Sean, Phil, Rick, Eli: A plea for a reasonable church calendar before it is too late.

The currently implementation of a church calendar is costing FL in high overhead for maintenance, high cost for adding new lectionaries, hindering the addition of historical lectionarys, and creating a complex and misleading coding for liturgical dates on related items such as sermons and worship aids. I want to present an alternative and simpler scheme to implement. It is critical that it be done before too much is invested in the related sermons, etc.

1. Essentially all Western and Eastern Orthodox calendars have the same structure. The Jewish calendar and the Oriental Orthodox differ sufficiently that I am excluding them from the discussion.
2. Church calendars are made up of four pieces:

• A major chunk that is built off of Christmas, where the dates can be descibed as "the Sunday falling between Dec. 18 and Dec 24th" Note that this is how Phyllis Tickle (Episcopalean) dates a large chunk of her The Divine Hours.
• The second major chunk that is built off Easter, where the dates can be described only as "days before/after Easter".
• The third major chunk is the sanctoral cycle (saints' calendar) which is based on fixed dates on the secular calendar (as is Christmas). This subdivides into different saints included depending upon the denomination, country, religious order . . .
• The final chunk is small and more limited in usage - elements of the calendar that are described as the "second Thursday of October aka World Day of Prayer". The African American Lectionary provides examples. With your announcement regarding African American packages this should be a serious consideration.

• the date of Easter - Western and Eastern. Because of a slight difference in the definition of when Easter calls, occasionally the date of Eastern actually diverge rather than it being a simple difference of calendar.
• which overlays apply i.e.:denomination, country/diocese, religious order, service book. For many people, a default generic calendar by denomination usually surfices.
• For sermons and worship aids whether the Sunday is called "proper 23" or "ordinary 28" or "Pentecost 21" is irrelevant. They all refer to the same Sunday and the same set of readings. Dates are not defined by the lectionary and their coding should not be tied to a specific lectionary.
• Also for sermons and worship aids, The Feast of the Holy Family is the same feast regardless of the date on which it is celebrated. But different feasts are different even if celebrated on the same date e.g. The Feast of the Holy Family and Feast of the Circumcision of Christ.
• While the Eastern Orthodox seasons may differ in length, that only affects the span of the overlay, the principles are the same.

• Sunday and feast day services
• Daily services
• The daily prayer book readings
• The saints' calendar, if there are special readings for the saint
• Use of alternative lectionaries e.g. the Season of Creation

I am sure that there are several people who would gladly help FL improve their liturgical dates/lectionaries functions. And expand it internationally to cover, for example, the German Evangelical Church lectionary, And expand it to include historical lectionaries essential for studying the use of scripture in worship.