Starter Questions

I'm from the "old school" and don't use the Internet a lot. Will this be difficult? No! sundaysandseasons.com will work just the way most people plan worship now: Select the date you're planning for Select the basic liturgy you want to use Customize the liturgy to suit your needs Preview and download your service! Everything is laid out step by step, with visual and text cues and help at every point. The powerful Template feature allows you to plan your "usual" worship service(s) and save them for re-use. You can just apply a Template you've saved to the service and day you've chosen, and you're ready to preview and download in a jiffy! How reliable is your Web server? We have a special server for sundaysandseasons.com, that is available 24/7. Like the Augsburg Fortress online Store, this has unparalleled reliability and almost no down time at all. (We anticipate 99.5% up-time). Furthermore, all data and stored files are backed up every day. We have dedicated staff who ensure that servers are available all the time.

Will sundaysandseasons.com produce finished bulletins or projections for me? No, but almost. Because every church has different preferences for size, font, margins, number of words to a page or slide, etc., we don't want to lock you into something you don't like. When you're done crafting worship the way you like, you'll download one file containing all of the texts you've chosen (just what you want, in the order you want), and another file with all of the music graphics, clip art, and projection slides you've chosen. It's up to you to put your sundaysandseasons.com download into your preferred format file, whether that's on paper or in an electronic form. (Most desktop software includes its own flexible template options that will help you with this step.) And you'll have to insert the music graphics into your service--but your text download will tell you exactly where they should go!

sundaysandseasons.com Contents

How many liturgies does sundaysandseasons.com have available? All of the Holy Communion, Baptism, Affirmation of Baptism, Order of Confession and Forgiveness, Marriage, Funeral, and Healing services from Lutheran Book of Worship, With One Voice, This Far By Faith, Libro de Liturgia y Cántico, and Evangelical Lutheran Worship. We'll continue to add more liturgies continuously, until all current liturgies are included online. Plus, we'll be able to add new liturgies as they are created and passed through normal liturgical and theological review processes. What other content is included? Artwork from our Icon One CD-ROM, Icon Two CD-ROM, and Icon Two for Projection CD-ROM is included, all searchable by lectionary day, theme, or scriptural reference. Reproducible children's bulletins from Kids Celebrate will also be included, searchable by lectionary day. At the conclusion of planning a worship service on sundaysandseasons.com, relevant artwork and children's bulletins will be suggested as optional downloads — you can get clip-art, projection slides, and children's bulletins to match your service with a single click! But there's still more! The complete NRSV translation of the Bible (with Apocrypha) is included, searchable by citation or word(s) — it's a complete concordance at your fingertips!

What hymns will be included online? Including hymns and songs in sundaysandseasons.com involves legal issues around copyright licensing. We include all "public domain" hymns (those that have no copyright on them) and all Augsburg Fortress-administered hymn material. We have obtained, and are in the process of obtaining, legal permission to include other hymns on the site, and will include them as soon as we can legally do so. We certainly hope to include every hymn from every worship resource. Remember, you always need proper licensing or permission from the copyright administrator before you can print or project copyrighted material (see also Licensing FAQs below). What about rubrics, or presider content? That's all included, too! As you plan your worship, you get to decide for each element of your service whether you want the download to include just the title of the service element ("Hymn of Praise"), the title and page number, the full text, the full text and music, the title and hymn number... whatever variants are relevant to that worship element. Your download will include only what you want. The last step before downloading includes the option to preview your download, so you know you've got just what you want, in the order you want (and of course you can easily go back and make changes before downloading). What if we don't use the lectionary in our worship? You can edit or change the lectionary readings that are recommended for any worship service. Using the convenient citation box next to each reading in the service, you can shorten, lengthen, or change any or all of the lectionary readings for the day. You can also preview the reading to ensure that the citation is correct. sundaysandseasons.com will save you time and worry by suggesting the appropriate lectionary texts, but it's up to you to decide how to use them!

Subscribing

Will this be too expensive for my congregation? We've priced sundaysandseasons.com to be affordable for any size church. With your Standard sundaysandseasons.com subscription you'll have access to: Every liturgy currently in use in the ELCA, including both texts and liturgical music graphics. Currently only select liturgies are available on CD-ROMs, and must be purchased separately, with accompanying licenses. The entire NRSV Bible. Currently this translation is difficult to find in electronic format, and fairly expensive. Nearly 1000 clip art and projection slide images for use in worship, on newsletters, and elsewhere in your ministry. These are presently sold separately. All proper prayer content for use in worship. These texts currently must be purchased separately. Plus, your subscription includes copyright licensing to use all of this content at your church! Deluxe sundaysandseasons.com adds more than 1000 hymns and congregational songs to this list of content (licensing for hymns and songs sold separately). You do the math, compared to the cost of all of these resources separately. We're sure you'll see the value!

