SUGGESTION: What would full lectionary support look like?
Yesterday, I responded (in negatives) as to why I placed a request for the return of the liturgical ribbon from the L7 home page in the Verbum forum rather than in the general forums.(See VERBUM 9 SUGGESTION re: "liturgical ribbon") So I thought today I should add (in positives) what I think is essential if FL is to truly support lectionaries. I am making some assumptions about pastors', religious ed directors', and faith formation directors' use -- I suspect I am wrong on some of them, especially across different faith traditions and parish sizes so please jump in and correct me:
VIEWS OF THE LECTIONARY
- In all cases below, treat "Sunday" as meaning "Sunday and Feast days"
- In writing a Sunday sermon, one needs context so a lectionary view showing this Sunday, the previous Sunday, the upcoming Sunday is needed; if the Sunday has multiples service, including a vigil, all the services for the day must be a lectionary view.
- In writing a Sunday sermon, if one is using the RCL daily lectionary, a lectionary view showing the readings from the previous Wednesday to the upcoming Tuesday is required as they are thematically related
- Outside Ordinary Time, the ability to see the entire season - Sundays only, full season including daily Note this should handle optional seasons such as the Season of Creation.
- For weekday sermons one should be able to see the weekday preceding and the weekday following as well as the current day
- Make it easy for the user to override their default lectionary as religious orders, dioceses, church name, current events all may adjust the calendar/lectionary. This should also allow for the use of short lectionaries overriding the standard lectionary as is done in the Season of Creation.
- To the extent possible, offer all the (English) Bible translations that are allowed for use with a particular lectionary - yes, for some churches this is a long list for others it is very restricted.
- Nice to have but not essential: ability to see what passages are and are not included in books given semi-continuous readings
- A nice to have: where there are options in the readings, allow the users options to be retained and shown by something such as bold print
- Nice to have: a pericope viewer based on lectionary pericopes
LECTIONARY PASSAGE GUIDE MODIFICATIONS
- Using resources such as Treasures Old and New: Images in the Lectionary by Gail Ramshaw for the RCL based lectionaries, create a Liturgical ThemeImage section that parallels the preaching theme sections. Sites such as https://episcopalchurch.org/library/article/lectionary-and-theme also carry thematic information.
- Add a section that highlights other times the Bible passage is used (a) in your preferred lectionary, (b) in historical/alternative lectionaries in your tradition, and (c) in all lectionaries - in historical or theological stream order
- Add liturgical date as a selection criteria for the Sermons section - yes, this requires a basic ability to account for the differences in liturgical date names across time and traditions
- Allow one to enter a liturgical date/lectionary id to generate a passage guide. This requires two changes: (a) allowing non-contiguous passage notation which Verbum/Logos converts to a single, continuous passage (b) open each of the passages in a passage guide that either allows you to tab through all the readings OR display them side by side.
- A section of links to sermons sites chosen by the user e.g. generic sites such as The Text This Week and denomination sites such as Torch: The Dominican Friars - England & Scotland. This provides some of the same functionality as the sermon sites in Logos but puts the choice of sites in the users hands.
- Nice to have: a compare text function that compares the pericope in the lectionary to the pericope in the appropriate Bible translation
- Nice to have: a section for history of the liturgical calendar/explanation of lectionary resources that lists references to the liturgical date.
SERMON TOOL MODIFICATIONS
- Add liturgical date to the metadata
- Allow auto-entry of lectionary readings
- Allow identification of preaching text - note some lectionaries include preaching texts outside the usual lectionary (lesson) texts esp. in the European Lutheran tradition IIRC
LAYOUTS:
- Allow the building of layouts that (a) have a fixed portion for lectionary level data and (b) have a portion for each reading that overlays ... this gives quick access to the layout for switching back and forth between readings
NICETIES:
- clip art that allows one to build a Sunday calendar for kids showing them the liturgical year
- clip art can also double on church bulletins
- create workflows for multi-passage Bible study and Sermon writing
- make it easy to identify the correct milestone format so that notes can easily be added to a liturgical date and the readings associated with it.
Okay, it's your turn to shoot holes in the above and to add to it ... I've probably missed as much as I included.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
Comments
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Sign me up!
What was that app you once told me about for lectionaries?
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We [you?] need to add is a link to one the many threads that have the topic of Calendars and Lectionaries and how they are related. There needs to be something [imho] that automatically converts a worldly [Gregorian] calendar date to the correct lectionary reading.
In the denomination that I belong to there is a study guide that is written starting years before we get to study it. So, the authors for such a study guide, if they are using any type of lectionary, need to be able to input the dates several years ahead to get the correct reading that will be used when the study guide gets used. [If they are going to use Logos to write the study guide.]
What would be needed? A perpetual calendar: input the Gregorian calendar date get the Lectionary date for whatever lectionary being used. [this might also solve the manual changing of the dates for lectionaries as now done in Logos when a “cycle” ends and the next begins]
And then when we make a PBB of that study guide that was written for the year 2011 but are reading it in 2023 the dates they are to be used by get “corrected” without the reader needing to do the corrections.
[[The study guides that I am referring to here is not made available more than three months prior to their use. That is time enough for a dedicated denominational person to whip out a simple PBB of the study guide but not time enough for Logos to publish a low volume polished work that will not have any resale value after the date the guide is for [therefor not profitable for Logos so the PBB is not in competition with any possible future publication by Logos]]
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