Lutheranism 101 - Part 10 - The Third Commandment Part II

Last week we talked about the specifics of the Third Commandment. Today I would like to talk about what the Third Commandment calls us to do. That is of course worship. What is worship and what does it include? For many years every Lutheran church had pretty much the same worship service. The songs might have been different, but they were still all hymns. The pastors might have preached on different readings but they all had the same readings. Lutheran churches were kind of like McDonalds, pretty much the same wherever you went. Everybody seemed perfectly happy about that as well. The church was strong and it grew, mainly through the maternity ward, but it grew. Then thirty or so years ago something happened. The church began to decline. Many younger people got tired of the same old thing week after week. They wanted more upbeat music. They got tired of the old textual analytical sermons that Lutheran pastors preached. They were very scholarly but they didn't connect with most people. The result was people began to leave the LCMS in droves. Our church body at one point was close to 3 million now it is closer to 2.4 million and getting smaller. As a result many pastors began to study what worship was really about. Many came to the conclusion that there were other ways of doing worship. They found that Scripture doesn't tell us to worship in a certian way. Most of the reasons Lutheran churches had done things the way they did them was because of tradition and not Scripture. As Lutherans they valued tradition, but they also realized that it was getting in the way of growth in the church. The result, many Lutheran pastors and churches began to add contemporary worship services. The churches that did this began to see growth again, but they also began to see conflict. There were many in the church that saw these worship services as a bad thing. This lead to what has been called worship wars. The traditional people said that the new worship services didn't have any substance, they were watered down. The contemporary people said the traditional services were boring and dead spiritually. Which group was right you may ask? I would say both of them were. Many of the contemporary worship services were without substance and were just fun gatherings with no real point. Many of the traditional services were boring with dead music and pastors droning on about our blessed Dr. Martin Luther.
So where is the middle ground? That is the struggle that every pastor and congregation faces today. How can we worship God reverently and yet make it interesting and relevant so that people are drawn to the church and then stay in the church? First of all there are two wrong answers to that question. Some say we don't need to make it interesting, if they want entertainment let them stay home and watch TV. The problem with that answer is that is exactly what they are going to do. Hence the dwindling numbers in our church body. The other wrong answer is we need to get rid of all the old traditional stuff and make the church more like our culture so everyone feels comfortable. In other words don't offend anyone. The problem with that is we are called to be different than our culture and we are called to worship God and follow his will even when we don't like it.
So what is the answer? Well that depends on the community that you are in, the size of your church and what your mission is. The answer is a little bit different for every congregation. Many congregations have gone to blended worship for instance. In blended worship you have liturgy and creeds like in the traditional service, but you also have new music and sermons that speak to people in common language they use everyday. You can also bring in drama or puppets or dance or videos and a number of others things. Some churches have addressed the issue by having a number of different services. They have a traditional service, a blended service and a contemporary service.
The most important thing in worship is that you get to hear God's Word, receive his forgiveness, sing his praises and also participate in the sacraments. How you arrange that is not Scripturally mandated. Again every church can do it differently depending on who they are trying to reach.

So what type of service do you like? Go ahead and post your answers in the comments section. I will start it off by saying that I like blended worship for the following reasons. I don't like the sound of an organ and I don't like most hymns, I find them slow and boring. At the same time I don't like yeah, yeah, yeah music with no point and I don't like sermons on lite weight topics. I do like some structure in my worship. I also like good songs that I can sing and enjoy. I like to be able to move to the music. I also have children. I will be so bold to say that if you have children and are attending a traditional church you need to join another church that does more modern worship. If you don't they will leave the church as soon as they can and they will be bored the whole time before that. Pastors and churches always complain about losing kids after confirmation, but the biggest problem is they are boring them with bad music, and boring traditions. I have a daughter who moves to music in her sleep, she would die in a traditional service.
In our next installment I will talk about the various worship traditions that observed in the Lutheran church.

Pastor Fred