From "The Augsburg Confession," Article 5
1 In order that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments was instituted. 2 For through the Word and the sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Spirit is given, and the Holy Spirit produces faith, where and when it pleases God, in those who hear the Gospel. 3 That is to say, it is not on account of our own merits but on account of Christ that God justifies those who believe that they are received into favor for Christ’s sake. Gal. 3:14, “That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”
4 Our churches condemn the Anabaptists and others who think that the Holy Spirit comes to men without the external Word, through their own preparations and works.5
Tappert, T. G. (1959). The Augsburg Confession: Translated from the Latin (31). Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
The Church and her Ministry
Occasionally you hear it: "I love Jesus but I don't like the Church," or "Jesus came to abolish religion." It usually come from a good place of appreciating the great things Jesus has done for us and also recognizing that – because Jesus was God in the flesh – men and women can't possibly live his example out to the fullest in our lives, because we're not God. However, as well intentioned as these thoughts or campaigns are, they're completely misguided. How can you say that you love the GodMan who instituted the Church but hate the Church He instituted?
Jesus called 12 apostles to Himself to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Matthew 10:2-4 specifically lists these 12 leaders among what Acts 1:15 says was about 120 others, not counting the women who followed and served, as well. These 12 he appointed to preach, to teach, to do miracles – confirming the divine truth of their message – and he commanded them to celebrate the Lord's Supper (Matthew 26:26-28) and to Baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18-20). He gave these 12 men specific authority to speak on His behalf to personally forgive sins as if He, Himself, were doing it (John 20:21-23). And He commanded them to do these things. So we see that Christ established a group of 12 men to lead a group of 120 – who'd become 3,000, and then 5,000, and so on – in Preaching, Teaching, and administering the Sacraments. And these twelve went on to establish local gatherings, and put men like Timothy and Titus as overseers of these local "churches" where they would be given the responsibilities the Apostles had to preach and teach and administer the Sacraments, faithfully. Thus, Jesus established a Church, a ministry, for the purpose of binding the sins of the impenitent and forgiving the sins of the penitent.
It's interesting that the New Testament uses this word Church rather than the Jewish idea of Synagogue – which means "to gather together." Church isn't just about like-minded people gathering themselves together. That's not Church. When the New Testament uses the word Church, in the original Greek "ecclesia" – where we get the word ecclesiastical or the name of the book of the Bible, Ecclesiastes – it means "Those who have been called out." The Church is the body of those who have been called from the darkness of this sinful, corrupt world to the light of faith in Christ (1 Peter 2:9-10). It's not about us gathering ourselves, but it's about Christ who gathers us through the proclamation of His Word and the administration of His Sacraments.
And Paul latches on to this idea in his epistles as he says in Romans 10:13-15, "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" And again in Ephesians 4:11-14, "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes." For more on what the Bible says about the Office of the Ministry, read through the Pastoral Epistles: 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus.
So Jesus says, so Scripture says, there's an Office of the Ministry, a Pastor who stands in the stead and by the command of Christ, because our Lord Jesus Christ instituted it to be that way until he comes again. Those who reject this are either ignorant of the Scriptures or are rejecting the full message of Christ and turning our Lord into what they want Him to be rather than who He really is. May we avoid this error.
The Church's Gifts and Blessings
Jesus didn't build a Church just for the sake of having it. The Church isn't about navel gazing. It's not about who can have the biggest building, the greatest attendance, the most popular preacher, or any other self-centered or self-aggrandized feature. Christ instituted His Church to DO something, and that something is to share the life saving and life changing Gospel of Jesus Christ. This isn't just another commodity or advertized special. This is THE most important thing that anyone can receive in this world and the Church that Jesus built is the only institution that has it. This is the Gospel message that brings people back from the dead – the death of sin and the death of the flesh. This is the Gospel that casts out demons through the waters of Baptism and fills broken souls with the comfort and power of the Holy Spirit. It's not just words; it's God brought down to earth for us. Don't you see, then, that makes the Church that Jesus built THE most important institution in this world.
