WHAT WERE THEY THINKING????

Okay, there has been alot of teeth-gnashing, garment-tearing, mudslinging and other cries of anguish in the fallout of GC06; especially around resolution B033. But very little has been/is being said about other resolutions that came out of Convention.

So let me be one of the first, if not the first, to shift the focus if only for a moment.

Let me focus your attention to Resolution A077: Revised Common Lectionary. This resolution states:

Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That this 75th General Convention direct that the Revised Common Lectionary shall be the Lectionary of this Church, amending the Lectionary on pp. 889-921 of The Book of Common Prayer, effective the First Sunday of Advent, 2007; with the provision for continued use of the previous Lectionary for purposes of orderly transition, with the permission of the Ecclesiastical Authority, until the First Sunday of Advent 2010.

The Explanation is as follows:

This Lectionary, produced by the Consultation on Common Texts, composed of a wide number of church bodies, is a revision of the Common Lectionary, which was authorized for trial use by the 67th and 68th General Conventions. This revision reflects the concerns about the Common Lectionary communicated to the Consultation on Common Texts through the Standing Liturgical Commission as a result of trial use. It also reflects issues addressed by Resolution A088 of the 70th General Convention directing the Standing Liturgical Commission to study revision of the Sunday lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer. The Lectionary was again authorized for trial use by the 71st, 72nd, 74th Conventions.
The Revised Common Lectionary is becoming the common lectionary among Christian denominations. Positive responses from congregations who have used the lectionary and the growing number of denominations and provinces of the Anglican Communion using the lectionary lead the commission to recommend this table of readings as the lectionary for the Book of Common Prayer.

On the surface, this is a good thing. I heard about this and thought, Cool, now we will be using the same lectionary as most other denominations. This could be a good thing when it comes to the Interim Eucharistic Sharing. But then I heard that the resolution to revise the BCP failed. And that got me thinking.

We are going to use the RCL exclusively come Advent 2007, unless you get your bishop's permission to use it through 2010. We aren't going to revise the BCP, at least not yet. What this means is that my BCP, come Advent 2007, will be out of date/obsolete. It won't be totally obsolete, obviously, but I will no longer be able to look up Sundays readings in my BCP, nor will I be able to tell my lectors, "You can see what we're reading on Sunday by looking at page 908 in the BCP."

Furthermore, I can't find anywhere where the RCL has a daily lection. Everything I've been able to find for daily readings uses the BCP lectionary. Maybe I'm just not finding it, but this is also problematic.

Additionally, this means that we will have to purchase new lectionary books to be read from on Sundays, and some churches will also have to purchase new Gospel books. We'll probably have to purchase new smaller lection books that we have around here that are handy to know what the readings are, as well as the fact that I use that particular book during my nursing home service.

So we aren't going to revise the BCP, but we are using a new lectionary. Will the church authorize the printing of new BCP's with the RCL on beginning on page 889 in place of the BCP lectionary? Is there a daily RCL lectionary that can be used? Will that be included in the BCP come 2007? Or will we remain with the current BCP, unchanged, and be forced to carry around an RCL lectionary with us?

If you are thinking of buying a new BCP, for yourself or for an ordination gift, I would suggest holding off on that idea until those questions are answered.

What were they thinking???