Chapter 7
Worship and the church year
Sunday is the heart of the game: everything people feel is scored after a service. This chapter covers how each tradition worships, choosing the sermon, communion, the church year and its feasts, dressing the church for the season, and weddings and funerals.
Services
A church can hold up to four services a week, set in People → Services: each with its day, time, and length (60 minutes by default). Each household keeps to one service. More services mean less crowding, but they split friends up and need more volunteers on duty. Leave 90 minutes between them.
During a service, the time bar names the part under way and where it's led from, and a glow marks that piece of furniture in the church.
The order of service
Each tradition has its own order of service. The church sets the service's length, and the parts are scaled to fit. Each part is led from the first of its listed items the church has, so a homily goes to the pulpit if there is one and the lectern if not. Church → Worship shows your church's order with its timings.
| Tradition | Service | Its parts (typical minutes) |
|---|---|---|
| Baptist | Preaching service | Welcome 3 · Congregational singing 12 (piano, organ, or drums) · Pastoral prayer 3 · Offering 4 · Scripture reading 3 · Sermon 25 · The Lord's Supper 7 (on communion Sundays) · Benediction 3 |
| Catholic | Mass | Introductory Rites 6 · Liturgy of the Word 12 · Homily 9 (lectern) · Creed and Universal Prayer 4 · Preparation of the Gifts 4 · Eucharistic Prayer 8 · Communion Rite 12 · Concluding Rites 5 |
| Lutheran | Divine Service | Gathering 8 · Readings and psalm 10 · Sermon 12 (pulpit) · Hymn of the day 4 (organ) · Creed and prayers 5 · Peace and offering 5 · Great Thanksgiving 5 · Communion 9 · Sending 2 |
| Pentecostal | Praise and worship | Welcome 2 · Praise and worship 25 (drums, sound system) · Prayer 3 · Tithes and offerings 5 · Sermon 30 · The Lord's Supper 5 · Altar call 10 |
| Orthodox | Divine Liturgy | Great Litany and antiphons 15 · Little Entrance 3 · Epistle and Gospel 8 · Homily 10 · Great Entrance 7 · Anaphora 15 · Holy Communion 10 · Dismissal and antidoron 7 |
| Quaker | Meeting for worship | Settling into silence 2 · Waiting worship 25 · Vocal ministry 10 · Settled silence 20 · Close of worship 3. No pulpit, no sermon, no one appointed to lead. |
A tradition from a mod that names no service gets a generic one from its worship focus: a liturgy for sacrament-centred traditions, a preaching service for word-centred ones, an unprogrammed meeting for silent ones.
Communion
On the Sundays a tradition celebrates it (weekly for Catholics, Lutherans, and the Orthodox; monthly for Baptists and Pentecostals; never for Quakers), communion begins with its part of the service.
- Traditions that come forward to receive are served at an Altar, Communion table, Communion rail, or Communion station. Each serves one person per front tile at a time. A four-metre rail serves four at once; a one-metre station serves one.
- Baptists and Pentecostals pass the elements along the pews in Communion trays, which they expect to have.
- If communion takes too long, the service runs over, and everyone loses 0.05 for every 10 minutes over (up to 0.2). The service report says how long communion took. Add stations, or a longer rail.
Choosing the sermon
Half an hour before each service with a sermon or homily, the game pauses and asks what it will be about. The choice is for that service only. Leave it to the preacher (or Esc) means no particular message, which neither helps nor hurts.
Each topic's message leans neutral, conservative, or liberal, and each tradition's people lean one way too:
| Leaning | Traditions |
|---|---|
| Liberal | Lutheran (ELCA), Quaker |
| Neutral | Roman Catholic |
| Conservative | Baptist, Pentecostal, Eastern Orthodox |
After the service, everyone there (except those minding the nursery) feels the message, scaled by the topic's strength (1 for most, up to 2 for Fire & Brimstone):
| The message | Tradition leaning the same way | A neutral tradition | Tradition leaning the other way |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neutral | +0.015 | +0.015 | +0.015 |
| Leaning | +0.04 | −0.02 | −0.05 |
So Fire & Brimstone fires a conservative congregation up (+0.08), puts a neutral one off (−0.04), and troubles a liberal one deeply (−0.1). With no pastor, or no sermon in the service (a Quaker meeting), the topic counts for nothing. The game models how the message is received; it takes no side.
