I’ve been working on my “white paper” on contemporary worship for my Worship class (duh!) and I wish my professor would realize that contemporary worship services attract more of the 65-70 crowd in the ELCA. People my age want liturgy and many want all the smells and bells (though in my case, I’d take the bells without the smells) and putting a Vineyard service in an ELCA church is not going to help. I think contemporary worship is wonderful and I recognize and respect what the Vineyard is trying to do. I used to be very much in the mindset that this was perfect worship but now I oscillate between liturgy and contemporary worship.

In my paper, I have to answer such questions as: What is Lutheran worship?Do new people need simplified user-friendly worship? Why is Sunday so important as a ay of worship? Define “traditional”, “contemporary”, and “worshipful atmosphere”. These things could be answered many ways. Lutheran worship can be anything from a chorale Mass to indigenous hymns in an African tribe with African instruments. As for new people needing simplified worship, do any of the converts among my readers want to answer that? Those words could be defined in a number of ways and I don’t think any of my definitions could do them justice.

I had lunch with Bruce (one of my classmates today) and it was good. We talked about classes and next year. I still need to figure out what’s up for next year. I’m still waiting for an answer from God on that…