Lutheran Worship

Lutheran disunity is an unfortunate fact, and I understand that all of this can be bewildering to outsiders.  But lets start off with Lectionaries...

The Lutheran Service Book is the current standard book for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.  That is the body of which I am currently a member. You include the 3 year (which in my experience most use) as well as the 1 year, and so we are covered.

The Largest Lutheran body in the USA is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  They have used the Revised Common Lectionary since 1995 (I think).  This Lectionary is included with Logos already, and while some of the special festivals in their current hymnal are not included, the basic functionality is there.

Next is size is the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and if I recall, their lectionary is also included in Logos.  I think their hymnal is called Christian Worship, but I may be a bit off.  While I have been a member of both of the above, and used Logos as a member of both of the above, I have never been a part of WELS, and so cannot say how well it is served...

There are smaller groups (I spent a brief time in LCMC, and have a sister in NALC) as well as Canadian groups affiliated with some of the above, but they use closely related lectionaries.  The ELCA and the Canadian sister for her DO use different Old Testament choices from the RCL, however, but this is an issue with anyone who adopts the RCL - there are two different series of OT readings during common time.

So, to best of my understanding of the English speaking North American context, you cover the Lutheran Lectionaries used.

That said, the way lectionaries are implemented in Logos 4/5 is a bit clunky, and I personally found the way in Libronix 3 to be more useful.  This is hardly a Lutheran only concern, and has been brought up in this forum before.  I hope that with the talk of liturgical year datatype, that much of this would be addressed at the same time.

SDG

Ken McGuire

As far as specific worship BOOKS, it depends on what all you want integrated into Logos.  Personally, it has been a few years since I was involved in worship planning, so my knowledge is a bit dated...

In the ELCA, much of it is done using Augsburg-Fortress's website http://www.sundaysandseasons.com/ This site integrates the older resources from the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW), the supplement With One Voice (WOV), and the new hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) AND the annual sourcebooks Sundays and Seasons.  I don't remember, but it may also include This Far by Faith, an African American resource, as well.  The full liturgical information is in the Minsters/Leaders Edition of the print versions of these hymnals, but the hymns themselves are in the pew edition and not these leader editions.  The pew editions have the basic liturgical information, but do not include full detail, especially for special services.  There are also additional texts available to give more information based upon these books...

I have not been involved in worship planning in the LCMS, but we do have an electronic resource called Lutheran Service Builder.  My impression is that is does similar things to the above website, but uses the LCMS texts.  A decade ago we in LCMS probably used more base hymnals than the ELCA did.  Most then used the 1982 hymnal, but some still used the 1941 one, and a few used the above LBW - which actually started as a LCMS project.  And then there was a 1997 (I think) supplement...  Now we have a new hymnal - Lutheran Service Book, and from what I see, it has generally replaced all of the above.  We in the LCMS use the old term "agenda" for the leader editions of these books...

That said, we Lutherans define ourselves by confession of faith and not liturgically.  We give latitude for local variation in our confessions, and in these days of document processing for service folders and overhead projectors, it is easy to supplement/replace things for local concerns.  Unfortunately at times these have been a subject of ugly "Worship Wars".  These may be simmering away in the minds of many, but there seems to be little open fighting now.  But if you are designing something for practical use by us Lutherans, you should make a way to easily substitute things in place of the "official" material.

SDG
Ken McGuire

Peace, Gabe!               *smile*                                                                   I'm a retired LCMS Pastor  -- what Ken says ....   that's really good -- well-presented indeed!                                                   you should make that one of your favourites!  

                              He is "right on"!               *smile*                                                I agree 99 44/100 %, eh???!!!

Well-Done, Ken!                    You said it just right!

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It is  not necessarily to read the following:                      *smile*    .... only presented here for your possible interest        --           From The New York Times

Lutheran Service Book and Lutheran Book of Worship (Red, Green and newest) are the ones I'm familiar with. They include prayers, orders of service, morning/evening prayer. I'm not as familiar with them as with the Book of Common Prayer - their psalter has not been so influential

TLH, 1941 = usually red, but have seen blue too...

SBH, 1958 = Red book

LBW, 1978 = Green book

LW, 1982 = Blue book

ELW, 2006 = Cranberry book

LSB, 2006 = Burgundy book

Probably the last two will both be called the red book by those who don't remember the existence of the older red books, or have not lived in both streams...

All include prayers, orders of service including morning and evening prayer and hymns in their common pew editions.  All include at least a selected psalter.  LBW uses basically the same revision of the BCP psalter as the American BCP of 1979.  LW uses NIV, LSB uses ESV, and ELW uses an inclusivized variant of the BCP (I think).

But all have fuller liturgical information (eg. Ash Wednesday Service orders, proper alleluia and offertory verses, etc.) in special editions for leaders which do not have all the hymns.

For some fuller info see: http://www.lutheranforum.org/extras/reforming-the-daily-office-examining-two-new-lutheran-books/

re: issues with implementation of lectionaries - I basically agree.  Would also like to add sermons4kids..

SDG

Ken

A brief, a bit over-simplified history of Lutheran Worship.

