Liturgy And The Youth

Pastor Matthew Harrison who is now president of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod talking about youth and the liturgy.

HT Paul McCain

So, What Are The Rubrics For Liturgical Thundersticks During Worship?

So, what are the rubrics for when Christian’s gather to worship and wish to incorporate the use of “thundersticks” into worship? Does anybody know? I can’t find the required rubrics anywhere in the Lutheran Service book! Why is that?

First we need to define some terms…

Rubrics are according to the Lutheran Cyclopedia are “Directions for conducting services; the name is derived from the red ink often used for them, in distinction from the text of the service, in black ink.” Another way of putting that is that the rubrics tell us how to conduct the Divine Service so that everything moves and is conducted in an orderly fashion. There have been rubrics governing the conduct of the Divine Service since God instituted congregational worship in Leviticus. If you think that Leviticus is nothing more than a bunch of rules for an Old Testament Israel to follow then the rest of this post will not make any sense whatsoever. Just sayin’…

Thundersticks according to Wikipedia are “sometimes known as cheerstix, bangers or bambams, are long, narrow plastic balloons that are used as promotional noise makers. The noise is created when two thundersticks are struck together. They are most often used at sporting events, political rallies and concerts.”

Worship was defined by the reformation era Lutherans as the gathering of the faithful where the marks of the Church were present, that is to say, where the people could go to hear the Word preached purely and the Sacraments administered rightly. The center of the Christian’s spiritual life has always been the gathering together for worship and this is why our confessions point to the “marks” for the very definition of what the Church is.

So, back to my question… what are the rubrics for when Christian’s gather to worship and wish to incorporate the use of “thundersticks” into worship? Maybe I need to explain why I’m asking the question to begin with.

At July’s National Youth Gathering one of the mass events featured thundersticks used en masse (pun intended) by both those leading the service as well as by the kids. As I have been set straight by one of the workers for the mass events that “were not considered a "worship service," but were considered worship” I think it’s only fair that we make certain that our kids don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the use thundersticks during worship is in any way similar to their use in baseball or football games.

It is crucial that we teach our children that order in worship should be of the utmost importance and that rubrics help facilitate such order. How can expect our children to return to their grandfather’s church and those dusty old hymnals if we don’t take the liturgical use of thundersticks seriously and write rubrics for the time-honored use of these joyful noisemakers?

To not properly incorporate thundersticks into the worship life of our congregations through ordered rubrics would simply turn our worship services into something resembling pagan sporting events and profane the holy things of the Church. We don’t want that do we? No, we don’t.

It’s all about setting an example for our children it is.

The Quote of The Week From A Friend On Facebook

Today’s quote of the week is from one of my friends on Facebook commenting on the recent revelation that an air traffic controller let his children direct airplanes from the JFK tower:

_______ is marveling at how everyone gets worked up over a kid repeating ground control instructions when even the pilots got a kick out of it, while no one gets upset over the notion of a youth-lead worship service.

What a brilliant observation! Think my friend and I are being too harsh? I don’t, not at all.

Well, you see, I have some personal experience with “youth-lead worship.” One of the last “worship” experiences I participated in, before leaving the faith for fifteen excruciatingly long years of atheism, had the youth of my congregation running the entire service dressed up as clowns while late sixties rock and roll (selected by me) blared in the sanctuary. With the hope of being seen as relevant and cool; the youth group I was a part of was allowed to take the holy things of God and profane them for all to see.

Boy did we pat ourselves on the back that day. Looking back, it is one of the most shameful things I’ve ever done and as sinful as I am… that's saying a lot.

That singular event is one of the primary reasons I cringe every time someone explains that we need to stop looking so much like church to reach the so called unchurched. The less we look like church the easier it is to look like a bunch of kids in clown suits.

"What Would You Rather Have; A Religion Or A Relationship?"

