Lutheran Love Week 1: Liturgy

After nine years of being in ministry, I have seen a lot in the three churches where I have served, especially the battles our churches have had when comparing us to other churches bodies. No matter how much you learn about your own denomination in Seminary, there is a brutal reality you face when you watch other denominations grow, and then have to ask yourself what are you doing wrong. Like anything, we sometimes have a knee jerk reaction to seeing other churches thrive. This can easily get us into trouble, not to mention leave behind some of our rich history in a quick decision to try and keep up with current trends. By now you know I am all about using current ways to reach people, such as the Internet, blogs, and screens, but those are elements that don’t compromise our rich traditional history. There are other areas I feel like people have compromised in haste, instead of asking themselves the bigger question of why our rich history is not reaching our current culture. I’m writing this series with two purposes in mind: one, to help us talk about our history and explain how it fits into our current culture; and two, to help those who lack the knowledge of our history to understand, and perhaps grow to love, parts of our service that might have been confusing before.

We begin week 1 with the liturgy. This is an area that is easily compromised in a desire to reach our current culture. I think often the debate is really about music. Unfortunately, liturgy often gets thrown out when people go with newer music. However, when we take the time to step back and ask ourselves questions about the parts of the service, we can see that the liturgy serves a purpose, makes us unique, and helps our worshipers hear the Gospel message throughout the service, not just during the sermon or in the hymns.

Liturgy is the language of the Word of God. We hear it spoken to us, and then we respond with the same language. The liturgy is another part of worship that speaks God’s grace. This weekend we take time to see the traditions of that language being used in the Old Testament, how they translated it into the New Testament, and how that connects to our use of liturgy today.