God made sure that everyone would know exactly where they could go to find His grace; and so He gave us a Church. Not that the Church has the Gospel captive, but God located the Church in this world just as He located the Temple in Jerusalem: so that all would know where to find Him when they're looking. Some people might see this as "Putting God in a box," but this couldn't be farther from the truth. We're not putting the infinite God into a box – He's put Himself THERE. Christ made promises to us that He would be present through the gathering of two or three (Matthew 18:20), where there's preaching of His Word for the forgiveness of sins (John 20:21-23), in the waters of Baptism (Acts 2:38), and in the celebrating – the distributing and receiving – of His body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar (Matthew 26:26-28). God commanded His Church to do these things because He promised to be there for all the world to see in the doing of them. So that, in preaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments, the Church feeds her own with the gifts of forgiveness and, at the same time, shows the world that this is where you find God in His love and mercy through Jesus Christ.
Some, in the course of history, have taken this great responsibility of the Church captive. Martin Luther in his Babylonian Captivity of the Church pointed out that the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation had made the Church a lord over her people and over all the people of the world. Rather than seeing the Church as located FOR the people, they held the people captive under the whims and rules of those in authority – the bishops, popes, and priests. These had become so used to thinking of the Church as a ruler of the world that they burdened people's consciences with things God never commanded nor forbid (adiaphora) and then tried to use the Church to make money selling the forgiveness Jesus had freely won for us on the cross (indulgences). This is why Luther wrote The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, the remind them and even us today that the Church is Christ's Church: His gift TO the world, FOR the world, that those who want to be saved from this "present evil age" may find the Way, the Truth, and the Life for them in Christ.
Seen this way, the way Jesus intended it, the Church is reminded of how great and important she is in this world. At the same time, we're all reminded that the Church is great because of Christ – not because of us. May Christ strengthen us to ever hold these two perspectives in balance that all the world may see Christ's Church and come to find the Gospel freely given for the salvation of the world.
Church Discipline
When a dog bites your hand, you discipline the dog because you don't want them to repeat that action; both for your sake, so it doesn't bite you again, and for the sake of the dog, because they can get into serious trouble if they bite someone else. Discipline is good. Animals are trained by discipline, families are reared by discipline, and even in the Church there is discipline. Yet, discipline in the Church is one of the most misunderstood things in our world, today. So here let's set the record straight.
Discipline comes from the Latin word meaning "to teach." A Disciple is one who is taught. A Discovery is something new learned. So, first and foremost, we must understand about discipline that it's not just punishment for negative actions. Discipline, in any sphere, involves positive and negative actions and reactions. With the illustration of the dog, you discipline a dog also by training her with treats when she follows her commands. That's discipline, too, because you're reinforcing good behavior. If we only ever think of discipline as negative punishment, we'll miss out on growing people into the good and we'll only ever be running them down. Think of it like Law and Gospel. When someone does bad, the motivation they need to hear is the Law to move them from impenitence to repentance. When someone does good or praiseworthy, the Gospel is the Good News of freely given grace.
That being said, when you hear "Church Discipline," people tend to think of excommunication. Yet most don't know what that is. Let's break it down. "Ex" means "out of." "Communi" is the same root as "Communion" and means fellowship, oneness, and especially refers to the celebration of the Lord's Supper. "Ation" means "to make." Put it all together and you get "To make someone outside of Communion with the Church." To excommunicate someone means that the church has officially and publically declared that an individual cannot receive the Lord's Supper as part of the local congregation. They are no longer in fellowship with, in Communion with, the Church. That does not mean that they can no longer sit in the pews or come to the potlucks. It doesn't mean you've kicked them out of the church. (Even a pagan can come to service and hear the sermon and the readings and sing the hymns.)
