Believers in Jesus expect to hear God’s Word when they gather for worship. This is especially true of Christians whose heritage rests on the Reformation foundation of sola scriptura (Scripture alone).

But which words of God will worshipers hear on any given Sunday? Who chooses them, and how do they decide? Since the Bible does not mandate any set of lessons for worship, we are free to choose them. For example, in 1946 Pastor W. A. Criswell from First Baptist in Dallas, Texas, decided to preach through the entire Bible verse by verse. Nearly 18 years later, he finished! Others have chosen different approaches. Some congregations explore a book of the Bible or a Bible topic for a few weeks or months. A national or local crisis might call for a special set of readings for a week or two.

Choosing the readings: the past

But sometimes pastors or congregations choose readings that may miss some important passages of Scripture. To help congregations read the “whole counsel of God,” many churches follow a set of prescribed readings called a lectionary. A lectionary generally consists of lessons from various parts of the Scriptures that are designated for the Sundays of the church year.

Using a prearranged set of lessons in worship is nothing new. God’s people have followed some order of readings since the Old Testament days of the synagogue. When Jesus visited his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Why Isaiah? He either asked for it or that was an assigned reading for the day.

The church of the New Testament era followed suit. The apostle Paul urged Timothy to “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (1 Timothy 4:13). On more than one occasion, Paul assumed that his letters would be passed from congregation to congregation and read when they gathered together (1 Thessalonians 5:27; Colossians 4:16). Nearly 100 years later, the church father Justin Martyr (a.d. 100–164) described the worship of his time: “On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits.”