October 14th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
I had a terrific opportunity to attend one of the workshops for the Lutheran Service Book. With the $20 fee I got a new hymnal and three hours of singing and presentation. This seemed more enjoyable than $18.50 + postage. 
This was my first time at Zion Lutheran Church in downtown Columbus. Smaller than average nowadays, the building is beautiful. Stained glass on both sides depicted the Christ in his various roles, some prophets, and some dogmatic symbols.
The presentation was given by Rev. David Reimann, pastor of Saint John Lutheran Church in Dublin. As a presenter he did quite well in the beginning. The first half went along smoothly. We had a break in the middle, and after the break we stayed way too long on the topic of copyrights. Pastor Reimann had to cut the hymn singing short and skipped slides to get through the second half by 12:30pm.
My favorite part of the singing was when we sang the Agnus Dei from Divine Service III. Pastor Reimann insisted we sing all four parts. It was nice and contrasted with the pastor’s comment later that some hymns could not be harmonized properly. I remain skeptical about such claims.
We sang one of the Spanish hymns. Learning both unfamiliar words and unfamiliar music on the fly was challenging.
The Pastor asked us to list some of our favorite hymns. I was a little amazed at the lack of hymn choices that were rich in doctrine. I interjected with “Salvation Unto Us Has Come“. Pastor Reimann liked my choice and made the point that good hymns not only make us feel good but teach.
I finally have a hymnal in the hand, and it is beautiful. Artwork depicting the means of grace is debossed into the burgundy cover. Open the front cover, and one immediately finds individual prayers for worship. Inside the back cover are the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds, and the Lord’s Prayer. A couple of pages forward from the back cover one finds the one-page emergency baptism service. These things, especially the baptism rite, are too important to be digging through the book to find.
I do like the fact that psalm numbers, page numbers, and hymn numbers don’t overlap. One won’t have to say “turn to page 15 in the front of your hymnal” any more. That alone may be worth the price of the pew edition.
Some hymns that were too aggressively purged of Jacobian language in the 1982 Lutheran Witness hymnal have been restored, making “My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary” singable again.
Extra care has been taken so that people do not flip back and forth while singing a song or during a service, like singing Matins from The Lutheran Hymnal. Another bonus.
There are a lot of good things that have been done with this book along these lines. It seems to have similar weight and dimensions as The Lutheran Hymnal.
In the Psalms the melody lines have been moved and combined at the front of the psalms at page xxvi. The tones are denoted with letters, but the psalms do not suggest which tones are appropriate for a particular psalm. It seems we need another LSB book to determine that, perhaps the Agenda or the LSB Accompaniment for the Liturgy. I read music. I like to see what I’m supposed to sing.
Similarly, the presentation noted that 20% of the hymns are melody line only; no bass clef and no “alto” part. Some hymns provide a little bit of forgiveness with notes that say one can find the accompaniment at a certain hymn number with the same tune. Others make you go to the LSB Accompaniment for the Hymns.
The Lutheran Service Builder software looks pretty sharp, and the pricing doesn’t seem extraordinary for smaller congregations. I think it would be hilarious to use the PowerPoint feature to present Divine Service III, but that says more about my sense of humor than anything.
At first look it seems there is a lot of opportunity to explore the Divine Service liturgies and increase one’s exposure to God’s Word. I look forward to checking out some of the hymns. It does look like I’ll be putting Accompaniment editions on my Christmas list. I am encouraged by all the work that has been done in putting this book/series together.
I had a good time at the workshop and met a friend from several years back when we attended a now defunct mission in Pickerington. He also has a developmentally disordered child. We’ll need to get everyone reacquainted. The world gets smaller still.
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October 16th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
We attended Zion for a while. My youngest daughter was baptized there; we then had a small luncheon at Schmidt’s. We were thinking about transferring to St. John Dublin when my youngest daughter started preschool there. The first church we went to was St. John Marysville, when we first lived in Dublin. Small world!
October 18th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
[...] After Vespers I chatted a little with Cantor Janet Muth, who was on the Hymnody Committee for the Lutheran Service Book. I brought up my qualms about the psalm tones and the single-melody lines mentioned in last Saturday’s post. Cantor Muth said that they moved the psalm tones to the front of the psalms because some congregations like to take one psalm tone and sing it for all the psalms through a whole season. As for the 20% single-melody hymns, some are actually chants, such as “We All Believe in One True God” (LSB 954). [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
[...] sad note: Pastor David Reimann, pastor of St. John’s in Dublin and presenter at my LSB Workshop in October 2006, was reported to have passed away. He seemed quite young; prayers for his family, [...]