A Simplified Guide to Worshiping As Lutherans

Waddell

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781498275163
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book was prepared for lay people, congregational leaders, pastors, church musicians, worship leaders, and worship committees. It provides an answer for those who are asking the question: What does it mean to worship as a Lutheran in the twenty-first century?The goal of the book is twofold:In today's context, with so many different and confusing opinions about worship, this book provides lay people and pastors with a clear and understandable presentation of Lutheran theology for Lutheran worship.It gives positive direction and equips worship leaders with concrete practical tools to evaluate contemporary worship forms, when these forms are considered for use in the Lutheran congregation.

1

A Pastor’s Story

First, to introduce this whole topic of A Simplified Guide to Worshiping As Lutherans, I want to say something about my own story and how this project came about. It originated out of my experience as a parish pastor leading worship in a local congregation.

I was baptized as an infant in the Lutheran Church, raised in the conservative Midwest, in small-town, rural Missouri; also in Nebraska, where my family have been members of the same Lutheran congregation for nearly forty years.

Throughout my life I have been a member of, or have served in some capacity, twelve Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod congregations, three of which I served as pastor. Most of these congregations used The Lutheran Hymnal (1941). A few of them used Lutheran Worship (1982). And in all three of the congregations I served as pastor, we chanted the liturgy; in one almost all the liturgy was chanted every Sunday; in the others we chanted parts of the liturgy.

During my seminary training in the 1980s we were taught to value the assumptions of a particular point of view on worship known as Liturgical Theology, even though we did not call it Liturgical Theology.1 (I will say more about these assumptions in chapters 4 and 5.) For now I will just make the following brief points.

Liturgical Theology holds a very high view of the church’s liturgy. It values the liturgical traditions of the church passed down from generation to generation. And it promotes the exclusive use of those traditions.

Liturgical Theology takes as its primary source of worship the printed hymnal. Its primary instrument is the pipe organ. And its primary music is expressed in classical forms and traditional hymns. Some have even gone so far as to say that the Lutheran chorale is a mark of the true church.2 Liturgical Theology is suspicious of all “contemporary” forms of worship. It questions anything that has arisen from Western popular culture, or anything that has not been tested by time.

Liturgical Theology holds a very high view of the sacraments—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These sacraments are precious gifts from God, delivering for us sinners God’s unmerited grace and unconditional promise of salvation in the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ. Liturgical Theology rightly values the delivery of these gifts in the sacraments. For this Liturgical Theology should be praised.

But for me, during the early years of my theological study, there was a nagging uncertainty that went along with all the rejoicing in these treasures of the church. I could not quite put my finger on the source of the uncertainty, but it was always there. I trusted what my mentors taught me by day. And I read the writings of our faith late into the wee hours of every morning.

I read the Scriptures. I read the Lutheran Confessions in the Book of Concord. I studied the sources. And I internalized the theology I received from these precious documents. As I considered all the assumptions of Liturgical Theology, I found myself repeatedly coming back to Article VII of the Augsburg Confession and Article X of the Formula of Concord. Article VII is the church’s great confession defining the church; Article VII defines the church on the basis of the Gospel and the sacraments, apart from humanly instituted ceremonies. Formula of Concord X is the church’s confession of church ceremonies as adiaphora.3

I diagramed Article VII and drew connections between the German and the Latin versions, trying to reconcile the assumptions of Liturgical Theology with our confession of the church and her ceremonies. Liturgical Theology sounded appealing. And I was (and still am) fully committed to my unconditional subscription to the Lutheran Confessions.4 I worked with all my might to fit the two together.

But the nagging uncertainty persisted. As long as I studied the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions through the lens of Liturgical Theology, I was troubled by the thought that something was not quite right.

It was like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. To make it fit, you must either change the shape of the peg or change the shape of the hole. But then you end up with something entirely different. On the one hand I had Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. On the other hand I had Liturgical Theology. And I was not about to change Scripture or the Lutheran Confessions to fit my Liturgical Theology. Although, as it turns out, this is precisely what some in the church are doing today. (This is a criticism that cuts in both directions, because there are also those in the church today who misread Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions to defend their uncritical adoption of contemporary forms of worship; I will say more about this in chapter 4.)

