We also observe the church calendar, in a fairly loose form. I do wish we’d follow it more closely, but then again I’m one of those weird Baptists who like to kneel and genuflect and stuff…

Our pastors generally preach though books of the Bible, not verse-by-verse necessarily. Right now we’re in the Leviticus portion of a year going through the Old Testament. They’ll also preach topically as occasion requires, but we have so many non-Sunday-morning teaching and discipleship opportunities that it’s hardly ever necessary.

That nicely summarizes the purpose of the liturgical calendar and the lectionary. All the basic themes of Christianity in an annual cycle. It’s a great discipline. As a preacher, I prefer to work with assigned texts rather than searching out the Scriptures for texts to prove my point.

Thanks much for this post – very, very insightful and yet another thought provoking post for me as my wife and
I are yet closer and closer to washing our hands of the SBC church we’re at and, quite possibly, the entire thing as it is now. As I’ve stated before, my wife was raised church of Christ and the church she was at when we met did have a liturgy, albeit simple, yet the service was very much structured as to how it flowed. They didn’t follow the christian calender (taboo there as it is in many baptist churches) and sermons were usually topical series as best I remember at the time and no emphasis on any aspect of the calender other than singing (unaccompanied) Joy To The World near or
on Christmas. You could pretty much count on the structure and flow of the service which always had communion in it to be consistant week to week. I know what I described is not liturgical in the sense that it’s spoken of in the post and comments but I find I did
like (enjoy) the more structured approach that they had and the fact that communion was always a part of that – of course there were the usual theological/doctrinal issues but I could deal with that just to have the other and I consider it a good experience for me. Can’t say the SBC has been that favorable/good for my wife though – another time on that one!

We are not planning on going back to CoC but a good Anglican (AMiA) or perhaps a non-denom that follows
the christian calender – something more structured
seems the direction and everytime I’m in that setting
there seems almost a confirmation that that’s were we need to be…. at least for awhile.

I was raised pretty much non-practicing, then got my head messed up by what was essentially an overgrown non-liturgical house church gone cultically-bad, then ended up being introduced to the liturgy through the indirect method of a fantasy novel. And liked what I saw in the RCC Roman-rite Mass. Bells and Smells, the rote prayers and responses instead of the total improv (which I am lousy at), and especially the structure of the liturgy and the liturgical year, the solid historical trace of 20 centuries of Christians.

Both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics use more than one liturgy. The most common Roman liturgy is the Latin Rite. However, the Mozarabic Liturgy is still celebrated in the Cathedral in Toledo, Spain. Venice has its own special liturgy. Some of the different Roman orders (Benedictines, etc.) have their own allowed variations.

The most common Orthodox liturgies are the St. John Chrysostom and the St. Basil. But, which liturgy you use at what particular time is not up to the individual decision of a priest. Having said that, both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics have “options” within their liturgies that do allow for some small variety. At bottom, however, all liturgies have the same backbone (outline). The argument is that this backbone, along with some details, is what we have received from the Fathers, through Scripture and Tradition.

I would join you in rejecting the whole thing as done in the RCC, but the basic calendar seems to have few negatives.