A fourth year of lections?

I've had a convert's fervor for liturgical worship ever since I stumbled upon an ELCA music position as a recent Wheaton College grad with a very low-church background. (When my much-younger sister advanced pretty far in the state spelling bee but didn't win, my dad told her to call me. "I lost on a word I've never heard of: 'liturgy,'" she said. "Dad said you'd know why that was funny.")

But only in the last couple years have I become a bona fide lectionary nerd. It began right before the Century site launched in 2010, when I was burning the midnight oil putting together our lectionary browsing tool. I wanted to get it all programmed for several years beyond the calendars offered by sites such as Vanderbilt's, so I had to do my own math—meaning I actually had to learn how the thing works.

My mild-to-moderate-obsessive side found it engrossing. "Wow," I'd say to my wife, "there are nine Sundays after the Epiphany in 2011. That almost never happens!" I figured that the fact that she's super churchy herself would make her drop everything and come study old calendars with me, but I guess she had a sermon to write or something.