11-Week Study & Discussion Guide
Liturgy of the Ordinary
by Tish Harrison Warren·78 discussion questions
Discussion question your group will work through:
1.Warren opens with an honest confession that her days often feel cluttered, distracted, and far from holy. How did her description of an ordinary day land on you? Did you recognize yourself in it?
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About This Study Guide
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.
11-Week Schedule
- Week 1Introduction — Loving Ordinary Time7 questions
- Week 2Chapter 1 — Beginnings: Waking7 questions
- Week 3Chapter 2 — Making the Bed: Liturgy, Ritual, and What Forms Us7 questions
- Week 4Chapter 3 — Brushing Teeth: Boredom and the Daily Office7 questions
- Week 5Chapter 4 — Losing My Keys: Fragmentation and the Thin Place7 questions
- Week 6Chapter 5 — Eating Leftovers: Abundance, Scarcity, and Gratitude7 questions
- Week 7Chapter 6 — Checking My Phone: Attention, Distraction, and the Presence of God7 questions
- Week 8Chapter 7 — Sitting in Traffic: Anger, Liturgy, and the Slow Work of Peace7 questions
- Week 9Chapter 8 — Wasting Time: Sabbath and the Gift of Rest7 questions
- Week 10Chapter 9 — Sleeping: Surrender and Trust in the Dark7 questions
- Week 11Review & Reflection — The Whole Day, the Whole Life8 questions
Week 1: Introduction — Loving Ordinary Time
Free sampleRead the Introduction of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passage: Romans 12:1–2.
1.Warren opens with an honest confession that her days often feel cluttered, distracted, and far from holy. How did her description of an ordinary day land on you? Did you recognize yourself in it?
2.She draws on the Anglican liturgical calendar's season of 'Ordinary Time' as a metaphor for the whole of daily life. What does the word 'ordinary' actually mean in that context, and why does recovering its original sense matter for the book's argument?
3.Warren distinguishes between 'big' spiritual moments — retreats, revivals, mountaintop experiences — and the slow formation that happens through repeated daily practice. Have you tended to think of spiritual growth primarily in terms of dramatic moments? What has that assumption cost you?
4.She leans on philosopher James K. A. Smith's argument that we are not primarily thinking beings but *desiring* beings — that our habits and liturgies (not just our beliefs) shape what we love. What is your initial reaction to that claim? Does it feel liberating, unsettling, or both?
a.Can you think of a habit in your own life that has shaped what you desire, for better or worse?
b.How does this reframe the way you think about discipline and spiritual practice?
5.Warren is an Anglican priest, and she frames the Sunday liturgy as the key that unlocks the meaning of daily life. Even if your church tradition is different, what regular practices or rhythms in your faith community might function in a similar way?
6.What is the 'liturgy of the ordinary' that Warren is proposing? In your own words, summarize her central thesis as clearly as you can.
7.How does Warren's vision connect to Romans 12:1–2 — offering our bodies as living sacrifices and being transformed by the renewing of our minds? Where do the daily habits of the body fit into that kind of transformation?
Week 2: Chapter 1 — Beginnings: Waking
Read Chapter 1 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passages: Psalm 63:1; Lamentations 3:22–23.
1.Warren connects waking up to the Christian practice of morning prayer. What is the liturgical logic she is drawing on — why would the church have structured morning prayer around the simple fact of waking?
Week 3: Chapter 2 — Making the Bed: Liturgy, Ritual, and What Forms Us
Read Chapter 2 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passage: Deuteronomy 6:4–9.
1.Warren uses the act of making the bed as an entry point into the broader question of ritual and habit. What distinction does she make between a 'mere habit' (something we do mindlessly) and a 'liturgy' (something that carries meaning and forms us)? Is the line always clear?
Week 4: Chapter 3 — Brushing Teeth: Boredom and the Daily Office
Read Chapter 3 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passages: Psalm 119:164; Luke 18:1.
1.Warren uses brushing teeth as a metaphor for practices that are unglamorous, repetitive, and easy to resent. What is her argument that such practices are not the enemy of spiritual life but are, in fact, its very structure?
Week 5: Chapter 4 — Losing My Keys: Fragmentation and the Thin Place
Read Chapter 4 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passages: Romans 8:18–25; Psalm 22:1–2.
1.Warren describes the experience of losing her keys with surprising theological depth. What is she uncovering about the spiritual significance of frustration, disorder, and the sense that 'things are not as they should be'?
Week 6: Chapter 5 — Eating Leftovers: Abundance, Scarcity, and Gratitude
Read Chapter 5 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passages: 1 Corinthians 11:23–26; John 6:35.
1.Warren begins with the humble act of eating leftovers and connects it to the eucharistic practice of the church. What is the argument she is making — what does an ordinary meal have to do with the Lord's Supper?
Week 7: Chapter 6 — Checking My Phone: Attention, Distraction, and the Presence of God
Read Chapter 6 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passages: Psalm 46:10; Matthew 6:22–23.
1.Warren is honest that checking her phone is the default act of transition in her day — the thing she reaches for in every empty moment. How does she frame this not merely as a distraction problem but as a formation problem? What is she being formed toward?
Week 8: Chapter 7 — Sitting in Traffic: Anger, Liturgy, and the Slow Work of Peace
Read Chapter 7 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passages: James 1:19–20; Ephesians 4:26–27.
1.Warren describes the way traffic (and minor inconveniences like it) becomes a kind of spiritual stress test — revealing what is really forming us beneath the surface of our presented selves. Have you had a recent 'traffic moment' — a small frustration that produced a disproportionate reaction? What did it show you?
Week 9: Chapter 8 — Wasting Time: Sabbath and the Gift of Rest
Read Chapter 8 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passages: Genesis 2:1–3; Mark 2:27.
1.Warren challenges the assumption that rest is simply the absence of work — something we earn or fall into when productivity is complete. What is her positive theological definition of Sabbath, and how is it different from mere leisure or recreation?
Week 10: Chapter 9 — Sleeping: Surrender and Trust in the Dark
Read Chapter 9 of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passages: Psalm 4:8; Psalm 127:2.
1.Warren frames sleep as a daily act of surrender — a giving up of control that the body demands and the soul often resists. What are the theological dimensions she finds in this most physical of necessities?
Week 11: Review & Reflection — The Whole Day, the Whole Life
Review your notes from all chapters of Liturgy of the Ordinary. Key passage: Colossians 3:17.
1.Looking back across the whole book, which chapter or image was most unexpectedly powerful for you — and why? What did it show you about your own daily life that you had not seen before?
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