ELCA Worship News: February 2016

Dear friends,

During the month of February we hear a lot about love, at least from a Hallmark perspective with the commercialization of Valentine’s Day. But in some ways I find it fitting that during a month in which there is so much emphasis placed on love that we find ourselves in the church with ashes on our foreheads.

On Feb. 10, we gathered as a community in Christ around the holy meal of bread and wine and we confessed our sins, known and unknown. We received a visible symbol of our own mortality with the ashen cross, as we heard these ancient words spoken, “… you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

Ash Wednesday is intended to be a bold confrontation with death. This to many in our world is a painful dose of reality; we live in a culture that wishes to ignore death and dress it up, trying to conceal that which cannot be concealed. As author and professor Laurence Stookey stated:

This harsh medicine of reality is intended to set in motion a reconsideration of the meaning of life and death apart from Christ and in Christ. Ashes, the sign of death, are put on the forehead not in some random pattern but in the shape of a cross. This alters the starkness of the message, which this becomes: You will die. You cannot change that. But you can die in Christ, whose death transforms your own demise. Meanwhile, live in Christ and discover Christ’s new life, which conquers death.

We hear of the proclamation of God’s great love for us in life and in death, a proclamation that transcends any Valentine card and is a love that is impossible to fully comprehend or describe. The prophet Joel reminds us, “Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing” (Joel 2:13).

It is on Ash Wednesday that we not only receive that cross, as a reminder of our own mortality, but that the cross is traced over the cross that was placed on our foreheads long ago in our baptism. In baptism, we were marked with the sign of the cross and sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit forever, both in life and in death. Every time we gather for a meal at God’s holy table, we receive the reality of God’s great love letter for us, as we are strengthened and nourished. We are reminded as we gather each time at the table that we gather, in the presence of our enemies, assuring us that we can pass through the darkest valley without fear and find our place at the great resurrection feast in the house of the Lord.

Ash Wednesday was the beginning of a 40-day journey that we call Lent. Each year, Lent begins with a call to fasting and repentance as we begin the journey to the baptismal waters of Easter. The sign of the ashes reminds us of our frailty and mortality. What seems like an ending is really an invitation to make each day a new beginning, in which we are washed in God’s mercy and forgiveness. To me, what love is any better than the love that God has for each of us? I think none.

As author Rachel Held Evans put it:

It’s just death and resurrection, over and over again, day after day, as God reaches down into our deepest graves and with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead wrests us from our pride, our apathy, our fear, our prejudice, our anger, our hurt, and our despair. Most days I don’t know which is harder for me to believe: that God reanimated the brain functions of a man three days dead, or that God can bring back to life all the beautiful things we have killed.

I look forward to our journey together from ashen crosses to Easter alleluias.

May God continue to bless us so that we may be a blessing to others!

The Rev. Kevin L. Strickland
Assistant to the Presiding Bishop
Executive for Worship

A transformative experience in worship

One of the most transformative worship experiences I’ve had happened at the ELCA’s Worship Jubilee this summer. The Worship Jubilee is a conference hosted approximately every seven years, and this year it coincided with the Association of Lutheran Church Musician’s biannual conference. It was a tremendous experience, and I was honored to be involved in several of the stages of planning.

The highlight of the event for me was on Tuesday evening. On that evening, conference participants got to choose between three different churches for evening prayer. I served as the liaison to one of these churches: the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. The evening prayer at Ebenezer was one of the most beautiful worship services I have ever attended.

There were several points throughout the service that were emotionally overwhelming for me. Between the racial injustices that have bubbled to the surface in our country, and having a bi-racial family, I was moved and healed by the presence of God in this worship. The choir lifted their voices and hands in praise, singing the songs of freedom that have united generations. The assembly sang with vigor the words, “Rid the earth of torture’s terror, you whose hands were nailed to wood.” We were led into a time of corporate lament and confession where we mourned black and brown men and women who are killed extra-judicially every 28 hours, followed by a commemoration honoring the Charleston Nine in which we spoke aloud their names. The assembly sang with sorrow the hymn, “They Met to Read the Bible:” “We grieve a wounded culture where fear and terror thrive, where some hate others for their race and guns are glorified.” One of the most moving offerings of that worship was the solo sang by Mary Harris Gurley, who was a contemporary of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and sang a hymn at his funeral. She sang, “If I Can Help Somebody,” her elderly voice testifying to the truth found in her life.

Near the end of the service, we sang The Lord’s Prayer, the same version of the song played by Alberta Williams King on June 30, 1974, right before she was gunned down in worship while sitting on the organ bench. It was a remarkable service, mixed with pain, lament, bittersweet joy and hope in the resurrection. Ebenezer’s director of worship, Dr. Tony McNeill, crafted an excellent experience that brought us into the Lord’s presence, left a mark on my soul and gave me a model that was transformative for my ministry.