I received an email earlier this week that I wanted to address but couldn’t because of my work schedule being ramped up to get ready for a couple of weeks out of town. A friend of mine has written me that she has been visiting a very traditional congregation that uses the historic liturgy and sings the time tested hymnody sung by conservative congregations across denominational lines to supplement her Sunday morning worship at a congregation that has departed from, by all outward appearances, looking like a historic Lutheran church that your grandparents would recognize and be pleased with.

Let’s look at two of the more bizarre practices before I ask my questions:

The pastor has rewrote the ecumenical creeds for the congregation to
confess.

The people get to stand up at a point in the worship service and say
like the good folks at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church: “The bible I hold is God's word from cover to cover. It makes me wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. It is useful for teaching, correcting, rebuking,and training me how to live. I need to read listen and learn from God's word every day. This is most certainly true.”

If I had to endure either of these situations this I’d be looking for a way to supplement my Sunday worship just like my friend has choosen to do. I’ve wrote several posts detailing why I can’t return a home church because the pastor not only rewrote the creeds to the point I wasn’t even sure he was talking about a confession of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but he rewrote the Lord’s Prayer in such a way that even the Dali Lama could agreed with the text. Nope, ain’t gonna go back there…

So, since it’s become public knowledge that my friend is supplementing her Sunday morning worship with visits to a more traditional worship setting she has been under a good deal of pressure to stop visiting the more traditional congregation and “looking deeper into liturgy”. She writes:

“Pastor doesn’t' really approve of what we are doing and has already challenged us with questions like "what would you rather have; a religion or a relationship."”

What? Religion or a relationship? Is that what a liturgical, traditional congregation is, just a religion? Really?

Now, I promised some folks that since I’m a bit busy I’d give my readers the opportunity to address the question; “what would you rather have; a religion or a relationship?” I said I’d put this post up a few days ago but I wanted to get my friends permission to include actual quotes from her email.

So… for the discussion please address the dichotomy of religion versus relationships in the context of visiting or being a member of a traditional, liturgical congregation (and is that a false dichotomy?) and what does Scripture say concerning religion versus relationship when speaking of the faithful gathering to worship the crucified and risen Lord.

Discuss. What say you?

Thoughts On A Thesis Of Worship(?)

The following is what I sent to a friend of mine after he emailed me the Theses on Worship issued by the Council of Presidents and asked for my ever so humble opinion (I actually hadn’t seen them myself until Monday as I’ve been pretty busy with matters outside and off of the interweb):

While I have a love for theology I’m certainly not a trained theologian. I’m also by no means a wordsmith or anything approaching a good communicator. That being said; this document is a convoluted mess that a council of trained theologians should be embarrassed to issue! My thoughts on the thesis are as follows:

· We’ve surrendered the word worship to the evangelical view that worship is something that we do instead a Divine Service where it is God who gives His gifts.
· The liturgy is adiaphoria so we can each do what is right in our own eyes and anyone who says otherwise is only doing so to burden the souls who seek to experience God through their worship. In other words, AC XV 1 should be ignored and we amend AC XV to simply say all liturgy is a human tradition and therefore contrary to the Gospel. AC XXIV should also be amended to reflect the same.
· Our view of the Old testament is now equal to that of the Mormons where the liturgical rites that prefigure temple and synagogue worship were plan A and B and where overturned By Jesus and the apostles and are rightfully ignored and condemned. Our understanding of these rites as essential to understanding the vicarious atonement of Christ at Golgotha is as old fashioned as those dusty sixteenth century confessions and need to condemned.
· Worship is about you and community (read into this the emergent influence and undertones). Your calling is to expand your community so that more folks can understand that worship is about you and community.
· There can be true forms of worship just don’t tell me that there are wrong forms of worship because that will make me sad and I’ll accuse you of burdening my conscience.
· We should talk about the above until everyone agrees with us and can then claim unity.

Well, that’s my thoughts on this nonsensical drivel.

Pastor Klemet Preus also has some things to say about the thesis over at a post on Steadfast Lutherans.