At a glance: this is a 11-week study and discussion guide for Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren, with 78 questions organized by reading assignment. Week 1 is free to read, with no card required.
Tish Harrison Warren's Liturgy of the Ordinary begins with a simple but disorienting claim: the most important spiritual formation in your life is not happening at a conference, a retreat, or even in Sunday's sermon — it is happening right now, in the small, repeated, almost invisible acts of your daily life. Framed around a single ordinary day, each chapter takes something Warren actually does — waking up, making the bed, losing her keys, eating leftovers, checking her phone — and traces the deep theological and liturgical currents running underneath it. Drawing on the Anglican tradition, thinkers like James K. A. Smith and Alexander Schmemann, and the rhythms of Christian corporate worship, Warren argues that our habits and daily rituals are quietly but powerfully shaping who we are and what we love. The ordinary is not the waiting room for real spiritual life; it is spiritual life.
This study guide is designed for use in a small group or for personal devotional study over eleven weeks. Each week, you should read the assigned chapter before your group meeting or your personal study time, pausing to notice your own daily habits through the lens of what Warren is describing. Journaling is especially fruitful alongside this book — try writing one page about a mundane moment in your own day before you open each chapter, then return to your journal entry afterward. Come to discussion ready to be honest: this book works best when people are willing to name the actual texture of their days, not an idealized version.
By the end of this guide, you will have a richer theology of the ordinary — a sense that nothing in your day is too small for God's attention or your own. You will also find yourself looking differently at the Sunday liturgy, seeing in its prayers and practices the very shape of a well-formed human life. Perhaps most importantly, you will be equipped to stop waiting for the dramatic spiritual breakthrough and begin receiving the grace hidden inside the unremarkable day you already have.