Welcome to Liturgical Threads!
Why I'm doing this and what to expect
Thank you for subscribing to Liturgical Threads! I’m really excited about this project, and I’m very grateful for all your early support as I get this thing off the ground over the next few weeks. Liturgical Threads brings together a few different passions of mine - writing, theology, and liturgy – in a way that gives me a creative outlet and devotional practice, and hopefully benefits others. I see the work being done here as being useful to folks working in churches, those doing youth ministry of all types, and even those looking to enrich or deepen their home prayer and devotional practices. I also hope that, via Substack’s chat and Notes features, we can build a community that shares the work you all are doing, and how you are engaging faith in all areas of life.
The goal is to have the first liturgical materials go up the first week of February; these will be materials for Lent, which means the rhythm here will be to post items about a month before you would need them in a church or devotional setting. Before I launch that, however, you can expect a few orienting posts from me, on some topics I want to cover before then. Those include this one, which will detail below what you can come to expect from Liturgical Threads. I will also write posts about my choice of Bible translations to use, an essay on inclusive language in Scripture and worship, and one that lays out my own hermeneutical lens and priorities, so that you can know where I’m coming from in presenting materials and interpretations.
Today though, I want to run through a few preliminary things about Liturgical Threads. I’ll get into why I started this project; we’ll go over the full suite of what you can expect, and when to expect it; I’ll explain the benefits of a paid membership versus a free one; and I’ll project some hopes and goals for the future of LT.
Why I started Liturgical Threads
In short, because putting together worship materials is something I’m good at, and get a lot of enjoyment out of. Liturgical Threads is an opportunity to bring together something I’ve gotten good at in my working life, and some of the theological work I love. Over the last decades, I’ve worked in a variety of church settings. More relevant to this project was my time as Worship Coordinator at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, one of the largest and most ecclesiastically diverse Unitarian Universalist congregations in America. In my role there, I assisted our team of ministers and our Director of Worship put together three very different worship services every week. I then did the same job at Prairie Circle UU, in northern Illinois, which was a smaller congregation but a role that gave me a bit more freedom to craft worship experiences at a church without appointed clergy. Finally, over the last 18 months, I’ve been working as the Coordinator of Youth and Family Ministries at Fellowship Congregational UCC here in Tulsa, where I lead our youth worship every Sunday morning, as well as helping put together the full breadth of Christian education programs for our congregation. In the midst of all this work in church settings, I also attended Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary, getting my Masters in Theology and Ethics.
I love writing in general, and especially about theology, and even more especially, about Scripture. I also love putting together worship resources, and I’ve got a lot of experience doing it. Hence, Liturgical Threads came to be.
What to Expect from Liturgical Threads
The easy answer here is that you can expect to receive, every week, a variety of worship resources based on the Revised Common Lectionary. That’s the headline. Here’s what I envision this looking like (I say envision, because once I’m in the work of this, it may end up looking slightly different in practice.)
Every week, subscribers will receive four emails:
· One email will contain Scripture notes for all four Lectionary verses for the week (Old Testament, Psalms, New Testament, and Gospel.) These notes will unpack each selection, theologically, historically, and exegetically. This is the portion of this project where my academic theological training will come most into play. While these will be written accessibly, this won’t be devotional writing; the goal is to impart information and insights into the Bible.
· The next email will contain sermon stems for each verse, small bites to hopefully inspire reflection or full blown sermon writing, for those who need it. I will also include one “mini-sermon”, which will touch on at least one of the Bible verses for the week, and conceivably up to all four. (I love when I can pull the threads from four verses like that and make them into something coherent.)
· The third email will contain worship resources tied to that week’s Scripture, including a prayer, a call to worship, a Benediction, and potentially more (Words of Institution, Confessional.) Some of what I include here will be things I write, but I also hope to highlight and include materials from some of my favorite resources and prayer books, including prayers, devotionals, art, and other materials. I hope these materials will be useful to folks leading worship, whether for adults or for youth, and also for those looking for inspiration in their personal prayer life.
Now, here is the catch on these materials: I want them to be useful for folks designing and leading worship in church settings. That means that sending out Lectionary materials the week they are on the schedule isn’t really feasible, as a lot of folks doing ministry are planning ahead on worship (or at least aspiring to; I certainly don’t always work as far ahead as I’d like to.) So, this means that the emails you receive in your inbox any given week will be designed for the Lectionary selections approximately a month from then. So, for example, if Liturgical Threads were up and running this week, and you received three emails, on Monday January 20th, Wednesday January 22nd, and Friday January 24th, those emails would contain materials for the Lectionary verses prepared for Sunday February 16th.
Which gets the fourth email I promised above: email four will hit your inbox on Saturdays, and will be a compendium collection of the Lectionary materials for the calendar week you are currently living in. So, to take our example from the previous paragraph, after you’ve received those three emails on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with materials prepared for February 16th, on Saturday you will receive one email with all the materials I wrote a month ago, for Sunday January 19th. That way, you don’t need to go digging back into my archives, or your email inbox, looking for things sent to you a whole month ago; they will just show up again.
