NTNL WorshipWorks - Lutheran Worship

What Makes Worship Lutheran?

Lutheran worship follows the four-fold pattern of Gathering, Word, Meal, and Sending.
Lutherans practice the ministry of Word and Sacrament.
It is worship within the context of a confessing church. That is, Lutherans uphold various creeds, such as the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed, and the Augsburg Confession, among others.
Worship is participatory. The word liturgy means "the work of the people."

Some thoughts on necessities for worship

Corporate singing
Singing together, an expression of unity in the Body of Christ, that it isn't about any ONE alone, but the church together as the expression of Christ, also as a means of "hiding the Word in our hearts" this is a matter of spiritual formation, and a form of remembering in the Biblical sense, a sort of anamnesis, if you will, something akin to what we do in the Holy Meal ... an activity that makes us remember and internalize the living Word that moves beyond the intellectual plane.

Sing-able
That means lead-able, teach-able, on a variety of levels. That doesn't mean I can memorize it the first time I sing it, it does mean it has some cohesiveness that requires more than one individual interpretation (which leaves out a lot of the pop-soul-folk ballads and songs that are really only effective for a soloist) and that it remains interesting over a number of years.

Texts must reflect primarily a corporate/communal sensitivity and perspective
Some personal piety and first person language now & then, but that should not be the bulk of the repertoire.

Texts must encompass (across the body of the repertoire) the great scope of images and language necessary to describe the God we worship, and the challenges this God places before us to be the Body of Christ in the world ...
That is, if we're not being challenged and moved to some measure of discomfort in our texts, we're not being faithful to the gospel imperative in our discipleship. This requires "exalted" language - poetry and metaphor and visceral concrete imagery ... all of it, and primarily drawn from and utilizing scripture.

Music must be both contextual and specific
In ways that relate to that particular worshipping community,a language they can connect with, a language of their heart - and global in that they include (carefully and with sensitivity) music, images, perspectives and concerns from other cultures, thus more fully representintg the whole of the human experience and family.

Music must be learned, led and offered with as great a degree of excellence as is possible from those who are leading it.
This means PRACTICE! This means that there's no excuse for throwing stuff in at the last minute, no excuse for musicians to be trying to lead music in the congregation that they themselves have not practiced, learned and come to terms with as musicians. You can't draw people into a truly worshipful experience in music if you can't get them through the melody line. This also means that the accompaniment and ornamentation are just that ... side dishes to the main course of the corporate song. This aspect includes the considerations of amplification, volume, clarity and enunciation, availabilty of the song. All songs are not equal in performance from a worship leadership perspective.

-Debra Loudin-McCann, 2006

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The opinions expressed on this website are solely those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect any opinions held by the NTNL Synod or the ELCA.