The safe default is any neutral topic: a small lift for everyone, every week. A topic leaning your tradition's way earns nearly three times as much, so it's worth picking one each week if you know your people. In a neutral (Catholic) parish, every leaning topic costs you. A sermon also travels on the live stream: members who watched at home are likelier to come in person next time if it suited them (see The church in its community).
All 42 sermon topics
| Topic | Leans | Strength | What it's about |
|---|---|---|---|
| Biblical Stories | Neutral | 1 | The great stories of scripture told and opened up: Abraham and Sarah, Ruth, the prodigal son, the road to Emmaus. |
| Blessed Are the Peacemakers | Neutral | 1 | Reconciliation close to home: in families, friendships, and the congregation itself. |
| Called by Name | Neutral | 1 | Belonging to God in baptism, and living as someone called. |
| Doubt & Faith | Neutral | 1 | Thomas, Job, and honest questions: faith that survives doubt. |
| Eternal Life & Resurrection | Neutral | 1 | The empty tomb, and the hope of life beyond death. |
| Grace & Forgiveness | Neutral | 1 | God's love freely given, and how to give it to one another. |
| Gratitude | Neutral | 1 | Counting blessings, and living thankfully. |
| Hope & Comfort | Neutral | 1 | Strength for hard days: grief, illness, and worry, and the promise that sustains through them. |
| Joy in All Things | Neutral | 1 | Paul's letter to the Philippians, written from prison: rejoicing whatever comes. |
| Love One Another | Neutral | 1 | The great commandment in daily life: at home, at work, and with those we find hard to love. |
| Sabbath Rest | Neutral | 1 | Rest as a gift and a commandment, for busy, tired people. |
| Saints & Witnesses | Neutral | 1 | The lives of the faithful who went before, and what they teach. |
| Servant Leadership | Neutral | 1 | Jesus washing the disciples' feet, and leading by serving. |
| Songs of the Psalms | Neutral | 1 | Praise, lament, and trust in Israel's songbook, and the prayers it gives words to. |
| Stewardship & Generosity | Neutral | 1 | Using time, talents, and money well, and giving gladly. |
| The Church Year | Neutral | 1 | What the season means, from the waiting of Advent to the fire of Pentecost. |
| The Life of Prayer | Neutral | 1 | Praying when it is easy and when it is hard: listening, persistence, and silence. |
| The Parables of Jesus | Neutral | 1 | The sower, the mustard seed, the lost sheep, the good Samaritan: what the stories Jesus told ask of us. |
| Faith & Family | Conservative | 1 | Marriage, parenthood, and handing on the faith: the family as the first church. |
| Faith of Our Fathers | Conservative | 1 | Holding fast to the faith and ways handed down, against the drift of the times. |
| Obedience & Discipline | Conservative | 1 | Duty, submission to God's order, and the discipline of a faithful life. |
| Personal Holiness | Conservative | 1 | Turning from sin to a disciplined, holy life: purity, sobriety, and self-control. |
| Resisting Temptation | Conservative | 1 | The pull of a worldly culture, and how to stand apart from it. |
| Spiritual Warfare | Conservative | 1 | The armour of God, and standing firm against the enemy. |
| The Authority of Scripture | Conservative | 1 | The Bible as the inerrant Word of God, and standing on it whatever the world says. |
| The Great Commission | Conservative | 1 | Go and make disciples: the urgency of every soul's salvation. |
| Marriage as God Designed | Conservative | 1.5 | Marriage as the covenant of one man and one woman, and keeping it holy. |
| Sanctity of Life | Conservative | 1.5 | Every life sacred, from conception to natural death. |
| The Last Days | Conservative | 1.5 | Prophecy, the return of Christ, and being ready when he comes. |
| Fire & Brimstone | Conservative | 2 | Sin, judgement, and the urgent call to repent before it is too late. |
| Care for Creation | Liberal | 1 | Tending the earth as God's gift: the climate, conservation, and simpler living. |
| Healing for All | Liberal | 1 | Health care, mental health, and building a society that cares for the sick. |
| Interfaith Understanding | Liberal | 1 | Learning from neighbours of other faiths, and what we hold in common. |
| Reading Scripture in Context | Liberal | 1 | The Bible read with history and criticism: what the texts meant then, and mean now. |
