The LCMS Model Theological Conference on Worship last month is continuing to produce eddies of discussion. One of the chief desires of the conference was that we listen to the other side, addressing the issues without attacking people. The people who have commented here I think have done a good job of that, but this success isn’t carried everywhere.
The Synod has requested that each district hold its own conference. One advocate of contemporary worship (again, what does this mean?) suggested repeatedly that we do not invite people to these conferences that are “extreme or polarizing”, that each side try “to understand as well as be understood.”
The irony is that in not wanting to listen to everyone, the person making the suggestion is indeed being the polarizer. There is an implicit argument that people who don’t agree with this person’s norms are extreme and polarizing. The other side has already been pre-judged.
In order to listen, you have to give the other side their say.
Posted in: religion.
On the White Horse Inn radio show, their “man on the street” segment interviewed students at a Christian college to see if they could summarize the main theme of the Book of Galatians. Two out of 12 mentioned justification by grace and not by works.
I would have gotten that one right, but I thought about other books that I might stumble on. Other people might have the same issues, and I started asking around for pastors who might be willing to summarize or point me to some public domain commentary that I could use on Time Out.
Pastor Will Weedon of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Hamil, IL., stepped up. He pointed me to The Kretzmann Project, home of the electronic edition of The Popular Commentary of the Bible by Paul E. Kretzmann, Ph. D., D. D. The introductions to each book alone are filled with such good stuff, not only summarizing the content of the book but laying out Christ in the Old Testament.
The introductions will probably take another one to two minutes to read per book. It’s likely that they will be included as part of the Time Out episode on Pirate Christian Radio, but they will for sure be available as part of the podcasts on the Time Out site. When the summaries are included on the podcast, I will provide a link back to the Kretzmann Project site so you can follow along.
Thank you, Pr. Weedon, and thank you big time to those who digitized The Kretzmann Project.
Posted in: religion.
One of the critiques I repeatedly heard at the LCMS Model Theological Conference on Worship was that a person can mindlessly run through the liturgy and not apply it in their lives. This is a slightly different critique than the one I heard in the Ohio District talks, that liturgy is justification for one’s weekly misdeeds.
I suppose theoretically one could divorce one’s mind from the meaning of the words, but this isn’t a charge unique to liturgical worship. In fact, it’s more likely to happen when one is getting lost in ecstatic music.
The aversion to rote worship and memorization is counter to how we learn and harms our ability to use knowledge. Do we memorize multiplication tables, or do we sit down with a piece of paper and do the basic math every time? Do we turn screws each way to see what works, or does “righty-tighty-lefty-loosey” come into the mind without effort?
Rote worship — liturgical worship — is part of the institutional knowledge of the church. It is the shorthand of our vocabulary to convey bigger ideas. It is also a guard by which we ensure we believe the same things. We do not live in Wonderland, where Humpty Dumpty chooses the meaning of words.
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Posted in: religion.
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