Lectionary Preaching & Teaching
The lectionary concept has been around the Christian world for centuries. The most recent and broadly used revision I use throughout this site was developed by The Consultation on Common Texts in 1992. The Christian traditions include Anglican, Disciples of Christ, Christian Reformed, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Reformed Church of America, United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist. If your tradition is not listed above, don't worry about it. Neither is mine. I'm in the Nazarene tradition, and I assure you that this set of scriptures is as good as you will find anywhere. When we get into the pulpit, we are preaching scripture. But I find great confidence in knowing that over any 3-year cycle, I'm preaching the best balance of scripture available. And I have absolutely no difficulty setting the lectionary calendar aside to preach an off-lection special sermon or series that the Lord prompted me to preach.
Blessings, Tim
For every Sunday and Holy Day (such as Good Friday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, etc.) the lectionary provides a robust set of readings. There are always at least 4:
Old Testament. The readings in the first half of the Christian year are typological, meaning they complement or contrast with the gospel in some way. For the year's second half, the lectionary adds a stream of semi-continuous readings that lend themselves to preaching series based on Old Testament books. Most lectionary preachers choose to ride one of these streams for several weeks at a time.
Wisdom Literature. These come mostly from the Psalms and are great for responsive readings and "teachable moments" before prayer and sometimes for sermon texts.
Gospel. Year A features Matthew; Year B features Mark; Year C features Luke. John is scattered throughout and is especially prevalent around Easter.
Epistle. This usually connects with the gospel.
I used the lectionary as a roadmap for 10 years to the same congregation and never ran out of good preaching material. Using the lectionary gave me confidence that our people consistently received a balanced diet of the main themes of scripture. I seldom used more than one of the scriptures on a given Sunday. Our worship leader used the lectionary scriptures, especially the Psalms, to construct responsive readings and as a guide for selecting music.
Below is a helpful graphic illustrating the Christian calendar seasons and their lectionary connection. To view it in a larger size, click on it. For an animated PowerPoint slide, where you can move the "star" from Advent to whatever season you are emphasizing, download the attachment at the bottom of this page.
For general information about the lectionary, click on Lectionary Basics. For preachers, see below.
Benefits of Lectionary Preaching
1. Ensures the congregation a balanced diet of primary biblical themes while simultaneously balancing the various flavors of biblical literature types (narrative, teaching, poetry, instruction, prophecy, epistles, etc.).
2. Connects the congregation with the Christian calendar, helping parishioners understand that we are citizens of the Kingdom of God with postal addresses in the kingdoms of this world. (Philippians 3.20, 1 Peter 2.9)
3. Provides worship leaders lead-time to prepare special elements such as music, responsive readings, skits, etc.
4. Encourages preachers to address important scriptures that many of us would miss or skip.
5. It opens an assortment of sermon helps. For example, by clicking Sermon Collections, you can find individual sermons for most lectionary Sundays.
6. Provides a weekly Bible reading plan that prepares parishioners for the upcoming Sunday worship. A New Life parishioner, Gloria Wall, developed a daily Bible reading plan around the Revised Common Lectionary. It is available online on Gloria's Webpage.
7. When I used the lectionary, our church had three congregations: English, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese Chinese. The lectionary was one of many things that helped us tie our three congregations together into one church.
8. Centering the preaching calendar on the lectionary enables the pastors of a multi-language church to collaborate on sermon preparation. The preaching pastors met twice monthly to discuss and brainstorm past and upcoming sermons. These meeting times were among the best times we shared together.
9. When a special preaching need arose, connecting it to a lectionary scripture within the next few weeks was usually easy. When this was difficult, we set aside the lectionary for a week or a series.
10. There is potential to build a Bible study and discipleship curriculum connected to Sunday worship, such as the first item in the next section of this webpage.
My crib sheet of lectionary reaching and teaching resources
Click on Tim’s Lectionary Digest. I write to give individual Christians whatever they need to fruitfully dwell (reflect, meditate) on the lectionary scriptures for a week. And I design each week's Digest as a resource for teachers and preachers. I personally use the Digest myself. A click on the link at the top of this bullet will pop up the Digests for the upcoming Sunday and provide access to all the Digests for the entire three-year cycle. I update it every Monday morning (Pacific Time). I wrote every page of my Digests, which enabled me to offer connections among the four (or more) scriptures within a given week and connect a given week's scripture set with other sets in the 3-year cycle. Here are two other sites that offer similar information.
A Plain Account contains digest material submitted by writers from the Wesleyan-Armenian tradition; that's also my tradition - though I probably lean a little to the liberal side. The differences from my Digest: 1) It integrates material from many authors, so each scripture's digest tends to stand alone, and 2) The writings are more for devotional reading than deep reflection/meditation and teaching/preaching, 3) its website seems a little difficult to navigate outside of the current week.
The Episcopal Church Bible Study also contains digest material submitted by writers, this time from the Anglican tradition - so I'm a little more conservative. The differences from my Digest: 1) It integrates material from many authors, so each scripture's digest tends to stand alone, and 2) The writings are more for devotional reading than deep reflection/meditation and teaching/preaching.
Gloria’s Lectionary Page is my go-to source for scripture sets. You can use it to print out the lectionary in various formats. Gloria Wall is a good friend and a long-term member of Cupertino New Life (my home church)
RCL Lectionary Scriptures by Biblical Book. I use this when I want to quickly find the next or all the times when a passage is in the RCL. I adapted it from cri/voice.org.
BibleHub.com biblical timeline. I don’t trust this on everything, but it’s a convenient place to quickly find where a particular scripture fits in the Bible’s timeline.
Biblical Authorship is a supplement to my Scripture Digest. Instead of writing a paragraph about a particular book every time it appears in the Digest, I can point to this document.
Tim’s Sermon Collections. This link offers access to my sermon notes, organized by lectionary seasons (and cross-referenced to topics).