Singing the Faith

Stephen Johnson has some fine thoughts on hymn singing over at Liturgy Solutions' blog.
It's true, too often hymns in church have been "we sing what we like to sing," and complain about having to sing what someone else likes to sing; yet we often miss the point of hymnody.
Teachers like to talk about themes--units that all tie together. I went to a sectional at a teacher's conference that talked about integrated units. The teachers would teach Greece or Egypt as a unit and they came up with lessons in math, history, reading, science, and writing to go along with the theme and thereby tie it all together to make the lesson learned more complete.
How much more should our worship be "integrated"? It seems to me this was a basic principle we were taught in college in our worship class. Preaching and hymns should reinforce each other, not conflict; as was once made overtly clear to me (but apparently not to the pastor or the music director). The short story there was the pastor was preaching on faith alone; the song (it wasn't a hymn) talked of works righteousness.
Let's do what is good right and salutary for the building up of the faith.

The Parable of the Sower

I preface this with the admission that I do not always listen to the Sunday sermon as carefully as I should, especially when the preacher sort of misses the point (sir, we would see Jesus). This is where the following poem comes from, embarassing as it is to admit. The Gospel lesson in the 3-year series on July 13 was the parable of the sower, and I wrote this poem in my bulletin. I have been working to edit it, and now I present it to you. I welcome comments and yes, even corrections, if you find it to be amiss.

Consider the crazy sower,
The indiscriminate planter,
Carelessly tossing precious seed
To any unworthy-type ground.
Each single seed
More precious than jewels.
Left to become birdseed;
Never to take root;
Shallow, wither and die;
Scorched by summer’s sun;
Choked by thorn.
Weeds supplant the good,
Yet the good thrives.
For the Sower’s foresight
Knows
The seed is the Word
Which was snatched by the Evil one;
Left to die in the Passover Sun--

Until that light from want of Light went out--
Crowned with thorn,
Choked out.
The Seed died
Planted in the ground
Springing to life
So that the Word might give life,
Thirty, sixty, a hundredfold
To those to whom
The Word comes--
Not empty,
But life-giving.
For the sower is not crazy;
Indiscriminate only in His love.

[Sower photo from Lee Lawrie]

Mosaic

What a lovely mosaic commemorating the 50th anniversary of Peace Lutheran (ELCA) Church in Danville, CA. It'd be a nice mosaic if it were on a public libarary or something, but not so.

According to Thrivent magazine, they "wanted something to capture a sense of the history of our congregations. . .and something that would covey the spirit we're being led to in the future." Okay, fine. Notice the multi-religious symbols represented in the mosaic. The open circle in the middle is for "interchangable, two-foot-wide pieces created by each faith community for display on their holy days." There are Christian, Jewish, etc. interchangable pieces.

I don't understand why a church would, in effect, say through their artwork that any religion is valid. This is what this church is doing. They are making every other religion equal to Christianity. I know there are plenty of people in the world who believe that each religion is equal. Personally, I don't. The question I ask is this: If you belive that all religions are equal, why choose one? It makes me wonder what else this church believes, teaches, and confesses.

Your Thrivent funds at work.

The Muny and other Worship Thoughts

Here am I in Seward, NE; no corn jokes please; for the "Institute on Liturgy, Preaching, & Church music. It's been fun so far--okay, one day. I've seen many people, learned a few things, had some mammoth choir rehearsals, and the like. The opening worship service was fantastic. The music, the singing; and the sermon was pretty good. I'm sure some would have not liked it. Ah, such is life.
It's interesting hearing other folks' conversations. I'm not eavesdropping when they speak loudly enough for others to hear. Perspectives are always fascinating.
This is not a complaint post, as much of what I have seen so far has been positive, but there were a few things that set me on edge. Such as the liturgical dancer at the evening service. I'm sorry, but I don't find it worshipful when it was much like what I saw at the Muny a couple nights ago for their 90th anniversary show. I'm not exaggerating, either. The ballet dancer at the Muny for the reprise of "If I Loved You" had movements very similar to the liturgical dancer. No joke.
The thing that quite irked me was this, however: My roommate for this conference is a nice lady from a midwestern state. She is "typical" Lutheran. Listening to her, I see she is an average churchgoing woman. She is in a seminar (I'm not sure how she ended up in it) which unsettled her after the first day. There are 2 more sessions left. The presenter was essentially advocating church growth and not calling new plants Lutheran to be more sensitive to people's biases. This did not sit well with her. She is "forward thinking" (some would call it church growth or liberal), but she didn't like the idea of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. It bothered her. I imagine there are many in our church who would not go for this. Average member Joe wants church to be recognizable. Lutheran is our identity, our heritage, and yes, our future. When we don't want to say who we are, who are we. In the summarized words of Romeo, without a name, who are we? Without our heritage, we are no one. Sorry guys, we can't be Lutheran and Rick Warren too.