Martin Luther was a Roman Catholic Monk/Friar who had some theological issues with the medieval mass, chiefly that it turned a great gift of God to and for us into something we were giving - or buying off - to God.  As a result, he offered some reforms - largely by cutting out some offensive language, and inserting a varying amount of German text.  As the Lutheran reformation spread to different areas, it was implemented with various church orders - and in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire and eventually Scandinavia, these varied from place to place.  Many scholars have found it convenient to divide them into two families, depending on which of Luther's orders it was more influenced by - namely his Latin Formula of the Mass and his German Mass.  Even when Bach came along in the 18th century, some places would still use a mainly Latin Mass, and so besides some German Mass settings, he wrote the great Latin B minor Mass.  Also, when the first person was ordained in the New World, it was in a Latin service - it was the common language of the Swedes, the Dutch, and the Germans - all of whom were involved (or at least the educated among them).

When the pietist movement came along, many pietists had at best a love/hate relationship with fixed worship forms.  And when the Rationalists came along, they definitely didn't have a place for that mumbo-jumbo.  The rite became less and less as time went on.

When Lutherans came to this country, they (or their pastors) brought with them the rites they used in the homeland - which varied from place to place.  When they wanted to worship in English, the existing rite from a small Lutheran congregation in London was used, or forms were borrowed (or taken back?) from the Church of England.  Or they worshiped like their neighbors.

There are still some Lutherans who continue this freedom.  But most have been heavily influenced by some streams of liturgical renewal.  The first key figure for this renewal was a Bavarian pastor named J.K.W. Loehe.  He trained hundreds of people to help out the Lutheran diaspora, and he was quite interested in bringing back traditional worship forms.  His Agenda was quite influential in German speaking Lutheranism, if for no other reason than he sent over hundreds of emergency pastors from his small parish into the mission fields (USA, Australia, to some extent various South American countries).

Also quite important was the Common Service.  English speaking Lutherans got together to come up with a standard rite.  The basic principle was status quo, pro ante - they looked at as many 16th century Lutheran church orders as they could, and tried to develop a consensus of what was done then.  The work was originally done by the United Synod South, with consultation with the General Synod and General Council in the 1880's (I think - I really should look this up I suppose)  These were the major East coast groups - and major English speaking groups of the time.  The midwesterners were still quite dominated by the language of the old country, but as they transitioned to English, they largely all adopted the Common Service as well - with their own hymn collection...

Meanwhile, there was the Oxford movement in the Church of England (which had a bit of influence on Loehe) and then the Liturgical movement in the Church of Rome.  This lead to a great deal of knowledge of the history of the various rites, as well as information about how rites work.  In this country, the first official dipping our toes into this was the Service Book and Hymnal of 1958, which largely kept the now traditional Lutheran common service, but included options for the beginnings of a Eucharistic Prayer.  But the major "change" was with the Lutheran Book of Worship (and the various study works leading to it).  It was attempting to take the best of Liturgical Scholarship of the time, and to give voice to it guided by Lutheran thought.  The framework was not 16th century rites, which were based on the Liturgy of St. Peter - a liturgy so simple a priest could do it by himself - but rather those discovered by people like Dom Dix and other figures who spoke of the liturgy as the work of the people.  Not only the worship framework was new, (or ancient new?) but also the tunes were new (with the exception of an old Gregorian chant based setting that was only used by a few Swedish congregations in the USA), designed to be easily singable.

Those bodies which formed the ELCA jumped into this.  There was a bit of resistance, but the old Elizabethan language seemed quite old-fashioned, and they generally viewed themselves as Americans instead of transplanted Europeans...  The LCMS was hesitant - for multiple reasons - some because of a more specifically GERMAN identity, and also because of distrust of other Lutherans.  They officially did not approve the new hymnal, and soon created their own hymnal based upon much of the work leading to the LBW, but implemented in a more conservative fashion, and also including the old Common Service as an option.  And so in the 1980's I had to try to (unsuccessfully) explain to a German exchange student why two different Lutheran churches in our town used the same music, and basically the same service from different books...

And then personal computers came out making it easier to cut and paste their own materials, seeker sensitive worship, some attempts to be more Catholic than the Pope in our worship (in some corners, and yes I am exaggerating for comedic effect), and the contemporary scene.

SDG

Ken McGuire

As for what's wrong with the current lectionary implementation:

• need to be able to select more than one lectionary as favorites to support alternatives such as the Creation Lectionary, Office of Readings Lectionary etc.
• need to have liturgical calendar devotionals
• need to be able to link resources for scrolling by liturgical date

What would be nice supporting infrastructure:

• ability to link a note to multiple passages
• a lectionary guide - similar to passage guide but automatically tabbed for each of the passages, with a lectionary resource section and a link to Text This Week (and denominational appropriate resource sites if they are maintained).
• ability to indicate choices -  between optional celebrations, between readings, short vs. long form, regioanal or religious order variations - and have one's lectionary reflect that choice

Since MJ is asking the Anglicans to tag on here, I will also link an older topic where MJ came up with some good suggestions, and I tagged on...

http://community.logos.com/forums/t/56667.aspx

SDG