02 June 2009
On LSB and Traveling
One of the nicest things about worshipping at Immanuel in Alexandria was the utter familiarity of it all. Here we were, strangers in a church we'd never been in before, and yet as soon as the worship started, how completely at home we were. We sang the liturgy in the harmonies we sing at home; we got to sing lots of hymns we knew well; the book was the same. The loss of that in the previous decades brought more difficulties than I think we can even begin to imagine, but now to go elsewhere and see (in nearly every LCMS Church) the same book and to find it being richly used in so many places - well, it's nothing short of a miracle. And for every kooky church that dumps the liturgy or attempts to "blend" it (like the proverbial dog poop and brownies), there are many, many churches where it is simply USED. And used well. May their numbers increase among us until the CW debacle fades like a nightmare!
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13 comments:
Can you briefly refresh me on the CW debacle? Or did you mean LW debacle? Say no more if you mean LW debacle.
Contemporary Worship debacle.
The CW thing threw me a curve as well. I couldn't remember any Morse Code controversies in the Lutheran Church. (In Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, Morse Code is referred to as CW.)
In WELS, CW refers to "Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal"
Better still, we use the LSB out here in the UK, and it's used in some other corners of English-speaking Lutherandom. So next time you travel to England, Wales or Scotland, you know that you can find a Lutheran (ELCE) church and carry on where you left off at your home congregation.
I whole-heartedly agree with Pr. Weedon that, while I would have made the LSB different in many respects, the church worshipping uniformly is a price worth paying for not getting one's own hobby-horses in.
P.S. The Church of England's current authorised book of worship (alongside the BCP) is yet another CW - Common Worship. Whether this one is a debacle, I won't say...
To clarify: When I said "Better still", I meant that the situation is even better than that described in the post - the LSB is international as well as intra-Missourian.
As one of the first congregations to use LSB and help introduce it in our circuit, I can only say Amen! Ora et labora in Christ will bring about good fruit that will last.
Bill,
As someone who in the mid 1980's had to study TLH, LW AND LBW in "Worship for Lutherans" classes at C-SP, I heartily agree that the LSB is a Godsend. Even if everyone doesn't love it, the benefits far outweigh the division and confusion that having three different hymnals caused...
And it makes it easier on the pastors in those Lenten pulpit exchanges to have the same hymnal to refer to as well, I might add. :o)
M.D.
There is no doubt that LSB is a great step forward for straight-up Lutheranism, and that such an effort and product could emerge from LCMS was one of the main reasons why I changed synods to be in LCMS.
That said, the step forward was not so much putting aside the confusion and division of three hymnals as putting it within one set of covers rather than three.
The real progress toward leaving the contemporary worship debacle behind us will happen when a future service book leaves behind the contemporary worship IN the LSB.
Contemporary worship isn't about guitars, praise bands, praise services and street clothes. That's just one way to do what contemporary worship is all about, which is abandoning the historic liturgy and zealously guarding and defending it, retaining the ceremonies previously in use insofar as possible, as our Confessions describe.
Once one does that, it makes no difference whether one turns to 1960s Rome or Willow Creek for what comes next: one has abandoned the Lutheran way and sought to infuse a Lutheran content into something that is what it is precisely because it denies Lutheran content, and has the same result whether that alignment with heterodox churches comes with oragns and vestments or guitars and praise services.
The former may be less apparent, but it is no less real. Therefore considerably more dangerous.
Thanks for the clarification on "CW." I was thinking of the WELS hymnal, which I thought had pretty well penetrated the denomination without much ado.
I had to think about "CW" for a moment, too. It's a problem with abbreviationization of American Lutherans. Amongst the "conservatives" in the ELCA (pronounce each letter, please, it's not the name of a statuesque blonde), whenever I see comments on "CCM" I have to keep reading to discover if it's "Contemporary Christian Music" or our agreement with the Episcopal Church (Called to Common Mission).
Pax, Steven+
Who finds LSB much more tempting than (blecch!) ELW.
I too love the LSB but I am not one of those who found LW so distasteful. I participated in its introduction in 1982 and used it gladly until Oct 2006 when we introduced LSB. There would not have been an LSB without LW. We should not forget it. Plus the Nagel introduction in LW makes up for anything else lacking therein.
Fr. Peters,
I don't think of the LW as all bad - what was bad was the fact that it didn't win widespread acceptance across Synod and we erupted into TLH parishes, LW parishes, LBW parishes, and some TLH/LW parishes and all this hit at the exact time that desktop publishing took off (and do your own liturgies) and CW assaulted us. We'd have been stronger to resist the allure of CW and "the liturgy I made up last night" if we'd been united in our hymnal.
As for the Nagel preface - purest gold!!!
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