This book equips the Methodist pastor, worship leader, or layperson to create meaningful worship moments for any group of people, any time, any place. It includes liturgies and prayers suitable for traditional settings such as worship services, funeral services, and administration of the sacraments. It includes words to use during hospital visits, retreats, church meetings, and other conventional settings. It provides words of blessing for departing members.

It also provides language for other spaces and places, like home blessings, blessings for foster care families, words for times of transition, liturgies for fresh expressions of the church, prayers before the beginning of work, language for protests and vigils, ritual moments for difficult conversations, and prayers for interreligious and ecumenical events. It offers words of lament to use after violent events and natural disasters. From pulpits to pews, from altar tables to dinner tables, from sanctuaries to streets, the Compact Guide can be used by all ministers—clergy and laity—to employ worshipful words as the Spirit leads.