Yet why would you excommunicate someone? As a Church that believes Jesus is physically present at the altar with his body and blood, we believe as Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 11 that someone can receive the Sacrament to their condemnation if they don't believe in Jesus. The person who blatantly and unrepentantly lives in open sin has denied Jesus as their Savior just as they've denied the severity of their sin. For a pastor or congregation to let such a person come to the altar, fully aware that they're condemning themselves by doing so, is simply unethical. It's willfully and knowingly endangering a person's eternal soul and salvation. So when pastors and congregations encounter and become aware of anyone living in open and unrepentant sin, they first seek the repentance of that individual by preaching the Law to them. If after that they still do not repent, the matter is brought before the local congregation publically to encourage the person to repent. If after that there is still no repentance, the Church has no choice but to close fellowship with that person and refuse them from the altar, public service at the church, or other benefits of being a member of the Church. Should they then repent, the Church publically welcomes them back into fellowship and Communion and forgives and forgets. The discipline has worked – the lesson has been taught. That person has once again received the forgiveness of Christ. And that – the restoration of the relationship – is why you would excommunicate someone in the first place.
We live in an age where people are being taught one thing by the Church and another by our culture. It's easy, especially for young people, to get caught up in the louder voice of the culture, and so abandon Christ's Church and his teachings from the Bible. That's why the Church must stand firm and confident to discipline, both positively and negatively, those for whom Christ died. (That's everyone.)
Worship in the Church
Lutherans are known for traditional, Liturgical Worship. But what does that mean? The word "liturgical" comes from the Greek word for the works of worship that people would do to serve their God. People gathered for the liturgy with the single purpose of following the commandments of God. Liturgical is therefore purposefully reminding and enacting the Commands and Promises of God about his world and his people. This means that we place the Word of God from the Bible as the main thing in our worship. The songs we sing are from the Bible, the words we say are from the Bible, and we read from the Bible to hear what God has to say. That's Liturgical.
Then what is Worship? There are two parts to worship: What God does to serve man, and What man does to serve God. In Lutheran Worship the dominate theme is what God has done and is still doing to serve man. We are reminded every Sunday that God has not saved us because of something we have done but because of His great love and mercy in Christ. Our songs aren't simply our acts of praising God, but they serve to remind us of what God has done for us in Christ. We recall our Baptism, where God chose us and gave us His Holy Spirit to create and sustain faith in Christ's forgiveness won for us at the cross. We celebrate Communion, where Christ comes from heaven to earth to be bodily present in the bread and wine to forgive the sins of those who eat and believe His words, "given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins." These great gifts of God, both recalled and received, in turn lead us to offer Him our worship and praise. That's why Lutheran Worship is typically called Divine Service.
Why does Lutheran Worship stress the Sacraments? Because worship is primarily about receiving the gifts of God, Lutheran worship is primarily Sacramental. The Sacraments are those gifts of God which have been commanded and instituted by Christ for the Church to use physical and temporal elements to distribute His grace: the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. These are the reading, preaching, and singing of His Word, Baptism, and Communion. In these ways God has promised to be in His Church to give us His gifts. So we emphasize and stress these in our worship because God has promised and commanded us to do so.
Other Christian bodies have placed more emphasis in worship on our work towards God; often making their entire service about our Praise and our Worship. Where this happens, we lose the rich depth of what God seeks for our lives by drawing us together to receive his gifts. When we begin to think about worship primarily as something we do to God and for God, we begin to think that we can do it anywhere at any time in any way we choose. And soon, you have an empty church with no one there to receive God's blessings because they're out at the lake or on the golf course. Yet God is the one who has called us out of the world and into his community [the Church]. God is the one who declares that we should hear his Word and that we should hallow [make and keep holy] a specific day; sanctifying it by the reading of his Word, prayers, and receiving his gifts that make us holy. God is the one who is always more willing to give than we to receive – and every Sunday HE GIVES to us. That's why Lutherans are so picky about how we worship and what we do during worship – to avoid this ever being an issue for God's people.
