Blog

  • Weddings

    Weddings

    wedding

    Sample Templates

    Marriage (AAPB First Order)

    Marriage (AAPB Second Order)

     

     

    1.  Processional Music

    • Bridal March : Wagner
    • Trumpet Voluntary – The Prince of Denmark’s March : Jeremiah Clark
    • Trumpet Tune in D : Purcell
    • March in C : Purcell
    • Rigaudon : Campra
    • Air from ‘Water Music’ : Handel
    • Canon in D : Pachelbel

    2.   Recessional Music

    • Wedding March  :  Mendelssohn
    • Trumpet Voluntary : John Stanley
    • Trumpet Tune in D :  Purcell
    • Alla Danza from ‘Water Music’ : Handel
    • War March of the Priests : Mendelssohn
    • Choral Song : Wesley
    • Toccata from Symphony 5 :  Widor

    3.  Bible Readings

    • 1 John 4: 7-12
    • 1 Corinthians 13:1-8a
    • Song of Songs 2: 8-14
    • Genesis 2: 18-24
    • Ephesians 5: 22-33
    • Revelation 19: 6-9
  • Service Checklist

    When you create a new service, we suggest that you run it through the following checklist:

    § How is God presented in this service? As Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

    § What understanding of sin and forgiveness is set out in the service?

    § What understanding of the relationship between congregation members comes through?

    § Does this service reflect the gospel?

    § Does the sequence of service components help clarify and reinforce gospel truth or obscure and interrupt it?

  • QuickStart for Formal Services

    QuickStart for Formal Services

    QuickStart for Formal Services

    ServiceBuilder contains the full text of regular services from BCP, AAPB and Sunday Services.  It also contains liturgical resources from a variety of other sources, allowing you to integrate different confessions, creeds and prayers (for example) into existing forms of service.

     

    Resources for Occasional Services

     

    Baptisms Weddings Funerals Confirmations
    baptism wedding Cemetry Roses Confirmation

    Prayer Templates (Service Builder)

    Click here for a prayer template

  • Quickstart for Ministers

    Quickstart for Ministers

    Ministers have a special responsibility to ensure that our gatherings are ordered in accordance with the teaching of God’s word. A contemporary style of service gives us freedom to be creative, but we must exercise that freedom with thoughtfulness and theological reflection. Otherwise, our services may become nothing more than an unthinking reflection of the prevailing culture and whims of the world around us. This page contains resources to assist you in preparing services that glorify God and edify the church.

    Many ministers now share the task of preparing and leading services with a team of people. These teams need teaching, feedback and encouragement. Consider using this website to train and equip such people.

    Training your Service Leaders

    Nobody cares about better gatherings more than you do, and you have been equipped by your training for this ministry. So if you are going to delegate this to others, you will need to think carefully about how you will train, encourage and equip them for this task.  We have put together some suggestions to help you do this… see Train Service Leaders

    Using Service Builder

    ServiceBuilder is a tool that helps create God-honouring, meaningful and biblical gatherings. It allows you to arrange ‘resources’ (like confessions, creeds and prayers) into services that glorify God and edify the church. You can use predefined ‘templates’, or you can adapt the standard templates to create your own.

    Click here to start ServiceBuilder

    Click here for help to get started

    Click here for help to create your own templates

    Communion-lite and Baptism-lite

    Self-contained segments for the Lord’s Supper and Baptism which are designed to be incorporated within the framework of a non-liturgical service.

    Resources for Occasional Services

    Baptisms Weddings Funerals Confirmations
    baptism wedding Cemetry Roses Confirmation

    Seasonal Services

    Christmas

    Easter

     

  • QuickStart For Contemporary Services

    QuickStart For Contemporary Services

    Getting Contemporary Services Right!

    A contemporary style of service gives a tremendous freedom to what we do in church, but with that freedom comes a greater responsibility to ensure that what we do in church glorifies God and edifies his church.  While the service leader has a crucial role in shaping our gatherings, songs and music, prayer and the Bible reader are all critical.

    Advice for specific roles

    Service Leader Music Prayer Bible Reader
    manwithmicrophone guitarsepia praying hands bible

    Sample Outlines for Contemporary Churches

    Please read Practical Guidelines for the principles involved in the process of planning good services and consult Resources, specifically Services of the Word, for a range of prayers, praises and confessions of faith you can add to your service outline. Note also that there are Contemporary Service Templates in ServiceBuilder that allow you to collect and arrange resources on a variety of structures.

    Here we simply offer some sample outlines that you could copy or use as a guide for constructing your own order. Local practices such as children’s talks, notices and times of informal fellowship would need to be added where appropriate.

    1 Contemporary Order 1
    2 Contemporary Order 2
    3 Contemporary Order 3


  • Welcome to the Better Gatherings website!

    Welcome to the Better Gatherings website!

     

    Our Theology of Church Our theology in practice Resources and tools for service building

     

    This site is designed to equip service leaders to craft meetings that by their shape, their contents and their tone proclaim the gospel of Christ, build his body in the unity of the spirit and bring honour and glory to God. On this website we would like to help you reflect biblically and historically on just how good church can be, and give you the resources you need to put this vision into practice.

