The Way Lutherans Worship
From LutheranWiki
This is a popular-style treatment that seeks to address the issues raised by the "worship wars" raging on in the Lutheran church as well as in other liturgical churches.
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[edit] What’s going on in general?
When it comes to worship, many a congregation and denomination in America today is being rocked by rough seas. Some have even spoken of “worship wars” in this context. What is meant by this term that appropriately suggests the terrible effects disunity in matters of worship can have on a congregation or an entire denomination? Typically, people have in mind the conflict between those desiring to retain traditional liturgical forms and hymns and those who demand a more contemporary, “informal” look and sound of the worship of the congregation.
Usually, the need to lower the threshold to attract those currently not affiliated with any particular congregation is advanced as one or even the main argument for the latter view: Informal services, filled with dynamic pop culture (e.g., music) familiar to most people today, are meant to draw in people who don’t know much about the church or who’ve had negative experiences with “traditional” churches.
People advocating a traditional look of the worship service often will point to the long history and significant continuity in the basic Christian order of service, somehow always revolving around the proclamation of the word and the giving of the Lord’s Supper. What is more, a certain cultural difference to the popular tastes of the day is accepted or even demanded to represent the other-worldliness of the holy church in a corrupt world.
[edit] Who is right?
When there is controversy in the church, Christians ultimately turn to God’s word, the bible, to decide the matter. However, there are no full-fledged orders of service contained in the bible that would be binding on us today. What we do have, though, are some models. There is, e.g., the service at the temple in Jerusalem. Very little is known about it for certain in addition to the fact that various kinds of sacrifices were offered, an array of instruments was used, and psalms were sung (2 Chr. 29). Then there is the synagogue service Jesus participated in. From what we can discern from the New Testament, readings from the Old Testament and a sermon on what was read played an important role, while no instruments were used (Luke 4). Then there are, of course, the early assemblies of the first Christians after Pentecost. We know that teaching and preaching were part of these services, very likely also a celebration of the Lord’s Supper, additionally prayers and hymns were voiced. Unlike the synagogue services held on the Sabbath, early Christians soon began to meet on Sundays, the day of Christ’s resurrection and first appearance to his disciples (Acts 20).
Again, these are models, not commandments. We’re not commanded (not) to use instruments in our services; we’re not commanded (not) to meet on Sunday. And yet, certain constant elements seem to be apparent. There is a certain downward action from God to man; and there is a certain upward action from man to God. On the one hand, God’s word is preached (and the OT sacrifices are first and foremost “visible” words of God, reminding the believer visibly of the sacrifice of the coming Messiah for the sins of the world); the Lord’s Supper is given. On the other hand, prayers and praises ascend as the unbloody sacrifice of the believers to God in gratitude for their salvation.
[edit] Why this constancy?
The constant elements linking the temple services of the Israelites to the assemblies of the church in the New Testament age are no accident. They bear witness to the fact that we as sinners cannot find our way back into communion with God on our own. Having fallen away from God in paradise, the way back to paradise is now barred to sinful man. God himself has to take the initiative to restore us to fellowship with him. And, in Jesus Christ, in his life and death, God has done so in a fundamental way by bringing about the reconciliation of the entire world to the Father once for all. This reconciliation is announced to the world in the word of reconciliation, God’s peace offer that is accepted by faith in this very offer. And since we bear our irreconcilable sinful nature with us, even as Christians, out of which grow all sorts of acts irreconcilable with living in fellowship with God, we need to hear, and receive by faith, God peace offer time and again (2 Cor. 5).
Thus, because we are sinners unable to save ourselves or to keep ourselves saved, God needs to act first; and he needs to do so again and again. The orders of service Christians use need to reflect that, directing those attending away from their misguided attempts to reconcile themselves to God, or even their actions in general, to God’s act of reconciliation in Christ, the benefit of which is distributed to faith in the gospel. This gospel meets us as word, declaring to us Christ’s victory of sin, death, and hell. The gospel also meets us as a “sacrament” (baptism, Lord’s Supper), that is, as a “visible” word like the sacrifices in the time of the Old Testament.
Once this gospel has been heard and believed, once faith has been kindled or strengthened thereby, prayer and praise will spontaneously flow from the lips of the reconciled. This is where the second movement comes into play: from the believer up to God. Our praise and prayers are not pleasing to God in and by themselves. Like every other action, they need to flow from a heart that trusts, not in one’s own prayers, praises, and goodness, but in Christ’s act of reconciliation to overcome God’s wrath. We could say that God opens our lips to pray and praise him by first proclaiming the good news of the word of reconciliation to us (Ps. 51:15-17; 1 Peter 2).
[edit] What insight have we gained so far?
So far, we’ve seen that our lives as Christians before God rest squarely on God’s action in Christ’s life and death. The fruit of this action, our peace with God, is delivered to us by the gospel in word and sacraments. This fruit is received by faith in what the gospel announces and gives to us: that, for Christ’s sake, we are at peace with God, now and forever. Out of this faith, God-pleasing prayer and praise will rise up to our Father in heaven.
We can also put it this way: for there to be love of God (e.g., prayer to and praise of God), there needs to be faith in God and his gospel. Thus, the Christian service has this dual focus: faith and love. It should, first, create and strengthen faith by an abundant amount of gospel, not just in the readings, also in the hymns and other parts of the order of service. It should, then, offer opportunity to exercise our faith in love.
