February 20, 2015

“Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of G*d; that no “root of bitterness” spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled.” Hebrews 12:12ff

“I think our business as laymen is to take what we are given and make the best of it. And I think we should find this a great deal easier if what we are given was always and everywhere the same. To judge from their practice, very few…clergymen take this view. It looks as if they believed people can be lured to go to church by incessant brightenings, lightenings, lengthenings, abridgements, simplifications, and complications of the service. And it is probably true that a new, keen Vicar will usually be able to form within his parish a minority who are in favor of his innovations. The majority, I believe, never are. Those who remain….merely endure. Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they don’t go to church to be entertained.

A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on G*d. But every (innovation) prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about worship is a different thing from worshipping. A still worse thing may happen. Novelty may fix our attention not even on the worship but on the celebrant. Try as one may try to exclude it, the question “What on earth is he up to now?” will intrude.” C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963) “For All The Saints” volume III

In the Lutheran Church, many congregations have decided to print the entire service (hymns and all) in the bulletin. Even though there are hymnals in the pew, they do not need to be opened if the bulletin has all the details. Why would we do this? It is an effort to show hospitality to visitors who may not be familiar with the Lutheran worship service. But here is something that I have found: it helps with visitors and with long time worshipers alike. What do I mean? You see it allows all worshippers in the Lutheran Church to gain some consistency. Truthfully, we are not trying to complicate our worship experience. But by printing the service in the bulletin, we take away the distraction of dealing with hymnals that are not always user-friendly.

This allows us, as pastors, to use different liturgies more often, and to introduce new liturgies so that, when Lutherans travel to other areas and worship in an unfamiliar Lutheran Church, the possibility of knowing the liturgy and being familiar with it increases. Unfamiliarity with the liturgy is the 21st century “root of bitterness” because we have so many hymnals to choose from. And by providing as many worship aids as we can, we take the mind off “What are we doing now?”, and instead focus all minds collectively on Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving.

Pastor Dave