and Seasons, it is particularly exciting, in a challenging sort of way. Because of production schedules, we began working on this edition in the spring of 2003, and it went to press in late winter 2004. We want to incorporate as much of the current Renewing Worship resources as possible into the worship suggestions in this volume; however, many of the core volumes that you have available now were not yet finalized as we produced this resource. We have hinted and made somewhat vague references to, for instance, Holy Communion and Related Rites and Daily Prayer, but we have not been able to refer to specifíc wording or page numbers in those volumes. Despite this handicap, we hope that the planning helps will lead you into an exploration of the proposed rites, while still supporting the current generation of resources. You may want to check Words for Worship 2005 for additional texts related to Renewing Worship.