Colloquium: Associated Parishes for Liturgy and MIssion

Church Divinity School of the Pacific presents the
Annual Colloquium of Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission

 Lecture:
 “The Gospels and Liturgical Reform”
The  Rev. Dr. Gordon W. Lathrop

Text of lecture

Tucson Commons
CDSP, 2451 Ridge Road, Berkeley CA 

Dr. Lathrop also will be preaching at the Eucharist, 5:45 p.m., in All Saints Chapel at CDSP on Nov. 8, followed by a buffet dinner, $10 non-student fee.

To RSVP for the dinner after the Eucharist, e-mail aplm@cdsp.edu by Nov. 5.

The four Gospels of the New Testament, written in the late first and early second centuries, already evidence various concerns about the house churches and other communities in which they were first read. Along with the letters of Paul, these books can thus be seen as intentionally reforming documents with a clear sense of their own important role.

This lecture will explore some of the characteristics of those reforming concerns.  In doing so, the lecture will also ask about the role of the Gospels in our current Christian assemblies for worship, whether the reforms envisaged by the Gospels ought to continue to matter to us, and whether those reforms can be seen as re-invigorating the goals of an ecumenical movement for liturgical reform in the 21st century. 

This is a continuation of the his book published this year, The Four Gospels on Sunday, especially its final chapter, and two articles that appeared in Worship in May 2009 and January 2011.

Formal response: The Rev. Dr. L. William Countryman
CDSP Sherman E. Johnson Professor Emeritus in Biblical Studies

Gordon W. Lathrop is an internationally distinguished scholar of liturgy and is a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He has recently been Visiting Professor of Liturgical Studies in Yale Divinity School and is Professor of Liturgy Emeritus at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.

He is the author several books, including Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Fortress 1993), Holy People: A Liturgical Ecclesiology (Fortress 1999), Holy Ground: A Liturgical Cosmology (Fortress 2003), The Pastor: A Spirituality (Fortress 2006), and The Four Gospels on Sunday: The New Testament and the Reform of Christian Worship (Fortress 2012).  He was a participant in the preparation of Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006).  He has lectured widely, in several countries, and participated in the work of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and the Worship and Culture Study of the Lutheran World Federation, helping to draft, among other documents, the LWF Nairobi Statement and the WCC Ditchingham Statement.  He is an Editorial Consultant of the journal Worship.  In 1985 he was the President of the North American Academy of Liturgy and in 2006 he received that professional organization’s Berakah Award.   He is now the President of Societas Liturgica, the international society of scholars in liturgy, and will serve in that office until 2013.

The Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission is an association of people in the The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and sister churches who share a passion for liturgy that is well done, appropriate to the culture and context, and revelatory of God’s lively mission in the world.
For more information on Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission, http://www.associatedparishes.org