Tip: Using Accordance to help develop a liturgy

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

I come from a liturgical tradition where many elements of the liturgy vary from week to week. Recently I've been delving the Psalms as a source for Calls to Worship (or Greetings, for those of you--like my worship professor--who cringe at the term Call to Worship ) Because I'm committed to having the liturgy relate closely to the text I'm preaching from, I've been using Accordance to help me find good material for this element of my liturgy. Here's what I've been doing:

 

-I pull up my preaching text in a tab in my workspace.

-I add a pane for the Cross References tool.

-I look for Psalm entries in the Cross References notations for the various verses in my preaching text, and hover my mouse over them one by one.

-Some I can rule out just be the content in the Instant Details box

-If I find one that looks promising, I click on it, which pulls it up in a separate text tab

-I turn on "Show all Text" to see the surrounding verses.

-If there are verses that look like they would work for a Call to Worship/Greeting, I select them and choose "Add Selection to Reference List"

-I repeat this proccess until I've worked all the way through the preaching text verses.

-I go the the Reference List window, look at the verses I've copied there, and decide what ones to use for my liturgy.

-I copy those verses as a citation and paste them into my bulletin document.

 

In some instances I've also checked Isaiah and Proverbs for ideas, using the same technique

 

Lorinda

[ToddPeperkorn]

You know, you could save yourself a lot of work by using what we like to call a lectionary....

 

Seriously though, thanks for tips. I've gotten some good ideas on how to use Accordance from this.

 

Peperkorn

http://historiclectionary.com

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

Actually, I do use a lectionary. But at the moment we are praying the Psalm for the day later in the service, so I've been looking for other Psalms to use as Calls to Worship/Greetings. When we don't pray the Psalm for the day after the first reading, then I often use part of the lectionary assigned Psalm for the Call to Worship/Greeting.

 

Lorinda

[Lorinda H. M. Hoover]

While we're talking about the lectionary or lack of one, I've also used this technique--or a variation of it--when I have gone off lectionary. For example, I did an Advent series working through Luke 1-2, and I used the cross references to help me identify related Old Testament and Epistle readings for that series. The results for that one are available in the Accordance Exchange.

 

Lorinda