May Newsletter Article - Worship Matters

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Beloved in Christ, in this time of celebration I want to say a word of thanks to all of you. As I reflect on our time together this past Lenten season, I am grateful for the time and attention many of you gave to breaking bread together and gathering in worship. Lent has always had a special place in my heart because it is a time when the Holy Spirit can bring about change and growth in all of us through the extra time and attention we give to the gospel and to receiving it together.

As we move into the celebratory season of Easter I want to draw your attention to a series of workshops held at St. Petri in upcoming months for those of you involved in worship leadership at St. Petri. Worship Matters workshops will help all of us learn more about the different roles we have in worship, where those roles originated, and how to carry them out with great effectiveness and joy. We’ll meet & pray, learn a bit about each of the different elements of worship leadership in our congregation, spend some time considering the “how-to” aspects of those elements, and I’ll do my best to answer any questions or concerns that might arise during each session. We’ll rotate through the different parts of worship leadership as many times as we feel is necessary, so those of you who miss a session will have chances to attend when we work around to it again.

My tentative schedule for upcoming months is as follows:

• April 27 - Assisting Ministers
• May 25 - Lectors
• June 29 - Audio/Video Tech
• July 27 - No meeting (I have a prior commitment)
• August 31 - Ushers/Greeters
• September 28 - Altar Guild
• October 26 - Acolytes

If we identify other things we’d like to be doing in worship leadership, they can be added to the schedule as needed. Otherwise, I’ll begin the schedule again in November or December with Communion Ministers, since the first of the Worship Matters workshops was held in March with them.

If you’d like more information about any of these worship leadership roles, please let me know. One thing I do want to make clear is that these sessions are for those who want to be added to the roster of worship leaders and for those who are already actively leading in these roles. We can all learn more about leading worship - even a seasoned pro like myself needs to do some continuing education to grow and learn!

I look forward to seeing you at these workshops this year. For all the difficulties of modern schedules and activities, our weekly worship services are still the time when the largest percentage of members and guests gather in one place to receive the proclamation of the gospel. Worship still matters, in other words, and so we pay attention to Worship Matters (see what I did there?).

May the joy of the risen Christ sustain your own joy this Easter season.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Scott

April Newsletter Article: The Liturgical Year from Advent through Lent

“Alleluia! Christ is risen!”
“Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

By the time most of you are reading this article, we will have moved from the meditative, reflective season of Lent into the celebratory season of Easter, in which we spend seven weeks proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus with joy and passion. (Yes, I said “PASSION” - consider it an invitation to grow spiritually this Easter season.) But how do we get there in the church calendar? Why is it so early this year and so late in other years? Today I’m going to take a moment to walk you through the “first half” of the liturgical calendar observed by a substantial majority of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

On Worship and "Issues"

I really try not to engage in church schadenfreude, as it's not particularly polite. Brother Martin might even argue it's a violation of the 8th Commandment. Whatever - today I'm engaging in it just a little bit because of this. Suffice it to say that if you're dumb enough to publicly state "God's will" endorsing your own interpretation of what to do and where to go, some of us will find a lot of humor watching it blow up in your face.

The comments led me to pondering how to be healthier in dealing with issues that can be divisive. One commenter at the Pretty Good Lutherans story mentioned that at her church, an officer of the congregation was allowed to state his/her "side" on an issue during worship, which to me seemed a gross violation of the way to go about being the church together, regardless of the issue/interpretation at hand.

It comes down to this: whatever our differences may be, they all pale, dramatically, in comparison to the duty and joy of worshiping God together. One of the primary responsibilities I have as pastor to a community of faith is to ensure that whatever the issues, whatever our differences may be, we are first and foremost a band of sinners called and gathered by the Holy Spirit to praise, thank, serve and obey God - together. If we can't worship together, can we really expect to do anything else together?

I recently had the opportunity to worship with one of the primary movers and shakers in The Unbloggableness. Seeing that person walk into the room and sit down made me instantly furious all over again. Not the most conducive mindset for worship, right? But in the course of the hour, hearing God's word together and receiving the body and blood of Christ together reminded me that whatever our differences, we are both sinners in need of forgiveness. In fact, Jesus insisted that reconciliation is more important than worship, something with which I have struggled over the past few months. I'm not reconciled to this person, and at this point, I'm no longer trying to be. Try as we might, sometimes we simply cannot reconcile ourselves to one another, and perhaps it is at this point that a severing is the best way forward. I'm sorry that it came to this, and I'll admit that I'm to blame, not completely, but I'm definitely part of the problem here. Rather than continuing to be part of the problem, we went our separate ways, and maybe that's partially what Jesus was saying. I think he knew that not every disagreement can be reconciled, for an infinite number of reasons. Better to worship with a new community, perhaps, than to continue pretending all is well in the old when it is not.

Using worship as a venue to promote a specific agenda, however, is wrong in every instance. Worship is about God, not us. Worship is about proclaiming the gospel, not airing the dirty laundry. Worship is about being God's baptized and forgiven children, not squabbling over the petty daily problems that arise whenever two or more sinners have to rub elbows regularly. Of course, the old sinner within us will try to violate the sanctity of worship from time to time. I've done it, and regretted it almost from the instant I did it. I've seen it happen in other places, and the end result is never pretty. Pastors walk a particularly fine line at all times, since we have, by far, the greatest number of chances to hijack the gospel to serve our own ends.

There is a genuine need to discern the will of a congregation when division is present and anxiety is high. Upholding the sanctity of worship does not permit any of us to willfully ignore problems, nor does it give pastors and worship leaders the right to duck the challenge of the gospel when it needs to be spoken boldly. We all need to be reminded, however, that no matter how our discernment may differ, we have a responsibility to one another to refrain from threatening or impugning the devotion of our brothers and sisters with whom we worship. Paying lip service alone won't cut it - if we are to be authentic, cohesive communities of faith, we must use our worship time for adoration and our discussion time for conversation, and in all things we must assume that each and every one of us is being as faithful as we can be. Perhaps that's what was missing in the case of Schadenfreude Lutheran Church above - the assumption that, regardless of the difference, they were all faithful people attempting to find the faithful way forward. I pray for healing, and for humility on the part of all of us as we continue to seek for ways to live together, faithfully.

Grace & peace,

Scott