What Church Planters and Evangelicals Can Learn from the Lectionary

I will admit that I have been in lectionary recovery now for about five years. We have weekly meetings: "Hi, I'm Robb and I used to be bound by the lectionary" and all God's people said, "Hi Robb!" In a quest for relevance many have turned away from the lectionary mafia to topical teaching. While I believe one can use the lectionary and be relevant and even be topical, it is a lot more work to make the lectionary work.

In this season leading up to Christmas though the lectionary (more correctly the church calendar) can teach people who have moved away from these things from on high a thing or two.

• Christmas does not start the day after Thanksgiving (or worse after Halloween). Instead the weeks after Christmas are a time of preparation (called Advent) where we prepare our hearts to celebrate the great miracle of God "coming to dwell in the neighborhood" as Eugene Peterson puts it. So, when we rush to make sure we sing songs and celebrate Christmas so early what we are really doing is accommodating to culture. If I had it my way we would only sing Charles Wesley's "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus" until Christmas Eve :)
  
• Likewise, we do well to do as the Lectionary and Church Calendar reminds us to do and that is recognize that there are twelve days of Christmas culminating in the arrival of thewisemen called "Epiphany". Instead of adding to the stress and culture of consumerism during the time preceding December 25th perhaps it can be a learning moment for churches to cancel all "Christmas" events until the season of Christmas. If you do that I promise you will send some blue hairs and narcissistic baby boomers over the edge.

Well, as we move from what used to work to what works today we do well not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Tradition, symbol, and liturgy still have power today if they are explained and serve to bring people closer to Jesus Christ. Picking up on what one Jewish Rabbi once said, "The lectionary and church calendar were made for man, not man for the church calendar and lectionary." Nonetheless, we can still learn something from them.