Common Worship - Series

Series

The main Common Worship book is called Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England. It was published in 2000 alongside Common Worship: President's Edition. These volumes contain the material for Sunday services but, unlike the ASB, contain no readings.

The third book to be published (also in 2000), Common Worship: Pastoral Services, provides for the first time a range of healing services as well as revised provision for weddings and funerals. The former has a completely rewritten preface that no longer describes the threefold purposes of marriage and is much more secular in tone. It includes, for the first time, a congregational response to the declarations by the couple and a long nuptial blessing. The funeral provisions includes material for before and after the service, all completely rewritten. The funeral now includes an optional penitential section, no longer has a required psalm and includes set intercessions. It also allows for a eulogy by one of the mourners, a new departure, at the beginning of the service.

In 2005 the fourth book, Common Worship: Daily Prayer, was published. The form and style of daily morning and evening prayer no longer shows the influence of the BCP but the work of the English Franciscan community and its book Celebrating Common Prayer. The offices are not dissimilar to those of the Roman Catholic Church. Penitence becomes optional, as does the Creed; the Te Deum disappears almost completely, and a Gospel canticle—the Benedictus in the morning and the Magnificat in the evening—follows the reading(s); there is a wide range of intercessions; collects are provided for lesser festivals (unlike in the main book); and there is a psalter. Both the book and the new daily lectionary were trialled in parishes before final publication.

In 2006, three more volumes, Common Worship: Christian Initiation, Common Worship: Ordination Services and Common Worship: Times and Seasons, were published. In the first, there is there is provision for Baptism, Confirmation and related rites (including Reconciliation). In the second, there are rites for the ordination of deacons, priests and bishops. In the third, there is provision for all the seasons of the church's year, including sections on the Agricultural Year and Embertide.

The final book, Common Worship: Festivals, was published in 2008 and provides propers for all the Festivals and Lesser Festivals of the Church of England's calendar.

Several other books, although not part of the principal series, are part of the Common Worship series. Some reproduce parts of Common Worship in a different or more concise form, such as Holy Communion Order One, Additional Collects, Funeral, Marriage, Rites on the Way, Ministry to the Sick, The Reconciliation of a Penitent Form One, Holy Week and Easter (includes readings), and Time to Pray (containing Prayer During the Day and Night Prayer). Those that contain material not found in the rest of Common Worship series include books of readings (e.g. the Daily Eucharistic Lectionary), the annual lectionary (with references only), and Proclaiming the Passion: The Passion Narratives in Dramatized Form. Although not part of Common Worship, New Patterns for Worship is part of the same liturgical phase in the Church of England.