| Swords into Ploughshares | Liberal | 1 | Nonviolence and peace between nations, and the gospel against war. |
| The Prophets' Call | Liberal | 1 | Amos and Micah: let justice roll down like waters; do justice, love mercy. |
| Wealth & Poverty | Liberal | 1 | The rich young ruler and Mary's song: a challenge to wealth and to the systems that keep people poor. |
| Welcome the Stranger | Liberal | 1 | Hospitality to outsiders: refugees, immigrants, and anyone on the margins. |
| Women Who Led | Liberal | 1 | Deborah, Mary Magdalene, Phoebe, and Junia: women leading God's people, then and now. |
| Racial Justice & Reconciliation | Liberal | 1.5 | Racism as sin, and the church's work of repair and reconciliation. |
| Radical Inclusion | Liberal | 1.5 | A table with room for everyone, LGBTQ people fully included in the life of the church. |
| Social Justice Call | Liberal | 1.5 | A call to act for the poor and the oppressed: fair wages, decent housing, and the dignity of every person. |
The church year
Every tradition except the Quakers keeps a church year. Western churches (Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Pentecostal) use the Western calendar; the Orthodox use the Eastern, with Pascha by the Julian reckoning (never earlier than Western Easter). The time bar shows the season and its liturgical colour.
| Western seasons | Colour | Eastern seasons | Colour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advent | violet | Nativity Fast | red |
| Christmastide | white | Nativity and Theophany | white |
| Season after Epiphany | green | Before Great Lent | gold |
| Lent | violet | Great Lent | violet |
| Holy Week | red | Holy Week | black |
| Eastertide | white | Paschal season | red |
| Ordinary Time | green | After Pentecost | gold |
Big Sundays
Some feasts make regulars more likely to come to a service near them, and newcomers feel it twice as much:
| Feast | Effect |
|---|---|
| Christmas, Easter Day (Western) | Regulars twice as likely to come (up to 98%); three times the usual newcomers. |
| Pascha (Eastern) | Even stronger than Western Easter. |
| Nativity of Christ (Eastern) | Nearly as strong as Christmas. |
| Palm Sunday, Theophany, Entry into Jerusalem | A little busier than usual. |
| Pentecost | Slightly busier. |
Christmas Eve
In every tradition with a church year, there's one 5 pm service on Christmas Eve for everyone, not just one service's share. People are two and a half times as likely to come (up to 98%), and four times the usual newcomers come with them. A church sized for an ordinary Sunday overflows and people stand. It's your best recruiting night of the year if you have the seats and the greeters: consider extra chairs, and every greeter and usher on duty.
Dressed for the day
Traditions with a church year notice whether the church is dressed for the season. After each service they compare the decor the day calls for with what the church owns, placed or in the cupboard: from −0.04 with none to +0.04 with all, scaled by the tradition's formality (in full for high-church traditions, a third for low).
| Item | Price | Out |
|---|---|---|
| Paraments | $2,400 | Always, in the colour of the day, on the altar, table, pulpit, and lectern |
| Advent wreath | $250 | Advent |
| Christmas Eve candles | $300 | Christmas through Christmastide |
| Easter lilies | $400 | Easter Day through the Easter season |
Church → Worship lists the decor the season calls for, with a Buy button for anything you're missing. All four together cost $3,350: an easy, permanent lift for any high-church parish.
Weddings and funerals
- Funerals. When one of the church's people dies, the funeral is held there five days later, on a weekday morning. About 25 come, plus a share of the congregation that grows with how long the person had come (15%, and 3% more a year, up to 80%). The church receives $300, and the family feel cared for (+0.05).
- Weddings of your own. Young adults (22 to 34) in the church marry at about 5% a year. Each wedding is on a Saturday afternoon and earns $400.
- Outside weddings. Couples from outside book a beautiful church, up to one a month for the grandest, for $2,500. How much they want yours depends half on the style's formality and half on the average looks of what stands in the worship space. A Gothic nave full of handsome furniture is a steady income.