    You may be keen to go straight to the practical guidelines or resources sections, but take time to work through the biblical and historical sections, so that you are clear about God’s will for our gatherings and understand how Christians have sought to put biblical teaching into practice across the centuries.

    Download Common Prayer for Homes: Resources for Family Worship

    A new liturgical resource has been completed which provides flexible forms of household worship to serve the churches, by complementing the spiritual resources already being offered during this difficult period: Common Prayer for Homes: Resources for Family Worship.  We trust it will be of some assistance to the ministry already taking place in homes, and ultimately we hope that it provides some good benefit to the spiritual lives of Christ’s flock.

    The most recent edition can be downloaded with the below link:

    Click Here to Download Common Prayer for Homes: Resources for Family Worship

    There has been a new format produced, which can be printed using double-sided A3 paper to make a booklet which can be stapled together.  This new version can be downloaded with the below link:

    Click Here to Download Common Prayer for Homes: Resources for Family Worship – Printable.

    Click Here to Download Common Prayer for Homes: Resources for Family Worship – Printable (every second page rotated if printed in automatic duplex mode).

    The prayers in this liturgical resource can be copied and pasted using the below download:

    Click Here to Download the Main Component of Prayers in .docx format.

    Common Prayer in Homes

  • Help for Personal Templates

    This page explains how to create your own Templates in ServiceBuilder. For instructions on how to use the pre-defined templates in ServiceBuilder, click here.

    Before you can begin to create a Personal Template, you need to be be logged in to the system.  If you haven’t already applied for a user account at BetterGatherings, you need to use the login menu on the lower left hand side of this screen, or click on this link.

    To create a new Personal Template, you first open an existing template and then save it.  Start ServiceBuilder, and choose an existing template that is closest in format to what you wish to create.  Click “Next” to proceed to step 2 in the process.  At the top of this screen is a button that says “Create Personal Template”.  Click this button now.

    The selected template will now display in edit mode.  You must suppy a name for the new template that you are creating.  Then make any neccessary changes to the template.  Once you have finsished editing the template, click on the button that says “Save and Return to Template”.  See below for futher information about codes you can use in a template

    To open and edit an existing template

    When you are logged in, all templates saved under your user name will be displayed in the Personal Templates dropdown.  Select a template and press next to proceed to step 2.  Use the “edit template” button at the top of this page to edit an existing saved template.

    To delete a personal template

    Select a previously saved template from the Personal Templates list, and click the delete button.

    Template Format Codes

    A simple template might look like this

    Service Name

    {Song}

    {Creed Default=Apostle’s Creed}

    Bible: [Textarea]

    Special Elements in the template are enclosed within braces {}.  There are two types of elements – Variables and Resources.

    Variables List (with sample data)
    {CalendarDate} = “22/08/2010”
    {CalendarDateLong} = “22 August 2010”
    {SundayNameAABP} = “Ordinary Sunday 21”
    {SundayNameBCP} = “Trinity 12”
    {SeasonalName} = “”
    {Colour} = “Green”
    {ServiceDate} = “26/08/2010”
    {ServiceDateLong} = “26 August 2010”
    {TemplateName} = “Communion (First Order)”
    {UserName} = “mstead”

     

    Resources List

    {Greetings}
    {Sentence}
    {Seasonal Sentences}
    {Greetings Introductions}

    {Exhortation}
    {Confessions}
    {Assurance of Forgiveness}

    {Song}
    {Funeral Hymns}
    {Carol}

    {Commandments}

    {Collect}
    {Collect (AAPB 2)}
    {BCPCollect}

    {PreparingForGodsWord}
    {Epistle}
    {Gospel}

    {Creed}

    {Opening Prayers}
    {Expressions of Praise}
    {Intercessory Prayers}
    {Thanksgivings}
    {Other Prayers}
    {Concluding Prayers and Blessings}

    {Proper Preface}
    {Communion Exhortations}
    {Scriptural Introductions}
    {Prayers of Preparation}
    {Greeting of Peace}
    {Thanksgiving and Consecration}
    {Breaking of the Bread}
    {Thanksgiving and Dedication}
    {SentenceAfterCommunion}

    {BaptismExhortations}
    {BaptismCandidatePrayers}
    {BaptismQuestions}
    {BaptismForms}
    {BaptismPrayers}

    Specifying Default values for resources

    A “default” item can be specified for a resource lookup, using either a static value or a variable. The syntax is as follows:

    {Creed Default=Athanasian Creed}
    {Collect Default={Sunday Name}}

    Hiding sections of a service in the detailed and summary outputs

    material between the tags {rubric}  and {/rubric} will only appear on the runsheet.
    material between the tags {leaderonly} and {/leaderonly} will appear on the detailed export but not the summary export.

     

  • For Formal Services

    For Formal Services

    images

    QuickStart for Formal Services
    Resources and advice for formal services, including templates for AAPB and “Sunday Services”. Advice about how to make liturgy work well.
    [readon url=”http://www.bettergatherings.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=133″]Read More…[/readon]

  • For Contemporary Services

    For Contemporary Services

    imagesQuickStart for Contemporary Services
    Help for those involved in contemporary services – How to craft a better service, how to lead well, tips on choosing and leading singing, prayer and bible reading…

    [readon url=”http://www.bettergatherings.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=131″]Read More…[/readon]