ABOUT - Lighting Beacons Liturgy

Copyright
Published 2015 by Dot Woods, Josh Walker, Tim Watson

Copyright of liturgies
© Dot Woods, Josh Walker, Tim Watson

Cover design: Tim Watson

The content is licensed under a creative commons attribution – non-commercial – sharealike 2.0 license. In practice this means the authors grant permission for these liturgies to be used and remixed creatively and with imagination for non-commercial purposes. Please attribute the work to the authors.

For any other use please contact the authors via www.twitter.com/BeatLiturgist or revtimwatson@hotmail.com

for fellow pilgrims on the journey of faith

Introduction
For many hundreds of years daily rhythms of prayer have helped shape Christian communities. Monastic daily prayers (daily offices) have been said and sung across the world with these regular times of prayer and scripture reading rooting communities in the life of faith.
To this day, the use of daily prayer liturgies is foundational across many Christian denominations, while other groups of Christians are beginning to see the benefit of such forms of prayer. Daily liturgical prayer is especially finding a new resonance amongst emerging churches and communities self-identifying as new monastic.

Lighting Beacons: a liturgy for life has been written to help people engage with prayer on a daily basis. The rhythm of prayer has been written to be accessible and challenging, yet not overbearing. There are many different books of daily prayer liturgies and the authors of Lighting Beacons delight in the variety available. With this in mind, we have written these liturgies with a number of hopes:

that Lighting Beacons will help those new to liturgical daily prayer to take their first steps into this type of praying
that Lighting Beacons will enrich the diet of those who are used to daily prayer and like to make use of different resources from time to time
that Lighting Beacons might be something of a “refresher” for those for whom daily prayer has become too much of a burden
that Lighting Beacons might help churches and communities to form a rhythm of prayer
that Lighting Beacons would be adapted and remixed, altered and re-written to help specific communities in specific times and in specific places
that Lighting Beacons would be used by individuals and communities as a single volume book of liturgies whereby every week the community or individual starts at the beginning of the book on Monday morning and prays their way through the book until Sunday night, ready to go back to the beginning and start again. There is no need for numerous ribbons or volumes. One book and one bookmark can suffice

Each day of Lighting Beacons contains four services of prayer:

Morning Prayer: written to be used at the beginning of the day, on the train, at breakfast or as a community before the working day starts
Mid-Day Prayer: written to be used in the lunch or coffee break. This liturgy is written to take less time than the others and can be used flexibly
Evening Prayer: written to be used at the end of the ‘working day’ (for many) in a community, or for example on the train home
Night Prayer: written to be used as a last act during the day. Individuals might use these prayers before turning out the bedroom light, while a church or community might hold a candle-lit, quiet and reflective nightly service

It is important to note that this is merely the first volume of Lighting Beacons. The hope is that at some time this volume will be replaced with a volume that includes seasonal variations. This volume is most definitely a work in progress and the authors have specifically decided to publish the volume with Creative Commons Licensing. This is to enable and encourage creative expression in adapting the liturgies and the non-commercial reproduction of the work so that they can most effectively be used by churches and individuals in a format that suits the context.
Physical copies of Lighting Beacons are available online at cost price from www.lulu.com
An online version of Lighting Beacons can also be found at www.lighting-beacons-liturgy.com

To find out more about where to source Lighting Beacons, and for news on updates to the liturgy, please visit www.lighting-beacons-liturgy.com
Some guidance notes for using the liturgies can be found at the end of the book on page 159.
We hope and pray that these prayers might help you in your journey with Christ, as disciples in his Way.

Dot Woods, Josh Walker, Tim Watson

Notes On The Liturgies

Lighting Beacons has been written to be used by individuals and also by small groups, communities and churches. There are repeating elements that can be found in most of the services of prayer. Three out of four of the services contain confessions that include a response that addresses a group of people “We turn to Christ” as well as individuals, “I turn to Christ”. This has been deliberately done to remind the person praying that whether praying alone or as part of a larger group, we come to Christ as individuals, but also as parts of his body, the Church
If the liturgies are being used in a community, a service leader will say the majority of the words, while the rest of the group will respond with any words written in bold
Each liturgy includes the Lord’s Prayer, as a unifying call to remind the person praying that they are united with the wider church and with Christ as they pray
Each liturgy has been written to follow a repeating pattern, so that for example, each evening prayer is similar, with some differences each day, this is to allow the person praying to relax into the rhythm of prayer, that it might become familiar and in doing so, more helpful
While Lighting Beacons suggests what type of Biblical readings might happen in each service, it does not provide a scheme of readings (a lectionary), as our hope is that the rhythm of prayer finds use in churches that follow different patterns of Bible reading. The authors are also aware that individuals may be following their own pattern of Bible reading. The authors also hope that as individuals use the liturgies, they are enabled and encouraged to read from different parts of the Bible each day - to form a pattern of daily reading that fits
Each service of prayer has been written to be light enough to be flexible so that with Bible readings it might take between 5 and 20 minutes - with flexibility given to the individual or community to work out how much of the Bible is read and how the intercessions are organized
Everyday ends with Night Prayer, which includes periods of reflection on the day that has just passed. This type of reflection is often called an Examen and can be a helpful way to pause at the end of each day to recognise God’s workings in the world

Authors:
Dot Woods - Mid-day Prayer
Josh Walker - Evening Prayer
Tim Watson - Morning Prayer & Night Prayer