Texts for trial use and feedback

Many different circumstances lead to the decision to close the house of worship of a parish community. When well-supported, deconsecration can be a healthy, formative time in which a local worshipping community discovers a new and renewed sense of discipleship and mission, embodied in different ways. This liturgy is to be considered a diocesan service and is normally presided over by the diocesan bishop, as chief presider of the diocese.

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Early on, before any formalizing of a relationship, there is a point at which a person’s interior or private spiritual exploration may cause them to reach out. The role the rest of the baptized have is to recognize that reaching out, and to meet it with a welcome that leads to listening, to mutual conversation, and to some form of walking together. At some point, the intention of that walking together becomes clear: there is a choice and offer of commitment on the horizon. A public marking of this stage in the journey can be a powerful witness of grace.

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The church’s pastoral and vocational rites exist to accompany members of the Body of Christ through those stages, commitments, and callings through which God’s claim on our lives is publicly made known and our commitment to Christ is confirmed. The rites and prayers in this collection may be used in contexts where a member of the Christian family wants to have their gender identity affirmed within a supportive community. This can be due to a gender transition process begun, in process, or completed, or due to a newfound awareness of a particular identity location on the gender spectrum.

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Also available: Pastoral Educational Resources for Supporting Transgender Christians in the Anglican Church of Canada—an educational companion to this liturgical work containing theological and pastoral reflections on transgender experiences, on gender and theology, and an extensive annotated bibliography.

The Consultation on Common Texts is the multilateral ecumenical liturgical roundtable of churches in Canada and the United States that created the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). The Anglican Church of Canada was a founding member, and continues in that membership, officially supporting the Consultation and participating in its meetings and work. The Anglican Church of Canada adopted the RCL in 1993, but did not adapt either its Daily Office Lectionary or its Daily Eucharistic Lectionary. This Daily Readings table, produced by the Consultation on Common Texts and adopted widely, ecumenically, is intended as an alternative lectionary for devotional and daily office use. a structure that is based on the table of Sunday and Festival readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.

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The international ecumenical liturgical roundtable, the English Language Liturgical Consultation, has proposed this table of Old Testament readings for the three year cycle of Easter Season. The Revised Common Lectionary of 1992, following the Common Lectionary, provides readings from Acts for Paschaltide, but the Hebrew scripture portions are given only for Easter Day and Pentecost. The only justification for this omission of the Old Testament is that this was the tradition of certain ancient rites, both east and west. Our understanding of the resurrection and of the whole purpose of Paschaltide in the New Testament is based on the teaching of both creation and redemption as it comes to us from the Old. The particular contribution of the literature from the exilic and post-exilic periods is of great value and are highlighted here.

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This work is commended to the church for study, critical engagement and feedback to a committee that will be created to bring a final Proposed Calendar for Trial Use and Evaluation, following upon this consultative process.

This document outlines a proposal for possible revisions to the BAS Calendar. The proposal first sets out the process and methodological approach taken in reviewing both the Temporal (hallowing of time) and the Sanctoral (hallowing of witnesses to Christ) calendars, explaining the importance of principles such as organic progression and noble simplicity, of ecumenical and multicultural considerations and the challenges of the fact that when it comes to Calendars, there is no ‘typical edition’ (a single, ancient prototype, such as we have for the eucharistic prayer and other liturgical texts, for example). It considers the arguments for why particular commemorations or memorials ought to be ‘retired’ and how to deal with the memorializing of historic events. These and other core liturgical-theological principles of inculturation and the nature of discipleship within a living tradition are then brought to bear in the proposals for both additions to and retirements from the Sanctoral Calendar, as well as some changes to existing memorials and commemorations.

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The Anglican Church of Canada has benefited greatly from international work on common ecumenical liturgical texts. Many of these are already found in the Book of Alternative Services (BAS), which was able to adopt the very first of such text as produced by the English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC) and its predecessor, the International Consultation on English Texts. As the work of the ELLC continued in the decade following the publication of the BAS, a portion of ELLC texts are not currently found in the Anglican Church of Canada’s authorized liturgical materials. In March 2022, the Council of General Synod authorized the remainder of the ELLC texts for trial use, evaluation, and feedback, where permitted by the Ordinary (diocesan bishop). This trial use period is authorized to the end of 2022, with intention to take to General Synod 2023 for authorization. It is intended that the use would be as alternatives, where permitted, to the non-ELLC texts in the Book of Alternative Services. The document provided to CoGS, available for download through the form below, is excerpted from the website of the English Language Liturgical Consultation, www.englishtexts.org.

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