Priming the Lectionary isn’t just more material – it’s a shift in how we speak about God: understandable, rooted in real life, sensitive to different experiences, and shaped by justice as the main arc of the biblical story.
There are plenty of worship resources that offer prayers, calls to worship, liturgies, blessings, and responsive pieces. Some are beautiful. Some are familiar. Some are exactly what you need when you’re tired, stretched, or leading at short notice.
But over the last few years I’ve found myself rethinking something more basic than “Do we have enough material?” I’ve been rethinking the words themselves – the language we place on people’s lips, the images we repeat, and the picture of God that quietly forms in a community over time.
That’s the heart behind Priming the Lectionary. Yes, it contains a generous range of worship material, but it isn’t a resource I wrote just to add more prayers to the pile. It’s an attempt to model a different way of speaking about God – rooted in reality, understandable, attentive to justice, and spacious enough for people who have often felt church language was never meant for them.
I also think we need to be honest about something many of us are feeling. Much of our worship – even when it is thoughtful and sincere – isn’t connecting easily with people outside church. Not because people are “not spiritual”, or uninterested in God, but because the vocabulary can feel like a closed circle. If we want worship to be a place where people can meet the living God, we need words that are understandable, truthful, and rooted in the realities people are already living. We need language that opens doors, rather than quietly signalling, “This isn’t for you.”
Worship language doesn’t just say things – it does things
We don’t simply use words in worship. We’re formed by them.
The phrases we repeat week by week shape what we imagine God to be like, whose lives we consider “normal”, who we assume belongs, and what we think faith is for. When worship language is careless, it can do harm without intending to. When it’s narrow, it can leave people squeezed into someone else’s story. When it assumes everyone understands church vocabulary, it can make newcomers – and plenty of long-timers – feel like they’re always one step behind.
And when language floats above everyday life, worship can become a place where we speak beautifully while people are carrying grief, anxiety, debt, exclusion, burnout, and complicated joy.
So Priming the Lectionary treats worship language seriously – not as performance, but as formation.
Rooted imagery, not floating phrases
One of the biggest aims is to ground imagery in real life.
A lot of worship writing leans on abstract phrases that sound “churchy”, but don’t land anywhere. They may be sincere, but they can be hard to hold on to – and hard to translate into ordinary living.
In Priming the Lectionary, imagery is intentionally rooted in the places people actually inhabit: tables and thresholds, workplaces and waiting rooms, school gates and hospital corridors, crowded buses and quiet kitchens, belonging and loneliness, protest and tenderness, exhaustion and hope. Not to be clever, but because the Gospel refuses to stay “up there”. God meets us in the mess and beauty of everyday life.
That’s also why the language aims to avoid religious denseness. Where worship sometimes reaches for “faith words” that people never use anywhere else, this resource tries to translate without losing depth. It’s not about watering things down. It’s about making meaning available.
Making difficult concepts speakable
There are parts of the Christian story that are hard to name well: sin, salvation, repentance, judgement, holiness, covenant, atonement, the reign of God. If we simply repeat inherited phrases, we can end up either confusing people or implying things we don’t actually believe – about power, punishment, worthiness, or who God is for.
Priming the Lectionary leans into the hard concepts, but tries to give them language that people can actually pray – and that communities can use for faith talk with those exploring from the edges.
Often that means choosing words that are more concrete:
- naming harm and repair rather than vague guilt
- speaking of liberation, healing, and justice rather than individualised “self-improvement”
- praying about systems and real pressures, not just private feelings
- refusing language that romanticises suffering or treats pain as spiritually useful
The goal isn’t to be clever. It’s to be truthful – and to help communities find words that don’t ask people to leave their lives at the door.
A hospital chaplain said to me recently how delighted she was with the first volume, and how much she appreciated the way the language is used throughout. She spoke about how helpful it is to have prayers and reflections that don’t assume people already “speak church” – words that can hold real experience, and connect naturally with people who are not part of a congregation. That meant a lot, because it’s exactly the kind of setting where language has to be honest, gentle, and grounded, and where you quickly learn whether your words can actually be carried.
Sensitive to justice, because God is attentive to the world
If worship never names injustice, it quietly teaches that God isn’t concerned.
This resource tries to keep worship honest about the world – not by turning every service into a lecture, but by refusing the idea that faith sits safely apart from how power works. The prayers and reflections pay attention to the realities shaping people’s lives: poverty and food insecurity, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, disability exclusion, violence, borders and migration, climate breakdown, workplace exploitation – and the ways churches themselves can wound.
Justice isn’t an optional “theme” added on top. It’s part of what it means to speak of God with integrity.
That’s also why the language consistently aims to be inclusive – not as box-ticking, but as a way of honouring the dignity of real people. If our worship words repeatedly erase someone, misname them, or assume they don’t exist, we are teaching the congregation who counts as “normal” and who is treated as an afterthought.
I’ve also tried to be intentional about the imagery we use for God. So often, the default language of worship has imagined God as male – Father, Lord, King – so consistently that it can start to feel as though maleness is closer to holiness, authority, or truth.
Many people have been harmed by that assumption, especially where male power has been misused in churches, families, or institutions. Using consistently inclusive language isn’t about being fashionable or “correct” – it’s about being faithful to the wideness of God, and honest about the Bible’s own richness.
Scripture itself reaches for many images: creator and liberator, breath and fire, wisdom and shelter, a parent who gathers and nurtures, a friend who walks alongside, a presence that cannot be contained.
When we loosen our grip on exclusively male imagery, we make room for more people to meet God without having to translate or brace themselves – and we remind ourselves that God is not made in our image, but always larger than the pictures we reach for.
Not formulaic: modelling variety, imagination, and flexibility
Another thing I’ve wanted to resist is the sense that worship has to sound a certain way.
Church language can become predictable: the same openings, the same cadences, the same stock phrases. Over time, it stops waking people up – even when the theology is sound.
So Priming the Lectionary offers variety, not just in content but in voice and shape: short prayers and longer ones; direct address and reflective language; imaginative prompts; guided meditation; performance pieces; creative response ideas; questions for conversation; digital suggestions that translate beyond church walls. Everything is designed to be flexible – easy to adapt, rearrange, or use in parts – whether you’re leading a congregation, holding a small group, or shaping something in a chaplaincy setting.
A resource that teaches a way of speaking
So yes – it contains prayers and liturgy. But its deeper purpose is to model a way of speaking:
- language that is grounded, not abstract
- imagery that is embodied, not airy
- words that are accessible without being shallow
- theology that is justice-seeking, not neutral
- worship that makes room for those on the edges, not just those at the centre
I hope it helps leaders who are tired, and communities who want to go deeper. But even more, I hope it gives people words they can actually carry – and helps shape a new way of speaking as communities who follow Jesus.
Because the words we give people in worship become the words they use to interpret their lives.
And that matters.