What about the Music? Liturgical music in the Church is the combination of melody and text which reminds us of and enacts God's Words and Promises. Nowhere in Scripture do we have a specific melody set down for us. But, we have the Word. We have the Psalms and we have Canticles of the Saints throughout the Bible and we have the songs sung by the heavenly choir recorded in places like the Book of Revelation. Because Hebrew and Greek poetry in the Bible wasn't written according to modern rhyme or meter, we either have to change the words and rhythms to rhyme like songs we're used to, or we have to change our music to fit the text. Paraphrases or rhyming music are called hymns, and music crafted specifically not to change the text is called chanting. So traditionally Lutherans chant because this allows the Word to be proclaimed without changing it, but we also sing hymns because this allows a musical melody and rhyme to stay with you and so keep God's Word on your heart.
Church Music
Now, let's take the elephant in the room: Church Music. It seems that nothing is so personal and divisive as music in the Church. People have left one church and gone to another simply because they played different music – or played the same music in a different style. There are some denominations in Christendom that refuse to use instruments at all and some churches that refuse to use certain instruments, while other churches use whatever and any instrument they can. There are some churches that refuse to sing certain songs from other denominations, even if they're old favorites, and there are some churches that sing anything. So how can you even begin to talk about music in the Church?
I like to start with the Bible. Paul says in Colossians 3:15, "Let the WORD OF CHRIST dwell in you richly, TEACHING and ADMONISHING one another with PSALMS, HYMNS, and SPIRITUAL SONGS." First, the aim of all music in the Church is the WORD OF CHRIST. If it doesn't speak Christ from Scripture, it's not doing its job and shouldn't be in the worship service about delivering the gifts of Christ. Second, Paul is very clear that music should TEACH and ADMONISH the Christian congregation. There are multiple ways to teach, from repetition to lecture to hands-on, and Paul says somehow that's what Church music should do. And it should admonish: which means to show us our sins and point us to our Savior – which is simply another way to say it should proclaim Scripture through Law AND Gospel, and not just one or the other.
Third, Paul specifically says that the Christian Church is a singing church. There is no way around it. You want to be a Christian according to the Bible: you sing. And what do you sing? You sing the words of Scripture. Psalms – that's the book of Psalms. Hymns – that's the canticles of the Bible. The Gloria (from Luke 2), the Alleluia (From Revelation 19), the Offertory (from Psalm 51), the Sanctus (from Revelation 4 and Psalm 118), and the Nunc Dimmittis (from Luke 2). You sing the songs that God inspired his people to write down in Scripture because you know that these songs are pleasing to God. And Paul adds Spiritual Songs as those songs which the Christian community continues to create, like some of our favorite hymns. Yet, notice, that 2/3 of what Paul impresses on us aren't our favorite hymns, but they're the songs of the Bible.
That means the primary thing about music in the Church is the Word of God. Some of our old favorites don't center around God's Word but focus on my personal experiences with God's Word added. That's not good. That's not biblical. And that shouldn't be used for worship. You start with God's Word not your word. That's why the vast majority of Christendom lets the words of Scripture stand and changes the melody around the words – rather than the other way around. We call that Chanting. So we chant the Psalms and the biblical Hymns/Canticles in order to preserve the Word of God. That's not "Catholic," or any other derogatory label one might use, it's simply putting God's Word first and making music the servant of the Word rather than making the Word of God slave to the music we like. Which one do you think is more God-pleasing?
