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Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Perhaps some of you recognize the words of this prayer. It’s a traditional Anglican prayer called the Collect for Purity. At Sojourn, along with churches around the world, we include this prayer in our worship by saying it together near the beginning of a communion service.

If you’ve been to any of our services at Sojourn, you know that we use a "liturgical" form of worship in our gatherings.  We sit, stand, read, confess and pray together. We realize that for many people much of this is unfamiliar.  For that very reason, we decided to put together a series of short videos to help explain some of the history, symbolism, and theology behind our liturgical worship.  Most of the videos are around 4-6 minutes long and they cover various topics related to liturgy. It is our hope that the information shared in these videos will be both informative and life-giving.

You might be sceptical about liturgical worship.  You might just be curious. Perhaps you have had a bad experience with liturgy or maybe you don’t even know what we mean when we use the word “liturgy.” Maybe liturgical worship is absolutely your favourite thing in the world. Whatever comes to mind when you hear the word “liturgy,” these videos are for you.

Over the next few weeks, a new video will be posted every day (or every other day) right here on our blog.  We want to know what you think of the videos! If there is a something you learned or appreciated, let us know.  If there is something you are curious about that isn’t touched on, maybe we’ll even make another video just for you!

Finally, if you find these videos helpful or interesting, please do share them with your friends!

So without further ado, the first (introductory) video: I. More than the Everyday.