A Resource Review:

“Call and Response: Litanies for Congregational Prayer” by Fran Pratt

From the Publisher:

A compilation of modern call and response litanies intended for congregational use. Whether your community is liturgical and looking for fresh language, or contemporary and looking to incorporate liturgical elements, this volume contains relevant, reflective prayers that call congregations deeper into the story of Divine Love. Written with attention to beauty, theological resonance, and justice-mindedness, these prayers probe the depths of what it means to live out faith in today’s context. People of faith from various traditions can find helpful language for integrating spirituality and contemporary life in this rich trove of communal prayers.

You can find out more about Fran Pratt and her resources here

This resource is definitely geared toward ministers and churches that have a liturgy.  Any minister or worship leader can benefit from having more litanies that cover so many subjects.  There are over 70 litanies covering various topics. Here are the subject areas of the litanies:

Litanies for Looking Inward

Litanies for Looking Outward

Litanies for Coping

Litanies for Communal Worship

Litanies for Injustice

Litanies for Advent

Litanies for Lent

These litanies were meant to be used in fellowship.  They were meant to be experienced together in a communal worship setting, but they can be used for personal devotion.  This is the strength of liturgical worship.  It forces us to be with one another, it forces us to experience God in community.  As ministers, we desire our parishioners experience a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and that we are formed into the Body of Christ.  Litanies help to shape the community’s prophetic imagination.

These litanies can also help rediscover the vocabulary and language of the Church.  There is a language crisis in our modern churches.  We no longer speak with the vocabulary of faith and in turn, we struggle to put our Christian vision of the Kingdom of God into words.

This resource can be purchased through Amazon here

(Remember you can support the Ministry Council by making us your designated charity through Amazon Smile)

I hope you’ll pray them aloud together. I believe that as creatures made in the image of God, we have some of God’s divine creative power: the power of Word made Flesh, of speaking hope and truth into earthly reality. So by speaking the words, we form them, and ourselves, into heaven on earth. And I hope you’ll get some of the benefits I’ve gotten from writing them,
which has been an ongoing Divine Communion and twin joys of receiving and creating.
~ Fran