| ¶ | Introduction to President's Edition | |
| This volume offers a convenient arrangement of all the material required by the president for the celebration of Holy Communion and for the administration of Holy Baptism. Much that is included in the main volume, Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England, is therefore not to be found here. On the other hand, this volume does contain a considerable amount of material which is not included in the main volume because of that volume's focus on Sunday worship. The eucharistic Prefaces for use when pastoral offices (Marriages, Funerals and services of Wholeness and Healing) are celebrated within the Holy Communion are provided, as are the Collects and Post Communions for Lesser Festivals and Special Occasions. The opportunity has also been taken to include a fuller range of Proper Prefaces and seasonal Blessings, commended by the House of Bishops. | ||
| The eucharistic material is arranged somewhat differently from that in the main volume. At the centre, located where the book will remain open and lie flat most easily, are the orders of service for Holy Communion. The Collects and Post Communions (including those for Lesser Festivals, Commons of the Saints and Special Occasions which are not in the main volume) are placed before the services. The other variable texts follow the services. In this President's edition these include some texts (for example, forms of the Creed) which are separated from the services of Holy Communion in the main volume and also a number of texts commended by the House of Bishops (for example, Proper Prefaces and Blessings) which only need to be available to the president. These texts appear in an order which it is hoped will be found both logical and convenient - that in which they are required as the service progresses. These variable texts are thus available to the president with a minimum of page turning within the volume. For those who prefer the order and contents as they appear in the main volume of Common Worship, the desk edition provides a simple enlargement of that volume. | ||
| Musical settings of the Eucharistic Prayers are also included. All of the Eucharistic Prayers can, of course, be sung to contemporary settings as well as to the traditional tones. However, to set the prayers with which short or extended Proper Prefaces can be used to contemporary as well as traditional settings would have necessitated setting all of the Proper Prefaces more than once, and that would have resulted in a disproportionate amount of music in the volume. Those prayers with which short or extended Proper Prefaces can be used (Prayers A, B, C and E and the Order Two Preface) have therefore been set only to the traditional Sarum tones. Three of the others (Prayers D, F and G) have been given contemporary settings in different styles which give an indication of the range of what is possible. Further settings are published by the Royal School of Church Music. In the case of Prayers A, C and E, only the opening dialogue, preface and concluding doxology have been set, as is customary. The Eucharistic Prayer is, of course, a unity, and there will be some who, wishing to stress this and the joyful, celebratory nature of the thanksgiving, will wish to sing the whole prayer from the opening dialogue through to the concluding doxology. The setting of Prayer B indicates how this may be done using the traditional tones, while the contemporary settings are all settings of the prayer as a whole. | ||
| Some parts of Common Worship are yet to be published and some of the future provisions (particularly the volume of seasonal texts) will include further presidential material. The current volume, however, is offered as a useful resource to help those who preside at the liturgy to do so with convenient ease and appropriate dignity. | ||
| Pagination | ||
| In this volume, on pages which also appear in the main volume, Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England, page numbers from that volume are given in bold. | ||