First of all, I would like to thank the LCMS Commission on Worship for paying for my trip, Ohio District President Terry Cripe for choosing to have a representative from Zion, and Pastor Kudart for asking me to go. What a privilege and a trip. Thank you.

Maybe not in this post alone, but I need to cover:

• The agenda and methods of discussion
• The worship services
• Institutional knowledge
• The presentations
• The responders, especially certain theology professors
• The Ohio District’s response
• Evidence of differing theologies
• Reliquae
• The overheard
• The extracurricular
• The people I met

With the exception of presentations that were given in the gym of Concordia-Kirkwood and after about 3pm on Tuesday, I had wireless access and was able to Twitter key thoughts during the conference.  Do not take them as their quotes but as ideas I tried to get down in limited time and manual dexterity. You can follow the points at #LCMSMTC.
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All the presenters and responders, except for moderator Ted Kober, are ordained pastors. Imply the title “Reverend” unless otherwise noted.

David Johnson of the LCMS Commission on Worship kicked off the conference by asking everyone to be sensitive and showed a video with clips from various church services.  Jon Vieker of the LCMS Commission on Worship introduced a select bibliography, and Larry Stoterau, LCMS Pacific Southwest District President introduced the Theses on Worship prepared by the District Presidents.

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A pair of responders followed Tuesday’s first presentation of the day, “Missional and Vocational (One Approach),”: Paul Grime and Steve Arnold. Grime agreed with Pr. Beecroft that worship is a matter of reverence and asked who decides?  Noone has all the answers. Christ is to be delivered fully and faithfully. Grime, being dean of the chapel and associate professor at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, noted that the Fort Wayne seminary is in talks of revising its curriculum on religious practices, to give new pastors more instruction and practice in baptism, why we preach Christ, and the Lord’s Supper.

Arnold, a professor emeritus and chaplain at Concordia University, St. Paul, stressed “hospitality”, making worship a safe place for the world. He called for more sensitive gender language to make women feel more comfortable. He also asked for authenticity in our worship, stating that our spirituality is authentic, therefor our worship is authentic. Most of our members find what we do to be incomprehensible. We need to be conversational to help with wounds visited upon people by the church, such as the priest scandals in the Roman Catholic church. The church has one thing to offer: forgiveness of sins in proclamation of the Gospel.

Grime and Arnold also followed Tuesday’s last presentation of the day, “Missional and Vocational (Another Approach).” Looking back at my notes and tweets, I guess I really didn’t find anything groundbreaking.  Grime did quote Korby concerning our preaching: in our preaching, we have defanged the law so it will merely gum us to death.

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The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, is never present where lies are told. And there is actually more unity of the church present where Christians of differing confession honorably determine that they do not have the same understanding of the Gospel than where the painful fact of confessional splintering is hidden behind a pious lie.

– Herman Sasse, “Union and Confession,” The Lonely Way, Volume 1.

It seemed the overall intent of the conference was to unabashedly state that even though people may disagree in the practice of worship services, we share the same theology. Our Synodical President, the Rev. Dr. Gerald Kieschnick, addressed areas where we were united and where we were divided in a paper (PDF) available at lcms.org.

Pastor Ben Ball asked a question on Tuesday about practices which communicate theology to the observer.  He noted that there were wooden containers at the front row of the worship center which seemed designed to receive individual cups after communion. He asked what happened to the plastic individual cups that were put in the “sacred trash cans.” The pastor of Concordia-Kirkwood, Pr. Scott Siedler, responded that the cups would be moved into larger trash bags and put into the trash.

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I will again say that I enjoyed going to this conference.  It surpassed my expectations in content, and I surpassed my own expectations in networking. I could have spent several more days in discussion and talking with the guys.

Sunday night Seminarian Samuel Powell drove Cantor Beethe and I back and forth to the seminary chapel. He also took pictures with his phone, since I had issues with my camera. He also brought the guest soloist, Allison Ulmer.

Monday and Tuesday nights I secured a conference room at 10pm for Compline. Cantor Beethe and Pr. Weedon showed up for both, Pr. Paul Cain showed up for Tuesday night, and Brad Hall, former organist of Zion in Columbus (talk about your small world) was there Monday night.

Brad Hall, we should have known each other a lot longer. Just saying. Too bad you were up in that balcony during the LSB workshop in ’06. I could have been spared a lot of heartburn, but maybe I would take too much for granted.

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