Enriching Our Worship (5 vols.)

This is the new edition of Supplemental Liturgical Materials. New materials include 17 additional canticles taken from the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, the New Testament, Anselm of Canterbury, and Julian of Norwich. There are also additions and changes to the previously published supplemental materials including a third Eucharistic prayer.

Prepared by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music and adopted by the seventy-third General Convention, this new set of materials was adapted from sources in scripture; a variety of contemporary prayer books throughout the Anglican Communion; traditional materials from Orthodox and medieval western sources; and hymnody of various American cultures. Newly written texts and some texts from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer which have been revised are also included.

These newly authorized rites are intended to be a supplement to the burial services in the Book of Common Prayer, adding a rich variety of new material from many sources, including prayers for one who has died in military service, for one of unknown faith, for an unbeliever, and for a member of an inter-faith family. All of the major pastoral issues of the Prayer Book rites are addressed from the reception of the body to the consecration of the grave and the interment but with a freshness of language in new texts that the speak to contemporary sensibilities.

The rite for celebrating a new ministry in the Book of Common Prayer is a service that has caused much dissatisfaction in the church since its appearance in 1976. While the revision of the Prayer Book focused on a radical return to a baptismal ecclesiology, the “Celebration of a New Ministry” rite focuses almost entirely upon the priest, with little recognition of the ongoing ministry of the congregation. This new “Renewal of Ministry” rite reflects more clearly the teaching of the Prayer Book by setting ordained ministry within the context of baptism.

This unique new service book includes liturgies for blessing and healing as related to childbearing and childbirth. It includes prayers, Scripture readings, and hymn suggestions organized around the blessing of a pregnant woman, loss of a pregnancy, difficult decisions, unexpected pregnancy, loss of a child, infertility, sterilization, adoption, and others.