Common Worship Resources

Words - Printed

Common Worship services are published by Church House Publishing (website www.chpublishing.co.uk) in a wide variety of editions. They can be purchased through most bookshops, from on-line booksellers such as www.amazon.co.uk, or the Diocesan Resources Centre at Chelmsford (email: resources@chelmsford.anglican.org). If you purchase through the Diocesan Resources Centre you will be helping to support this useful facility and may be offered a discount.

The Common Worship main volume contains Sunday services, Holy Baptism, Collects and Post Communions, the lectionary and Psalter.
Standard Edition - 850 pages
Black hardback binding (ISBN 0 7151 2000 X).   £15.
Presentation Editions
Burgundy, red, or blue hardback (ISBNs 0 7151 (burgundy) 2010 7   (red) 2008 5   (blue) 2009 3)   £20.
Burgundy, red, or blue bonded leather, gilt edges, rounded corners   £40.
Black, white, or tan calfskin leather, gilt edges, rounded corners   £50.
Desk Editions - Larger size and typeface.
Red hardback (ISBN 0 7151 2017 4)   £40.
Red calfskin leather (ISBN 0 7151 2018 2)   £80.
President's Editions - A4 format, with musical settings for Eucharistic Prayers and Prefaces.
Red hardback (ISBN 0 7151 2002 6)   £85.
Red calfskin leather (ISBN 0 7151 2019 0)   £150.

Marriage, Funeral, Wholeness and Healing services and Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child are published in
Pastoral Services
Green hardback (ISBN 0 7151 2007 7).   £25.

Confirmation and the full text of Holy Baptism are published in
Common Worship: Initiation Services (ISBN 0 7151 3810 3) at £10.

Some services are also available in booklet form which may be more convenient and cheaper for some congregations. The booklets include:
Holy Communion Order One (ISBN 0 7151 2023 9)   £1-65
Morning and Evening Prayer on Sunday (ISBN 0 7151 2029 8)   £1-65
Marriage (ISBN 0 7151 2038 7)   £1-65
Funeral (ISBN 0 7151 2039 5)   £1-65

Common Worship Lectionary
For our Bible readings at Holy Communion we use the Common Worship Lectionary which has a three year cycle of readings. We recommend the version published by OUP (ISBN 0-19-145610-1) at £17-99 because it has the collects, readings and post communions printed conveniently together for each Sunday and major festivals.

Words - Electronic

One of the best resources is considered to be the software package Visual Liturgy which comes on CD-ROM. It contains the full Common Worship texts, Calendar and Lectionary until 2010.

Visual Liturgy 3.0 Common Worship (ISBN 0 7151 2041 7) costs £100 inclusive of VAT. If you already use Visual Liturgy you can buy the upgrade (ISBN 0 7151 2042 5) for £35 inclusive of VAT.

The Common Worship Text Disk (ISBN 0 7151 2043 3), at £20 inclusive of VAT, contains the full texts of all material from the Standard Edition and Pastoral Services in 'rtf' (Rich Text Format) text files for easy searching, copying and pasting.

Most Common Worship texts can also be downloaded free of charge from the Church of England's Common Worship website at www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship. Some of the downloads are 'rtf' text files which are relatively compact and can be read by most word processors on most platforms. The text can then pasted into orders of service as required. There will be some formatting to do but it saves a lot of keying in and the inevitable accompanying typographical errors.

One of the available downloads contains all the Common Worship rtf files in a single .zip file, rtffiles.zip (1.3Mb). (The current version includes the texts of the more recently published Daily Prayer.) To download find the option 'All the Common Worship rtf files as a single .zip file' at the bottom of the following page:
www.cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/resources/downloads/rtftexts1.html
When unzipped the rtf files are placed in a number of categorized folders (directories) on your hard drive and should provide most of what you need in the way of texts.

Music

The Psalter in Common Worship has no pointing, which is perhaps surprising as it encourages the use of a psalm in the Holy Communion service and makes extensive use of canticles and psalms in such services as Morning and Evening Prayer on Sunday.

The following publications are available from the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM):

Music for Common Worship I: Music For Sunday Services
A resource book containing direct and straightforward music for the whole worshipping community including:
+ settings of all the principal liturgical texts
+ Holy Communion (modern and traditional language)
+ Service of the Word, Morning, Evening and Night Prayer (modern and traditional language)
+ selected psalms and canticles
Retail price £15-95 (RSCM Affiliates £11-95). c400 pages. ISBN 0 85402 100 0

Music for Common Worship II: Music For The President
This volume offers a rich range of music for use by and with the President. Designed to compliment the President's Editions, it includes both new and traditional tones, which are suitable for even the most modest of singers. This supplement provides special music for the Eucharistic Prayers reflecting the diversity of styles in the Church.
Retail price £15-95 (RSCM Affiliates £11-95). c200 pages. ISBN 0 85402 101 9

Music for Common Worship III: A Basic Guide
A concise and straightforward handbook, which explores some general principles of music in Common Worship. It considers each service in turn and gives guidance on the use of musical resources including materials found in the new resource books and those already in use.
Retail price £7-95 (RSCM Affiliates £5-95). c80 pages. ISBN 0 85402 102 7

Special Price for Books I, II, & III
If ordered together, all three books are available at the
reduced price of £35 (RSCM Affiliates £25). ISBN 0 85402 103 5

Available from RSCM Music Direct
Telephone 01306 - 872811     email: musicdirect@rscm.com     Website: www.rscm.com

A complete Psalter pointed for use with Anglican chant is now available as a free download in pdf format (requires Acrobat Reader), from the RSCM website at www.rscm.com/psalter. Two printed editions - words only and with chants - are planned for publication.

The edition with chants will be for congregational singing, and chants are being chosen to reflect these needs. Those churches in which the choir sings the psalms on their own will already have their own chant anthologies, and will be able to use these with either the web site or printed versions.

It is worth bearing in mind meanwhile that any version of the Psalter is allowed for use within worship in the Church of England.

Most of this information has been reproduced from the April 2001 issue of the RSCM's Church Music Quarterly.

Web Links

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Page Guide for Holy Communion Order One and related material.

We prepared this quick reference for our own use which others may find handy.

General Notes on Order One are on pp. 158 and 159.
Further Notes are on pp. 330 - 334.

Rules for Regulating Authorized Forms of Service are on pp.525 - 534

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