Christian liturgical calendar

The Christian liturgical calendar shapes when congregations hear particular passages and how they follow the movement of the gospel across the year. In this book, that structure is useful but not absolute: readings from Acts can make the church’s expanding mission visible, yet commitment to familiar seasons and lectionary choices can itself become a kind of Jerusalem from which worshipers may need to set out on less familiar roads.

A framework for hearing Acts

The book discusses Acts through readings assigned to Sundays in the Easter season. On the Fifth Sunday of Easter in Year B, the congregation hears Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch. This passage marks a change in both geography and mission: the earlier Acts readings for the Second, Third, and Fourth Sundays of Easter in Year B take place in Jerusalem, whereas this story unfolds beyond Jerusalem, on the way toward the ends of the earth. The sequence lets the calendar frame the narrative’s outward movement as an invitation for the church to move beyond familiar settings.

The Christian liturgical calendar also places the story of Dorcas on the Fourth Sunday of Easter in Year C. The book identifies this assignment as an opportunity to attend to a woman as the central figure and to consider the liberating implications of her raising. Because the lectionary includes relatively few passages centered on women, this reading can also prompt reflection on gender bias in the lectionary and in the Bible itself.

The lectionary as a sequence

The Easter readings in Year C can be preached continuously across three weeks: Acts 9:1–21, Acts 9:36–43, and Acts 11:1–18. This approach, known as continuous reading, follows a body of scripture in sequence rather than isolating each passage. To prepare for the final reading, the preacher should include representative selections from Acts 10, which set the stage for Acts 11:1–18.

The assignments for the Sixth and Seventh Sundays of Easter in Year C trace a larger arc. They move from the call of Saul and the beginnings of the mission to the Gentiles toward its fuller authorization, carrying the gospel’s progress from Jerusalem toward the ends of the earth. The book notes that the Sixth Sunday’s reading should extend to Acts 16:6–15. Given how few Acts passages appear in the lectionary, the inclusion of Paul’s Macedonian call can invite the church to consider its own call beyond familiar boundaries. Lydia’s appearance also offers a rare opportunity to center a woman in the congregation’s hearing.

Familiar worship and wilderness roads

The book warns that attachment to the Christian liturgical calendar and the lectionary can become a “liturgical Jerusalem”: a familiar mode of worship that, despite its strengths, remains limiting. The image sets liturgical familiarity alongside the movement of Acts, in which God leads the church away from Jerusalem and toward encounters with people who may unsettle relatively homogeneous congregations. The point is not that the calendar has no value, but that its use should not prevent the church from following the mission the readings themselves disclose.

Worship planners and preachers can test their habits by exploring less familiar forms. A congregation accustomed to a pipe organ might worship for a season with a band; a preacher who always follows the lectionary might develop a topical series. Such departures turn the book’s metaphor into a practical challenge: familiar practices can sustain worship, but they can also become boundaries when treated as the only faithful possibilities.

Calendar and the expanding community

In the book’s reading of Acts, the movement outward is not only a change of place. Encounters with Samaritans, eunuchs, and Gentiles enlarge the church’s understanding of who belongs to the community of the Realm. The lectionary’s sequence can help congregations recognize that expansion, particularly when passages are read in relation to one another rather than as disconnected appointments in an annual cycle.

The calendar therefore serves the church best when it makes the trajectory of witness audible without turning familiarity into a refuge from change. The assigned readings provide a recurring structure for following Acts, while the book’s challenge is to let that structure point beyond itself: toward new forms of worship, unfamiliar neighbors, and a wider community.