Let’s face it, when you think of enthusiasm for the liturgical calendar, you probably don’t immediately think of Evangelicals. Sure, we do Christmas and Easter, maybe even Pentecost if we’re charismatic, but that’s often as far as it goes. The liturgical calendar is a foreign country we visit from time to time, mostly for cultural and evangelistic reasons, but it isn’t our home. It doesn’t shape the way we practise our faith, week by week, month by month, year by year.

The specific types of Evangelicalism that I’ve been moving in since my late teens seem an even less friendly soil for the church calendar to take root in. Aged seventeen, I had a dramatic conversion to what Time Magazine called ‘the New Calvinism’. With heroes like John Piper, J. I. Packer and D. A. Carson, I was steeped in a brand of Reformed Christianity that drew its intellectual and spiritual energy from 16^th and 17^th century Puritanism – you know, the people who famously banned Christmas as idolatrous. Alongside the books and blogs I was reading, the churches I spent my 20s in were heavily influenced by Sydney Anglicanism. Iconoclastic to its core, that tradition is potentially at its most radical in its approach to the church meeting.

So it probably comes as little surprise that I haven’t always loved the liturgical calendar myself. I still carry a lot with me from those who’ve nurtured me over the years, not least an enormous debt of gratitude. But, like many of the people Collin Hansen famously called ‘the young, restless and Reformed’, I’ve fallen in love with the liturgical life of traditional Christianity – principally through the medium of the Book of Common Prayer. And with that has come the liturgical calendar – a tapestry of fasts and feasts that now acts as the rhythm of my year, sets the spiritual barometer for my prayers, and serves as the structure for my reflections on my faith.

I’ve been thinking about blogging about this for a few years now. Many thanks to the friends who’ve patiently and persistently nudged me in that direction. With Advent starting tomorrow morning, I’ve finally decided to give it a go this year. So this is Christ and Calendar, a space where I hope to:

Reflect a bit about the liturgical calendar. I’ll be thinking about questions like What are all these seasons about? Why do I find them valuable? What have they taught me about the Christian life and how have they led me to a deeper enjoyment of the Gospel?

Share a bit of how I observe the fasts and feasts at home with my wife. When I first started this I just had no idea how to make this a part of my spirituality. I certainly won’t be claiming that the way we do it is the right way – for one thing it’s continually developing – but I know friends have often enjoyed hearing what we find works for us.

Share some resources I’ve found helpful. Lots of this has been coming up with traditions of our own – personal ways we mark the year. But it’s not a journey we’ve made alone. The calendar (in slightly different iterations) belongs to the whole Church. I’ll be sharing some of the resources that have help me celebrate better.

And I want to do all of that within a historic Reformed frame of reference. Most (though not all) of the resources I’ll be sharing are from outside the evangelical and reformed branch of the Church. In one sense that’s natural because the calendar is catholic in the best sense of the word. But I also want to show that it’s Evangelical in the best sense of the word – focussed on the saving work of God in the Gospel. The calendar I’ll be blogging through is (with a couple of additions) the one in the Book of Common Prayer – the calendar of the English Reformation – and while I hope it benefits you whatever your tradition, I hope in particular, in some small way, that I can stir up some evangelical enthusiasm for the liturgical calendar.

I’ll see you tomorrow in Advent!