But what about the other things that get chanted in the traditional, LSB setting 3 service? Why does Pastor chant prayers and responses and other pieces of Scripture used in the service? First, almost everything from the service is Scripture. So we want to preserve the Word of God and not change God's Word. Second, the example we have from Scripture of worship in heaven is singing. The angels and saints in the presence of God sing. In worship, we experience a little heaven on earth. So we who are now in the presence of God sing. It's really that simple. How we sing can vary, but we sing God's Word. Again for 2 reasons: God said sing, so we sing, and heaven sings in the presence of God, so we sing. Third, chanted sound carries better than spoken – and, for the over 1,900 years of the Church when there wasn't powered amplification, that's how you made sure the people in the back heard you. And, finally, it makes the service "pretty:" ascetically pleasing and enjoyable because it's unlike every other interaction we have with the world. (Why do you think musicals are so popular?) That's why throughout it's nearly 500 year history, Lutheran churches have chanted AS THE STANDARD. Only recent years have seen a change in that across Lutheranism.
Hopefully that helps to answer some questions out there about the what's and why's of music in the Lutheran Church. So let's get to singing and chanting.
Occasionally you hear it: "I love Jesus but I don't like the Church," or "Jesus came to abolish religion." It usually come from a good place of appreciating the great things Jesus has done for us and also recognizing that – because Jesus was God in the flesh – men and women can't possibly live his example out to the fullest in our lives, because we're not God. However, as well intentioned as these thoughts or campaigns are, they're completely misguided. How can you say that you love the GodMan who instituted the Church but hate the Church He instituted?
Jesus called 12 apostles to Himself to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. Matthew 10:2-4 specifically lists these 12 leaders among what Acts 1:15 says was about 120 others, not counting the women who followed and served, as well. These 12 he appointed to preach, to teach, to do miracles – confirming the divine truth of their message – and he commanded them to celebrate the Lord's Supper (Matthew 26:26-28) and to Baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18-20). He gave these 12 men specific authority to speak on His behalf to personally forgive sins as if He, Himself, were doing it (John 20:21-23). And He commanded them to do these things. So we see that Christ established a group of 12 men to lead a group of 120 – who'd become 3,000, and then 5,000, and so on – in Preaching, Teaching, and administering the Sacraments. And these twelve went on to establish local gatherings, and put men like Timothy and Titus as overseers of these local "churches" where they would be given the responsibilities the Apostles had to preach and teach and administer the Sacraments, faithfully. Thus, Jesus established a Church, a ministry, for the purpose of binding the sins of the impenitent and forgiving the sins of the penitent.
It's interesting that the New Testament uses this word Church rather than the Jewish idea of Synagogue – which means "to gather together." Church isn't just about like-minded people gathering themselves together. That's not Church. When the New Testament uses the word Church, in the original Greek "ecclesia" – where we get the word ecclesiastical or the name of the book of the Bible, Ecclesiastes – it means "Those who have been called out." The Church is the body of those who have been called from the darkness of this sinful, corrupt world to the light of faith in Christ (1 Peter 2:9-10). It's not about us gathering ourselves, but it's about Christ who gathers us through the proclamation of His Word and the administration of His Sacraments.
And Paul latches on to this idea in his epistles as he says in Romans 10:13-15, "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" And again in Ephesians 4:11-14, "And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes." For more on what the Bible says about the Office of the Ministry, read through the Pastoral Epistles: 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus.
So Jesus says, so Scripture says, there's an Office of the Ministry, a Pastor who stands in the stead and by the command of Christ, because our Lord Jesus Christ instituted it to be that way until he comes again. Those who reject this are either ignorant of the Scriptures or are rejecting the full message of Christ and turning our Lord into what they want Him to be rather than who He really is. May we avoid this error.
The Church's Gifts and Blessings
Jesus didn't build a Church just for the sake of having it. The Church isn't about navel gazing. It's not about who can have the biggest building, the greatest attendance, the most popular preacher, or any other self-centered or self-aggrandized feature. Christ instituted His Church to DO something, and that something is to share the life saving and life changing Gospel of Jesus Christ. This isn't just another commodity or advertized special. This is THE most important thing that anyone can receive in this world and the Church that Jesus built is the only institution that has it. This is the Gospel message that brings people back from the dead – the death of sin and the death of the flesh. This is the Gospel that casts out demons through the waters of Baptism and fills broken souls with the comfort and power of the Holy Spirit. It's not just words; it's God brought down to earth for us. Don't you see, then, that makes the Church that Jesus built THE most important institution in this world.
