Program Ready II: More Quick and Complete Programs for the Church Year

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Dorothy MacNeill’s fourth published collection of Christian worship
resources for laypeople focuses on a typical mainstream Protestant
church year from Advent to Easter, and includes such semi-official
Canadian church celebrations as Remembrance Day, yard sales, and golden
anniversaries. Each program comes complete with a call to worship,
suggested hymns, a scripture reading, a brief reflection, and a closing
prayer. The props required by the programs (old Christmas cards, red
balloons, recycled ribbon, tape, and candles) are readily available. The
prose is crystal clear, and the spiral binding makes the book easy for
worship leaders to handle.

The most moving program—the Lenten Tenebrae service, in which candles
are extinguished as scripture describing Christ’s final journey to the
cross is read aloud by different members of the congregation—is
unpretentious but visually dramatic.

That said, the programs may not be to everyone’s tastes. Christians
who demand a higher degree of scriptural analysis might find some of the
programs somewhat tepid and secular. The suggested Christmas service,
for example, uses six “rocking-chair stories” in which disadvantaged
parents describe their childrearing struggles. Even with Mary (the
mother of Jesus) finishing off the narratives, the traditional point of
Christmas—the birth of the Christ-child—seems to be lost in the
apparent need to make an obvious point about tough times in modern
society.

MacNeill’s first two collections were written primarily for use by
women’s church groups. Her third volume was aimed at men’s groups,
senior Sunday-school students, Bible study classes, and youth circles.
Program Ready II is an invaluable resource for laypeople who are
searching for new and interesting ways to explore their faith.