- LCMS Conference on Worship
- First Thoughts on LCMS Model Theological Conference
- Presentations
- Responders and Ohio Response
- Evidence of Differing Theologies
- The Extracurricular and The Peeps
- Model Theological Conference Audio Now Available
First of all, I would like to thank the LCMS Commission on Worship for paying for my trip, Ohio District President Terry Cripe for choosing to have a representative from Zion, and Pastor Kudart for asking me to go. What a privilege and a trip. Thank you.
Maybe not in this post alone, but I need to cover:
- The agenda and methods of discussion
- The worship services
- Institutional knowledge
- The presentations
- The responders, especially certain theology professors
- The Ohio District’s response
- Evidence of differing theologies
- Reliquae
- The overheard
- The extracurricular
- The people I met
With the exception of presentations that were given in the gym of Concordia-Kirkwood and after about 3pm on Tuesday, I had wireless access and was able to Twitter key thoughts during the conference. Do not take them as their quotes but as ideas I tried to get down in limited time and manual dexterity. You can follow the points at #LCMSMTC.
Agenda
It was clear ever since the first agendas came out that we weren’t going to solve the “worship wars” in 2½ days. Six presentations focused on general qualities that worship should be: Scriptural and Confessional, Pastoral and Sacramental, Personal and Contextual, Missional and Vocational (two approaches), and Practical and Theological.
Other than what Concordia-Kirkwood offered in its sanctuary and praise center, there were no samples of worship to critique. No bounds were discussed, and so my first expectation was not met.
Ted Kober of Ambassadors of Reconciliation, an LCMS Registered Service Organization, moderated the conference, and he did a good job of letting people discuss without things getting out of control on these emotional issues. He set forth ground rules that were very helpful.
Worship Services
It should be noted that the first agenda of the conference that came out had nothing that was labeled traditional or liturgical. The updated agenda that we received kicked off the conference with LSB Morning Prayer. I hope that means that there was some pre-conference feedback about what we were to be doing.
All services were printed in a large worship folder, which was usable, but all the hymns and songs only had melody. We ended up having to pick out harmonies on the better hymns or pull the LSB out of the pews for hymns like, “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright.”
The worship services were represented as a “traditional” Morning Prayer service, a “blended” Evening Prayer service, a “contemporary” Morning Prayer service, and a “contemporary” Eucharist service. To Concordia-Kirkwood’s credit, all services had some semblance of liturgical form and could even be recognized as Lutheran. Blended looked like traditional accompanied by praise band instruments in a somewhat reverent way, except for one song. Unfortunately, the worship that we saw were not examples of what we have in the Synod, whether traditional, blended, or contemporary.
I asked DP Terry Cripe what he thought after the contemporary service, which had two theologically light songs and two songs that actually had some meat on them. Pastor Cripe noted the older contemporary songs were indeed terrible, but the better songs were newer. It seemed that song writers have heard some criticism.
Institutional Knowledge
Several pastors made use of institutional knowledge in their presentations. One pastor used hymns such as “Thy Strong Word” and “We All Believe in One True God.” Another used the liturgical Psalm 51, “Create in Me a Clean Heart, O God.” When those were brought out, the assembly was encouraged to sing along. I wonder if the church plants who avoid liturgy and Lutheran hymns will be able to sing these in 20 years.
More to come.
Dan,
Thanks again for the tweets and this report. I was hoping to see tweets and reports like this from the “gatherings”. I’ll be late to the party, but I’ll try to do it from Newport Beach as practice for Houston.
I’ve been following your Twitter feed on this conference with some interest, and I’m looking forward to your blog series on it. Thanks for putting forth the effort!
I have been eagerly waiting for these posts! Thanks so much for sharing (and continuing to share).
I am interested in which contemporary songs were used in the blended and contemporary services.
It was a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Dan.
Thanks for starting a series on this. Pastor Weedon has done the same, and I have inaugurated a series also over at Liturgy Solutions.
We are all hitting on different, but related, aspects of the conference, but all of us have questions about the worship services. Perhaps because the synod emailed us a survey with so many questions about them!
I forwarded a couple of questions to David Johnson & Jon Vieker at the Commission on Worship, since they oversaw the worship planning. I look forward to learning more about the rationale behind the choices that were made for worship at this model conference.
As an aside, I find it interesting that you referred to one of the services as “contemporary”. Which one was that? I don’t think we really experienced “contemporary” worship. We did hear a model praise band, who did a very fine job and who should be thanked for offering their talents. But we experienced a fairly narrow slice of LCMS worship, and I wonder if that was by design or by virtue of some limitations.
Cantor Magness, likewise, it was a pleasure.
I actually referred to two services as “billed as” contemporary: the morning prayer of the second day and the Eucharist. I share your assessment that they did not reflect what is going on in those churches that do not use the liturgy.
That survey was interesting. I recall answering one of the questions as, “I learned that it doesn’t take an organ to drag.” Perhaps they wanted to emphasize that it was evening; I don’t know.
The praise band performed well, but there’s a couple of things mulling around in my brain that I may address in later posts, such as the aspect of worshiping together when a praise band leader is amplified to be more than the congregation and the aspect of a female worship leader leading a corporate litany of repentance that confessed no original sin (p. 33 of the folder). Little things like these, where some people dismiss or don’t see what is going on, speak a lot.
As I keep saying, more to come, despite my additional non-churchly vocations.
I’m following these posts with much interest since I am also in the Ohio District.
Thanks for making the information available.
Christine