God made sure that everyone would know exactly where they could go to find His grace; and so He gave us a Church. Not that the Church has the Gospel captive, but God located the Church in this world just as He located the Temple in Jerusalem: so that all would know where to find Him when they're looking. Some people might see this as "Putting God in a box," but this couldn't be farther from the truth. We're not putting the infinite God into a box – He's put Himself THERE. Christ made promises to us that He would be present through the gathering of two or three (Matthew 18:20), where there's preaching of His Word for the forgiveness of sins (John 20:21-23), in the waters of Baptism (Acts 2:38), and in the celebrating – the distributing and receiving – of His body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar (Matthew 26:26-28). God commanded His Church to do these things because He promised to be there for all the world to see in the doing of them. So that, in preaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments, the Church feeds her own with the gifts of forgiveness and, at the same time, shows the world that this is where you find God in His love and mercy through Jesus Christ.
Some, in the course of history, have taken this great responsibility of the Church captive. Martin Luther in his Babylonian Captivity of the Church pointed out that the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation had made the Church a lord over her people and over all the people of the world. Rather than seeing the Church as located FOR the people, they held the people captive under the whims and rules of those in authority – the bishops, popes, and priests. These had become so used to thinking of the Church as a ruler of the world that they burdened people's consciences with things God never commanded nor forbid (adiaphora) and then tried to use the Church to make money selling the forgiveness Jesus had freely won for us on the cross (indulgences). This is why Luther wrote The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, the remind them and even us today that the Church is Christ's Church: His gift TO the world, FOR the world, that those who want to be saved from this "present evil age" may find the Way, the Truth, and the Life for them in Christ.
Seen this way, the way Jesus intended it, the Church is reminded of how great and important she is in this world. At the same time, we're all reminded that the Church is great because of Christ – not because of us. May Christ strengthen us to ever hold these two perspectives in balance that all the world may see Christ's Church and come to find the Gospel freely given for the salvation of the world.
Church Discipline
When a dog bites your hand, you discipline the dog because you don't want them to repeat that action; both for your sake, so it doesn't bite you again, and for the sake of the dog, because they can get into serious trouble if they bite someone else. Discipline is good. Animals are trained by discipline, families are reared by discipline, and even in the Church there is discipline. Yet, discipline in the Church is one of the most misunderstood things in our world, today. So here let's set the record straight.
Discipline comes from the Latin word meaning "to teach." A Disciple is one who is taught. A Discovery is something new learned. So, first and foremost, we must understand about discipline that it's not just punishment for negative actions. Discipline, in any sphere, involves positive and negative actions and reactions. With the illustration of the dog, you discipline a dog also by training her with treats when she follows her commands. That's discipline, too, because you're reinforcing good behavior. If we only ever think of discipline as negative punishment, we'll miss out on growing people into the good and we'll only ever be running them down. Think of it like Law and Gospel. When someone does bad, the motivation they need to hear is the Law to move them from impenitence to repentance. When someone does good or praiseworthy, the Gospel is the Good News of freely given grace.
That being said, when you hear "Church Discipline," people tend to think of excommunication. Yet most don't know what that is. Let's break it down. "Ex" means "out of." "Communi" is the same root as "Communion" and means fellowship, oneness, and especially refers to the celebration of the Lord's Supper. "Ation" means "to make." Put it all together and you get "To make someone outside of Communion with the Church." To excommunicate someone means that the church has officially and publically declared that an individual cannot receive the Lord's Supper as part of the local congregation. They are no longer in fellowship with, in Communion with, the Church. That does not mean that they can no longer sit in the pews or come to the potlucks. It doesn't mean you've kicked them out of the church. (Even a pagan can come to service and hear the sermon and the readings and sing the hymns.)