Worship Space

I have a feeling it's not a good thing (sorry, Mrs. Mills) when one walks into the church office and finds the secretary, business manager, and church musician huddled around one computer looking at website of another church and saying things such as, "Wow--Holy cow--Man, that's cool!"

I had that experience recently as the music director was talking about the church where her son-in-law was recently installed and explaining how the church and PreK-12 school's campus has 9 buildings, including one specifically for the contemporary worship service (the building is called Studio 6). I can understand needing many buildings for a PreK-12 school, but a separate building for the contemporary worship service? Bah, humbug.

Most vexing of the whole conversation? They were impressed and thought that the aforementioned Studio 6 must be really cool. I merely smiled and nodded and left before I said something I shouldn't have. Sometimes it is the best option.

Church Music

Pastor Hall has a post on his blog regarding church singing and hymns. I will agree with him to a point. It's not about what you want to sing. It's what about what should be sung. Old hymns, new hymns--it's not about singing to sing. It is about singing to each other the faith. There seem to be many people in churches who have not learned why we do liturgy and hymns.
Where is the glitch? Is it the pastors have not taught them, or they have not learned? If it it the latter, then the lesson needs to be taught again. (I know that students don't always get it the first time.) If it is the former, why aren't the pastors teaching the people? Is it because the pastors were absent that day at seminary and didn't learn it themselves, or because they are using up too much of their time teaching the people other things they haven't learned yet (like why it's wrong to shack up before getting married), or is it because they expect someone else to do it? Maybe it's because there are too many people who hold to the idea that we should always be forward-thinkers and throw out the liturgy and hymnody as the proverbial baby in the bathwater. I like Lost and Found's song Opener which has the following lyrics:
"EVERY SUNDAY IS JUST LIKE THE LAST, AS IF THE CHURCH HAS NO HISTORY AND THE PEOPLE HAVE NO PAST. WE JUST SING THE SONGS WE LIKE TO SING AND WE PREACH ABOUT THE NEWS AND WE THINK UP SOME NEW THING JUST TO FILL UP THE PEWS"
Sounds like many churches. It finishes up with the line, "LET'S STOP ALL THE FIGHTING OVER WORDS AND WAYS AND TELL ABOUT JESUS LIKE IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS." Yes, let's, and it seems to me that the liturgy is the best way to do it.

As/Is

While traveling in the mitten state of Michigan, one can see many billboards advertising casinos. One such billboard shows a couple playing in the casino, and the tagline/adline says, “Come as you are.” I merely pose this question: What does it mean when the casino and the church ads have the same phrase? Hm. . .

Worship, HT Style

One conference down, two days of the second conference down, and two days left of this one plus one more conference to go.

I was invited by some Higher Things bigwigs (I mean that in the nicest way, guys) to stop by for worship, since there was a chair or two available. I enjoyed the HT conferences back in the day when we used to be chaperones. I felt as though I learned just as much as the high schoolers.

I stopped by for two worship services, Evening Prayer and Morning Prayer. It is amazing to hear hundreds of Lutheran high schoolers singing the liturgy. Those who truly believe that kids can't do the liturgy should stop in sometime and see how wrong they are. It was a glorious sound of singing the hymns and chanting the Psalm and praying the liturgy. It is truly beyond description.

I could go off on my soap box here, but why ruin the moment. Let's just suffice it to say two things. 1)Kids--teens-tweens-et al--can do whatever they are expected to do. Why not hold them to a significant standard? 2)For all the HT naysayers, may I point out that the students who went to HT conferences were more regular in their own worship attendance and more involved in the life of the church than many of the adults?