The most important aspect of the new lectionary is that it is thematic and entirely on the Church Year. The original 1928 lectionary (weekday lectionary) aimed to simply get readers through as much of the Bible as possible in a year, and was based on the Church Year only in certain seasons (such as Advent). Put another way, the old lectionary tended to follow the civil year whereas the newer one the ecclesiastical year. The old schema had a number of limitations and problems. Many of the lections were too long; Psalms that had an obvious connection with the morning often ended up being read in the evening; the civil scheme was constantly interrupted by movable Holy Days; many passages of Scripture were needlessly repeated at the expense of others; and more. The newer lectionary sought to remedy all of that, and to provide more flexibility and variation. I came away from reading the book with a new appreciation for the thought and time that went into developing our lectionary, which is vastly superior to just about everything else out there - particularly the old Roman breviary. And it can certainly hold its own with the lectionaries of today in terms of comprehensiveness.
But the most interesting part about the book was on page 151, where the author states that one of the purposes of the additional readings for Morning and Evening Prayer on Sundays is that they be used as alternatives for the liturgical lectionary's Epistles and Gospels to provide a variation, particularly for weekday celebrations of the Holy Eucharist! In other words, it was a "proto-three-year lectionary." This is what churches and parishes that use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and lectionary should do today. In the APA we are allowed to use the RCL. I don't know how many of our parishes do it (I imagine it is very few). But using the additional readings from Morning and Evening Prayer is I think a much better way to go if one senses he must use a three-year lectionary. The reason is because all of the readings relate to the same theme and to the collect for the day. This also solves a built in problem with continuing churches - namely that since most of our parishes celebrate only Holy Communion on Sundays the people do not get to hear many important passages of Scripture because they are not part of the liturgical lectionary. They are in the lectionary, no doubt, only they are in Sunday Morning or Evening Prayer, which many clergy seem to want to stamp out of parish life. (especially on Sundays) If these additional Epistles and Gospels were allowed to be used as alternates to the liturgical lectionary, then more of the Scriptures would be covered, but the unity and integrity of the 1928 Prayer Book and lectionary, and all that goes with it, would be preserved intact.
