Seven Frequently Asked Questions about Celebrating Sunday

Celebrating Sunday is the first publication in the process to revise APB 1989.

Celebrating Sunday it is a set of supplemental resources authorized for use with, alongside and in conjunction with APB 1989 during the ‘Core Seasons’ of the Church Year: Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Lent and Eastertide. Celebrating Sunday does not provide resources for the rest of the year, nor does it provide any of the other resources found in APB 1989.

Celebrating Sunday does not – and cannot – replace APB 1989.

Celebrating Sunday is the first product of the project to Revise APB 1989.
It provides limited seasonal resources for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Lent and Eastertide. It is experimental, written to test the waters, so to speak, of how we can better worship Under Southern Skies and In an African Voice.
Celebrating Sunday is intended to be used in conjunction with APB 1989.

Celebrating Sunday is a limited set of supplemental resources intended for use with, alongside and in conjunction with APB 1989.

A parish may decide to integrate one or more of the elements provided in Celebrating Sunday into the Holy Eucharist from APB 1989: for example, a Prayer for Illumination may be chosen instead of the Collect for Purity, or the Prayers of the People taken from Celebrating Sunday rather than from APB 1989, or the Eucharistic Prayer, etc.

No. Celebrating Sunday is not intended to be used in this way.

It is not a book that can be distributed to worshippers.

Celebrating Sunday is a collection of resources that requires someone – the Rector, the Coordinator of Worship or the Worship Team – to make a series of decisions about the Shape and Structure of the service and then choose those elements to be included in it from Celebrating Sunday and those that will be taken from APB 1989.

Once these selections have been made, the complete liturgy for the service needs to be compiled and a decision made about how it will be presented to the worshipper – printed on hand-outs or projected on a screen.

Celebrating Sunday is a collection of resources to be ‘cut and pasted’ into a service. A CD with all the texts for the elements is provided with Celebrating Sunday.

Of course. That is one way in which Celebrating Sunday is intended to be used – providing elements that can be selected and included in the APB 1989 liturgy.

It is also possible to design the whole liturgy using the elements provided in Celebrating Sunday.

Each of the Eucharistic Prayers in Celebrating Sunday has a very definite seasonal focus: one could not use the Eucharistic Prayer from the Advent materials in Lent, and so forth.

You are right. A significant motivation for developing Celebrating Sunday was to provide seasonal resources for the ‘core seasons of the Church Year: Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Lent and Eastertide. We hope that is what we have done.

These materials are additional and supplemental. They do not replace the materials in APB 1989. The Celebrating Sunday materials are provided to emphasize and elaborate the growing seasonal focus that has been with us since the introduction of Liturgy 75.

The materials in Celebrating Sunday. are intentionally seasonal. As such they provide additional, alternative, supplemental materials to be used with, alongside and in conjunction with APB 1989. They do not replace APB 1989.

Yes, you will be asked to provide feedback on your experience of worship using these materials.

The period of Trial Use of Celebrating Sunday is Eastertide 2017 – from Easter Day to the Day of Pentecost [4 June 2017]. On Monday 5 June an online survey will be come available inviting responses from the people of our Church.

There will be two surveys. One will be a survey that invites feedback from the Rectors of the official Parishes for Trial Use. The other is a Congregational Survey that invites feed-back from Diocesan Link Persons, Diocesan Link Representatives and also from worshipper who wishes to provide feedback on their experience of worshipping with these materials.
This represents the very first time in the history of the development of a Worship Resource for our Church that we have asked for feedback during the process of developing materials. We are excited about this very significant and intentionally collegial involvement.

We understand that the process of revising APB 1989 is an initiative of the Synod of Bishops endorsed by the Provincial Synod of ACSA. Anglicans are episcopally led and synodically governed: our Bishops have set the course and our elected representatives have made the Bishops’ initiative a priority for our Church.

It is with this understanding that we proceed with the project: consulting with the Bishops, informing Synod and Provincial Standing Committee and working collaboratively with the people of ACSA.

We understand that a Prayer Book cannot be assembled from a collection of feedback responses. Expertise, knowledge of historical development and concern for pattern, repetition, memorable language and an organic wholeness to the project will require creative work by a small team of liturgists.

However, we are committed to take very seriously all the feedback we receive, consider the contribution it makes to the project and proceed with a full awareness of what they offer.