Pierre Pidoux's edited volume,
Le psautier huguenot du XVIe siècle: Mélodies et documents, contains a fascinating lectionary for singing through the entire Psalter in the course of 25 weeks, or approximately half a year. This was used in Geneva during the 16th century. I am unaware of any Reformed denomination, at least in North America, prescribing such a pattern for its congregations. Note that it presupposes two sunday worship services and a wednesday "day of prayers." When I was a child, our
church congregation had a midweek prayer meeting. This chart makes it clear that such a gathering has historical precedent. The reference to the second ringing of the bell may arouse curiosity nowadays given the lack of bells in most contemporary church buildings. Click on the image below to bring it up in a larger and more legible format.
My question is whether it would be in order to revive the use of this or a similar lectionary to ensure that the entire Psalter will be covered on a regular basis in the church's liturgy. It is worth at least serious consideration.
Crossposted at First Things: Evangel
2 comments:
FPCR -Faith Presbyterian Church Reformed of Mesquite, TX (formerly named 'First Presbyterian Church Rowlett, TX) uses a Psalter (called the "Comprehensive Psalter") with 312 Psalm settings.
It is essentially the Scottish 1650.
Their program is one song per day Monday through Saturday (6 total), then on Sunday repeat the first three in morning worship, and the last three in the evening service.
In a year, the members have sung through the entire Psalter twice. Once in Public Worship, and once in Family or private worship.
Highly recommended.
The BCP has, doesn’t it, a monthly lectionary of the Psalter? But my question is, how should the Psalter lectionary be related to the other lectionaries, if at all?
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