A guide to the seasons, festivals, and rhythms of the Christian year
Keeping time with Christ means more than just remembering when Lent begins or keeping Christmas from overtaking Advent. Christian time is about ordering our days, weeks, years, and lives around the great mystery of faith: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”
Time Made Holy provides an accessible overview of the major festivals and seasons of the Christian year, beginning with and grounded by the theological basis for letting faith order our time. Author, minister, and church musician David Gambrell engages with each segment of holy time, from daily rhythms to Sunday worship, holy days, and liturgical seasons, providing biblical, theological, and historical background on these various observances.
Chapters on each of the seasons—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany and the time after, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and the time after—address how the lectionary ties Scripture together with these seasons and include ideas and inspiration for celebrating the Christian year in congregational worship and personal practice (including an array of ecumenical and multicultural traditions).
As a refresher for longtime clergy or a primer for new leaders and curious laypeople, Time Made Holy both offers the big picture of Christian time and covers the specific questions that can make even lifelong churchgoers scratch their heads:
- Why is the date for Easter different every year?
- What’s with the one pink Advent candle?
- Why does the transfiguration get its own Sunday?
Sidebars answer common questions and highlight relevant excerpts from classic hymns and other ancient texts. An appendix includes the citations for the Revised Common Lectionary with brief notes explaining the distribution of readings through each season.