Those emailed materials are the largest bulk of what I have to offer, and I hope, on their own, they are enough of an incentive to subscribe, whether for a free membership, or a paid one (more on that difference below.) But, they aren’t all! I also hope to be making good use of Substack’s chat feature; through this part of Liturgical Threads, I hope we can cultivate a vibrant community of those who subscribe to and use these materials, including sharing how we have put them to use, problem solving worship issues with one another, and otherwise sharing our worship and prayer experiences with a community of like-minded folks.
What is the difference between a free and paid membership?
There are two main subscription choices that are standard to the Substack experience. First is the paid tier, which I currently have set at $5 a month, $50 a year, or $100 a year for those who want to provide extra support and encouragement support me as a Premier member. No matter what paid type you choose, you will receive everything I detailed above: four weekly emails, with a wide breadth of worship materials, access to the community features, and hopefully, future features that come with growth (more on that below.) Paid is, obviously, what I hope most folks sign up for. Not only will it give me support in dedicating time to this, but you’ll get the full range of materials on offer here.
If you decide to go with a free membership, you don’t go home empty handed, but you do get a reduced suite of materials. You’ll get three emails per week, along the lines explained above but in reduced form, and not fourth compilation email. In the three emails you do receive, you’ll get :
· Scripture notes for what I consider the “main” passage that week.
· My mini-sermon
· A limited portion of the worship materials I’ve written and curated.
I don’t want this to be punitive or anything; but, I do want to ensure that those who commit a small portion of their money to my work get their money’s worth, and that means keeping the majority of those materials behind the paywall indefinitely.
Now, none of this is set in stone. I want to be responsive to the membership trends I see, and if I need to adjust the free tier in a more generous direction – or the opposite! – I certainly reserve the right to do so. But, again, while I do this whole thing as a labor of love, your financial support would be huge for me and my family.
Finally, if you really want access to these materials, but financial support is just wholly out of the question, please reach out to me directly, and let me know. I have the ability to comp memberships on a limited basis, and in cases of real need, I’m happy to do so. I ask that you don’t abuse this; this will be done on trust and your integrity. But, money shouldn’t get in the way where it doesn’t need to, and the purpose of paid memberships isn’t to make me rich; its simply to make this work that I do in my own free time a little more sustainable.
What are my future hopes and dreams for Liturgical Threads?
I’ve never embarked upon an entrepreneurial experience like this before. I really have no idea what to expect, whether this is something that will take off, or will quickly fizzle and burn out. I’m open to a full range of outcomes in that sense. But, I do foster some hope that this will catch one, with a small and passionate few who are into this kind of thing. And, if it does, there are a few things I hope could grow out of it one day:
· Guest writers and contributors: I am blessed enough to be acquainted with, and to even call friend, a whole host of amazing theological thinkers and worship geniuses. If Liturgical Threads can cultivate a solid and steady membership, I hope to be able to tap this network, and bring in some different voices and lenses.
· Youth focused materials: In my day job, the biggest portion of my work is doing youth ministry. I know that, especially for those in more progressive and inclusive churches, finding worship materials that are theologically sound, inclusive, and justice-oriented isn’t always easy. Not to say they don’t exist; they certainly do. There are some wonderful progressive youth worship resources out there, including Illustrated Ministry, A Sanctified Art, and SparkHouse. But, I am strongly of the opinion that, rather than more voices in this space crowding out and silencing others, that having a larger variety of options for worship leaders and youth ministers to draw from strengthens the worship young people are experiencing. So, to that end, if this grows and the demand presents itself, I’d love to offer some youth-specific materials.
· More community building and interaction: I am a part of several liturgical and lectionary-focused communities, on social media and IRL, and I find each of them useful, encouraging, and just all around good spaces to be a part of. I’d love to grow Liturgical Threads into that, whether that’s here on Substack, on other social media spaces, or even via regular online or even in person gatherings. The sky is really the limit on what it could become!
I hope what you have read here is enough to convince you to subscribe. I’m excited about the potential of this project, and regardless of readership or income, I look forward to the work I’m planning here, simply because it is work I love to do.
Over the coming days, as we get closer to rolling out the first materials in February, I have a couple of other introductory posts planned. In one, I’d like to reflect on the use of inclusive and non-gendered language when describing God, as well as thinking about the presence of violence in Scripture and the royal imagery around Jesus found in many of the Epistles. I think doing this thinking early on will help shed some light on what to expect, and be part of the decision for some folks on whether this is something they want to spend money on. Then, I will also have an essay up that presents my hermeneutical lens, which is a fancy academic way of saying it will explain where I’m coming from and what I prioritize and find important in Scripture.
Thank you, again, for giving Liturgical Threads a try. I’m really excited to see what it can become.
Grace and peace,
Justin