Dr. Clayton Faulkner
Director of Worship, Music and Technology
Faith Lutheran Church, Bellaire, Texas

We are a church of storytellers as we pass our experiences from one generation to the next.
What is your story? We would love to hear them.
If you would like to share your story with the worship staff, email it to us at worship@elca.org

As part of the 500th anniversary observance of the Reformation, gather with other members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to rejoice in the freedom we have in Christ. The Grace Gathering, in partnership with the 2016 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, will be an opportunity to gather with voting members, prepare for the 500th anniversary and reflect on how the Reformation can continue to guide us today. It will be a time for workshops, worship and fellowship.

The Grace Gathering will provide an opportunity for all ELCA members to experience the same inspiring worship, Bible study, experiential learning activities and fellowship that voting members have when they attend the Churchwide Assembly in New Orleans. At the same time, the Grace Gathering will offer workshops and presentations that equip congregational leaders and synod planning teams to prepare for observing the 500th anniversary in local communities.

Registration is now open. Learn more and register at ELCA.org/gracegathering

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Are you planning a worship event in your congregation or synod? Share it with us for this newsletter!
Due to publication schedule, items should be submitted a minimum of 10-12 weeks before the event.

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We love highlighting worship events from across this church in this newsletter.
To submit your story, send a brief article and pictures to worship@elca.org

Worship Planning Resources for the Easter Cycle
Help your congregation experience seasons and celebrations in new ways with guides designed to provide in-depth insights and ideas around these special times of the year.

Worship Guidebook for Lent and the Three Days
This guidebook is a treasure trove of insights, images, and practical tips to help deepen your congregation’s worship life during the days from Ash Wednesday to Easter.

Music Sourcebook for Lent and the Three Days
An essential companion resource to the Worship Guidebook, this collection greatly expands the repertoire of resources for the song of the assembly and its leaders during the days from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Most materials are reproducible and newly composed in a broad range of styles.

Purchase the guidebook and sourcebook set and save $10!

‘Prophetic Preaching in Times of Change’
Atlanta
May 16-20

Registration for the 2016 Festival of Homiletics is open! This year’s theme is “Prophetic Preaching in Times of Change.” It is sure to be a time of incredible preaching, proclamation and fellowship.

The Festival of Homiletics is a weeklong conference that brings together a wide variety of outstanding preachers and professors of homiletics to inspire a discourse about preaching, worship and culture. Preachers are invited to experience various styles and methods of preaching in the hope that they will renew their faith and refresh their spirits through engaging worship, lectures and workshops. Throughout the week we aim to inspire you in your role of proclaiming the gospel.

Please visit the festival’s website to learn more about this year’s event.

National Worship Conference
Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario
July 24-27

Discover how art, drama, food, fun, poetry, multimedia, music, movement, nature, spiritual elements and story-telling can be interwoven with Anglican, Lutheran, and cross-generational threads to create meaningful and transformational worship.

“Formation and Reformation: Worship, Justice and Mission of God” brings together presenters and participants from across North America to explore diverse styles of worship.

Keynote speakers include the Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Larson, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada pastor who co-authored “Liturgy, Justice and the Reign of God: Integrating Vision and Practice,” and the Very Rev. Bruce Jenneker, rector of All Saints Church, Durbanville, in the city of Cape Town and the Diocese of Saldnaha Bay in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. He is also the canon liturgist for the diocese.

Scott Weidler, ELCA program director for worship and music will lead two workshops, “Let Justice Sing” and “In These or Similar Words.”

To learn more about the conference or to register, go to nationalworshipconference.org.

Joint Catholic-Lutheran “Common Prayer” for 500 years of Reformation

In January, The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU ) announced the publication of the “Common Prayer: From Conflict to Communion” for Lutheran-Catholic common commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. The document is the first jointly developed liturgical order prepared by a liturgical task force of the Lutheran Catholic Commission on Unity of the LWF and PCPCU.

“Common Prayer” is a practical guide to a process of worship for a joint Catholic-Lutheran commemoration of the 500 years of the Reformation. It is structured around the themes of thanksgiving, repentance and commitment to common witness. The aim is to express the gifts of the Reformation and ask forgiveness for the division perpetuated by Christians from the two traditions.

It includes materials that can be adapted to local liturgical and musical traditions of congregations in the two Christian traditions and offers suggestions of how Catholic and Lutherans should preside and read together at a common prayer service. Examples are provided of hymns and songs from a variety of multicultural contexts, as well as biblical and confessional readings that reflect mutual joy and repentance, and the desire to serve and witness to the world together.

It is available for download in the four LWF’s official languages – English, French, German and Spanish – and has been translated into several other national and regional languages.