[edit] The way Lutherans worship -- a closer look at faith and love
The kind of love that springs from faith is not only directed toward God. It is also directed toward our fellow man. This is apparent in the worship service itself. When, e.g., the congregation jointly sings a gospel-filled hymn or speaks the Creed (a summary of the gospel) together, it is, in fact, proclaiming the good news of reconciliation in Christ to its own members. By doing so, each member is serving his or her neighbor in love.
Yet this loving service extends beyond the local worshipping assembly. And this is, finally, where we come to answering the questions raised above. The very existence of “worship wars” indicates one thing very clearly: a significant diversity in the way members of one congregation or denomination worship creates church-divisive tensions. One may deplore this fact and demand greater openness to different styles of worship. But the inconvenient truth remains: those who profess believing the same things in one congregation or denomination require a somewhat uniform style of worshipping.
If the bible can teach us anything about this question then it is this: Christians have always had and will always have different degrees of faith and knowledge about the things of the faith. Certain practices, even though they might be left free in Scripture, will be applauded by some but rejected by others. So it is with “diversity” in worship styles. Some will find it unobjectionable or even necessary to reach the lost. Others will find it highly confusing, even offensive, questioning the desire of the “other” party to be known as members of denomination X or wondering about the similarities of its worship to that of other denominations.
The teaching of Scripture on this form of Christian love and considerateness is clear, and it is not merely optional (Rom. 14f.): Whenever the exercise of freedom causes the weaker brother to stumble, there the strong are called to forego the exercise of this freedom. Traditionally, this has meant in the Lutheran church that congregations and pastors would come together and agree on joint orders of service that are commonly and, in fact, exclusively used in congregations of one area. At the same time, changes were introduced jointly and with great restraint after mutual consultation.
In addition to the gospel-focus of the liturgy, we might call this the love-focus of the liturgy. The worship service used by one congregation can and will benefit other congregations in one church body by signaling to them that it wants to be known in public as belonging to the others. Since it believes the same as the others do, it also wants to preserve and show this unity before the world. It avoids confusing and offending the weak, also by avoiding liturgical proximity to those who believe differently. It signals, in a highly visible way, its willingness to submit in love and humility to others instead of doing their own thing.
[edit] What did Luther do?
First of all, his rediscovery of the freedom of the Christian from self-reconciliation motivated others to publish a whole host of different orders of service. Luther deplored this because it created confusion among the people. He considered this an abuse of the freedom of the Christian who exists to serve his neighbor in loving humility that puts the needs of the neighbor first. Christ himself served Luther as the great example for this attitude and practice (Phil. 2). This led Luther to act very conservatively when it came to reforming the orders of service in use at his time and place. Clearly, what contradicted the gospel had to go – and there were a few pieces in the traditional liturgy Luther eliminated for this very reason. But this did not cause him to throw everything out or opt for free congregational individualism – out of love for his fellow believers, and especially for the weak among them, he restrained his own impetus for innovation and that of others. What was familiar and could be used in good conscience continued to be used. He urged congregations in one area to come together, put their egos behind them, and come up with joint orders of service that would both proclaim the gospel and serve the fellow believer in love. More on Luther's thoughts on worship can be found here.
[edit] But what about the “seekers” or unbelievers?
So far, we have spoken much about concern for those who are believers already. Yet is not this the problem that betrays a lack of loving concern for unbelievers, when a congregation is stuck in the ruts of what is called a "maintenance" paradigm (as opposed to the new out-going "mission" paradigm)? This would be the case if we were not to reach out to the seekers and unbelievers with God’s word. Can this outreach happen in the worship service? It certainly can since Christian services where the God’s word sounds forth are typically open to the public. But the real question at hand is: should church services be designed chiefly with unbelievers in mind? The clear answer from the Scriptures is that they should not. Worshipping together presupposes that you believe the same thing. Otherwise, different gods will be invoked simultaneously. At least for the jealous God of the bible, this is an abomination. This is why teaching and baptizing comes prior to worshipping and communing together (Acts 2). We could also say: repentance from sin and false belief come before faith and reconciliation.
While teaching does go on in the church service, this teaching is not “evangelistic” or “missionary” in character. It is not first-time instruction in the basics of the faith, even though these basics will be touched upon again and again to confirm the saints in the faith – just as the gospel will be proclaimed constantly to nourish their faith. Strictly speaking, evangelism and missions take place in the world where Christians meet unbelievers, not in the church. Hence, Christ sent out his disciples to GO and make disciples by baptizing and teaching them (Matt. 28). They did not worship with them before they were converted from the dead idols and their lies to the living God and his word.
What is interesting is that the church in its early stages, when it was very small, did not adapt its services to accommodate unbelieving visitors. At the same time, the faith was vigorously taught so that those who at one point were strangers to the house of faith would one day be received into Christ’s church as fellow saints who believed and confessed the same faith and who therefore also gladly worshipped in the same way. Luther, far from adapting the services to unbelievers, also demanded rigorous instruction for Christians so that they would understand and benefit from what went on at church. Teaching the faith – that, as seen above, is also an act of love.
[edit] Why, then, do Lutherans worship the way they do?
Lutherans worship by using jointly agreed orders of service that focus on the gospel in its forms of word and sacrament. Why? Because they cherish both faith and love, both Christ and their fellow men, especially those of the household of the faith (Gal. 6:10).