I want to try this out before I subscribe. Is that possible? Yes! You can try out sundaysandseasons.com at no charge. You can plan a worship service for either of the two Sundays just past, including all of the customization and flexibility options that subscribers get (you're restricted to LBW Setting One, however). You can even preview your worship text; music and art graphics are not downloadable. This way, you can experience for yourself the easy and intuitive functionality before you buy! What am I subscribing to in sundaysandseasons.com? Your subscription to sundaysandseasons.com is annual, for twelve months from the day you sign up. Standard sundaysandseasons.com includes access to all liturgies, liturgical music, lectionary texts, prayers, artwork, and children's bulletins, and includes copyright licensing to use these locally (see Licensing below). Deluxe sundaysandseasons.com adds access to all available hymns and songs (texts and music). Pricing is based on your Average Weekly Attendance for all of your regular worship services. You will be billed for the full year when you sign up, and your subscription will be automatically renewed every year. You can cancel any time within 90 days of your renewal, no questions asked. Your annual subscription includes access to any content that we add during the year, too.

Licensing

What licenses are needed to use sundaysandseasons.com? Standard sundaysandseasons.com provides you access to all liturgies, liturgical music, lectionary texts, artwork, and children's bulletins. This subscription also includes an Augsburg Fortress Liturgies License allowing you to print or project this content for your local worship services (or use the artwork in newsletters or other free, local-use publications). Deluxe sundaysandseasons.com provides additional access to hymn and song content, however extra licensing is required. You can choose the Augsburg Fortress Hymns and Songs License to obtain permission for all Augsburg Fortress-administered hymns and songs. Printing or projecting hymns whose copyright is administered by any other person or company requires appropriate additional licensing from that copyright holder.

How will I know what the copyright status is of any given hymn? Copyright Lookup is a FREE feature of sundaysandseasons.com, so anyone can check on the copyright status of any hymn or song printed in any Augsburg Fortress worship resource. Additionally, when a subscriber downloads any hymn or song, copyright status is included so you know how to use this download legally.

Sundays and Seasons Print Edition (and Other Things You Love!)

Will sundaysandseasons.com contain everything that's in the print edition of Sundays and Seasons? No! sundaysandseasons.com is designed to help worship planners and those who craft worship materials for presiding, printing, or projecting. All of the enriching content in the print edition of Sundays and Seasons — the Images for Preaching, Let the Children Come, Worship Space, and Worship Matters essays, for instance — will not be found online. What you will find online are all of the worship texts, both primary and alternate, including seasonal texts and seasonal rites, that are found in the print edition of Sundays and Seasons.

Will sundaysandseasons.com replace any existing product? No! All of the other products you know and love will still be available, year after year, to help you with worship planning and worship content.

Multiple Services, Multiple Staff and sundaysandseasons.com

What if we have several, or many, people helping plan and publish worship materials? No problem! With the easy availability of sundaysandseasons.com (any internet-connected computer, anywhere, can access it, any time!), you can have various people fill in their parts of the worship plan, and someone else can download it for printing or projecting. Worship planners are able to work when they want, and save their work online for themselves or others to work on later. We have several services and use different liturgies for each. Will sundaysandseasons.com be able to handle that? Yes! You can set up your entire regular worship schedule online, name the services whatever you want (Traditional, Contemporary, Early, First, 8:30,...), and even make worship templates for each, with all of the detail about the sequence and contents of each of those worship services. When you plan worship you can start from a scheduled service, from a template, or from a calendar date and simply pull up your plan. Content for that day (lectionary, prayers, etc.) will automatically fill in as a starting point, and you can adjust as you'd like. No matter how you want to work, sundaysandseasons.com will help you get your work done!

How are user accounts managed? Will I have to call in every time I want to make a change? No! With your subscription to sundaysandseasons.com you'll be able to set up a number of distinct users on your account, who can all be logged on and working at the same time. One user on your subscription will be the Administrator, and will be able to change logins, passwords, and users at any time. New staff member? No problem! Forgot your password? No problem! The maximum number of users is proportionate to your church size, but will be big enough for everyone to play their part. We have a multi-point parish. Do we have to subscribe separately for each point? No! Subscriptions are administrative, so multi-point parishes can sign up for one subscription, and use their combined Average Weekly Attendance to determine which sundaysandseasons.com product to sign up for. For instance, if you serve a 4-point parish, each worshiping 30 per week, you should subscribe once, at an Average Weekly Attendance of 120.

Downloads: Size and Time

How long will the downloads take? How big are the files that we'll be downloading? sundaysandseasons.com is created to make downloading as efficient as possible, whether you're on a broadband or a dial-up connection. Here are some real facts: A complete worship service with full liturgical texts, full lectionary texts, full prayers, etc. takes with a 56k modem about 10 seconds. That's a measure of what a really full worship service text download would be.

If you select graphics, too — liturgical music, psalm intonations, hymns, clip art — you'll have a second download which will be bigger. A 2.5 MB zipped file would take about 7 minutes to download on a 56k modem, or about the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee. Those fortunate enough to have broadband or DSL will have download times that are a fraction of these figures. Either way, sundaysandseasons.com downloads are easy — and remember, you control how much you download, when, and even where, so you can plan your downloading around your capabilities, schedule, and plans.