Rowland Croucher wrote:

Best Prayer Book? Either the New Zealand or Australian Anglican Prayer Books. They both have morning and evening prayers for each day, and I think are brilliant!

Nathan responded:

Thanks for a great list, Rowland. Probably the only point where I’d disagree with you is on the best prayer book. The NZPB is perhaps the most interesting in terms of being a major denominational prayer book that took a lot of risks in diverging from traditional language, and it certainly contains some very beautiful stuff, but I wouldn’t rank it or the Aussie one as the best. For Baptist pastors who want to purchase just one prayer book, I don’t think you can go past the USA Presbyterian “Book of Common Worship”. Make sure you get the full version, not the trimmed down pew version. It is some 1100 pages with really good resources for everything. It represents the fruits of the best of 20th century liturgical scholarship, but because it was not being prepared for a strictly prayer book church, it was freer to follow the implications of the scholarship all the way instead of having to try to make them match an existing tradition. One of its really good features for those of us in free church traditions is that every service in the book has a one page outline at the start, which makes it easier to visualise the shape of what follows, or easier to use the outline to guide an extempore service.

Since Worship Studies is my main discipline, I’ll add another couple of titles, because I notice your list didn’t have much on worship.

Best easy to read history of Christian Worship practices: James White, “A Brief History of Christian Worship”

Best non-academic introduction to understanding the dynamics, elements, and some history of worship, (written from an evangelical free church perspective): Keith Drury, “The Wonder of Worship: Why we worship the way we do”

Best guide to understanding the different worship styles around: Paul Basden (ed) “Exploring the Worship Spectrum” This new book is excellent. 6 authors present six major styles of worship (formal-liturgical, traditional hymn-based, contemporary music-drivencharismatic, blended or ancient-future, and Emerging church) and each of the other five offer a couple of pages response to each chapter. Great stuff for getting your head around the styles and their strengths and weaknesses.

Best easy to read academic Introduction: Susan White, “Groundwork for Christian Worship”

Best heavy duty academic introduction to liturgical theology: Gordon Lathrop, “Holy Things”

Best introduction to sacramental theology still Robert Jenson, “Visible Words”

Peace and hope,

Nathan

_____________________________________ Nathan Nettleton Pastor, South Yarra Community Baptist Church