When I was called to parish ministry I had neither the time nor the desire to worry about the contemporary worship issue. My first call was to a dual-parish in northeast Missouri, and of the hundred or so people who regularly worshiped only one asked for contemporary worship. So from a purely practical point of view it made no sense even to consider contemporary worship.

Then I accepted the divine call to serve a congregation in Michigan. Several of the leaders of the congregation asked for a contemporary worship service. As soon as I began my ministry there I found out why. The congregation had experienced a three-year pastoral vacancy, and leadership in worship suffered as a result. Hymns were selected that the congregation could not, or would not, sing. And the liturgy was so badly done, it was no wonder the people were asking for something different. So one of the first things I did as their pastor was focus on doing the liturgy well. But even then, the requests for contemporary worship continued.

I resisted their request for almost two years, during which time I tried reasoning with my flock. “The historic liturgy is the only form of worship that pleases God,” I said.

“Well, pastor, how do you know?”

“All contemporary worship is based on false doctrine,” I said.

“But, pastor, where does it say that in Scripture?”

“The hymns of our tradition are time-tested and time-honored by the church. This is not true of contemporary worship songs,” I said.

“But, pastor, who says they have to be time-tested and time-honored?” And the conversation went on like that.

As a parish pastor I have always taken seriously the responsibility to teach the members of my congregation. So I scheduled a series of talks on worship. My goal was to offer my congregation the opportunity to study the sources together and to teach these searching souls that the historic liturgy was the only way for us to go. I honestly expected the request for contemporary worship to go away after this. My method for achieving this goal was to present to the members of my congregation passages from the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions which I thought supported Liturgical Theology. I was comfortably secure that all the assumptions of Liturgical Theology would win the day, and that the members of my parish would rejoice in the gift God had given to his church, the historic liturgy, and abandon their “whim” of wanting a contemporary service.

As I prepared to teach the flock entrusted to my care, I poured over Scripture and studied the Lutheran Confessions, Article XV of the Augsburg Confession on ceremonies, Article XXIV on the Mass, Articles VII & VIII of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession on the church. I found myself returning to Article VII of the Augsburg Confession on the church and Formula of Concord X on ceremonies. Many passages throughout the Lutheran Confessions echo what Article VII confesses about humanly instituted ceremonies, and they consistently hold these two points in distinction from each other—the pure Gospel and the sacraments on the one hand, and humanly instituted rites and ceremonies in liturgy on the other hand. This point will be revisited in more detail in chapter 3.

I studied the writings of Martin Luther, his Latin Mass of 1523 and his German Mass of 1526. I studied the early Luther and the later Luther, his Lectures on Galatians (1519, 1535), the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), and Luther’s On Christian Freedom (1520). I read Luther’s A Treatise on the New Testament (1520), The Misuse of the Mass (1521), and his Invocavit Sermons of 1522. I studied Luther’s Against the Heavenly Prophets (1525), his Exhortation to the Livonians (1525), his Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528), his Exhortation to All Clergy Assembled at Augsburg (1530), Luther’s Psalm Commentaries (1530, 1535), personal letters, and literally dozens of other writings of the Reformer.

I studied Philip Melanchthon’s writings, his Loci Communes, his Commentary on Romans, various personal correspondences, and other Latin texts from the Corpus Reformatorum.5 Mostly I focused on Melanchthon’s detailed arguments in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. There is an enormous amount of material there related to the Gospel, the sacraments, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A Pastor’s Story
• Chapter 2: The State of the Conversation about Worship Today
• Chapter 3: What Is Worship?
• Chapter 4: Lutheran Assumptions about Worship
• Chapter 5: More about Assumptions and Methodology
• Chapter 6: Worship As Adiaphora
• Chapter 7: Worship As Confession
• Chapter 8: Lutheran Theology for Lutheran Worship
• Chapter 9: Worship and Culture
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: An Outline for Worshiping As Lutherans
• Appendix 2: A Tool to Evaluate Songs for Worshiping As Lutherans
• Glossary