Yet why would you excommunicate someone? As a Church that believes Jesus is physically present at the altar with his body and blood, we believe as Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 11 that someone can receive the Sacrament to their condemnation if they don't believe in Jesus. The person who blatantly and unrepentantly lives in open sin has denied Jesus as their Savior just as they've denied the severity of their sin. For a pastor or congregation to let such a person come to the altar, fully aware that they're condemning themselves by doing so, is simply unethical. It's willfully and knowingly endangering a person's eternal soul and salvation. So when pastors and congregations encounter and become aware of anyone living in open and unrepentant sin, they first seek the repentance of that individual by preaching the Law to them. If after that they still do not repent, the matter is brought before the local congregation publically to encourage the person to repent. If after that there is still no repentance, the Church has no choice but to close fellowship with that person and refuse them from the altar, public service at the church, or other benefits of being a member of the Church. Should they then repent, the Church publically welcomes them back into fellowship and Communion and forgives and forgets. The discipline has worked – the lesson has been taught. That person has once again received the forgiveness of Christ. And that – the restoration of the relationship – is why you would excommunicate someone in the first place.
We live in an age where people are being taught one thing by the Church and another by our culture. It's easy, especially for young people, to get caught up in the louder voice of the culture, and so abandon Christ's Church and his teachings from the Bible. That's why the Church must stand firm and confident to discipline, both positively and negatively, those for whom Christ died. (That's everyone.)
Worship in the Church
Lutherans are known for traditional, Liturgical Worship. But what does that mean? The word "liturgical" comes from the Greek word for the works of worship that people would do to serve their God. People gathered for the liturgy with the single purpose of following the commandments of God. Liturgical is therefore purposefully reminding and enacting the Commands and Promises of God about his world and his people. This means that we place the Word of God from the Bible as the main thing in our worship. The songs we sing are from the Bible, the words we say are from the Bible, and we read from the Bible to hear what God has to say. That's Liturgical.
Then what is Worship? There are two parts to worship: What God does to serve man, and What man does to serve God. In Lutheran Worship the dominate theme is what God has done and is still doing to serve man. We are reminded every Sunday that God has not saved us because of something we have done but because of His great love and mercy in Christ. Our songs aren't simply our acts of praising God, but they serve to remind us of what God has done for us in Christ. We recall our Baptism, where God chose us and gave us His Holy Spirit to create and sustain faith in Christ's forgiveness won for us at the cross. We celebrate Communion, where Christ comes from heaven to earth to be bodily present in the bread and wine to forgive the sins of those who eat and believe His words, "given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins." These great gifts of God, both recalled and received, in turn lead us to offer Him our worship and praise. That's why Lutheran Worship is typically called Divine Service.
Why does Lutheran Worship stress the Sacraments? Because worship is primarily about receiving the gifts of God, Lutheran worship is primarily Sacramental. The Sacraments are those gifts of God which have been commanded and instituted by Christ for the Church to use physical and temporal elements to distribute His grace: the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. These are the reading, preaching, and singing of His Word, Baptism, and Communion. In these ways God has promised to be in His Church to give us His gifts. So we emphasize and stress these in our worship because God has promised and commanded us to do so.
Other Christian bodies have placed more emphasis in worship on our work towards God; often making their entire service about our Praise and our Worship. Where this happens, we lose the rich depth of what God seeks for our lives by drawing us together to receive his gifts. When we begin to think about worship primarily as something we do to God and for God, we begin to think that we can do it anywhere at any time in any way we choose. And soon, you have an empty church with no one there to receive God's blessings because they're out at the lake or on the golf course. Yet God is the one who has called us out of the world and into his community [the Church]. God is the one who declares that we should hear his Word and that we should hallow [make and keep holy] a specific day; sanctifying it by the reading of his Word, prayers, and receiving his gifts that make us holy. God is the one who is always more willing to give than we to receive – and every Sunday HE GIVES to us. That's why Lutherans are so picky about how we worship and what we do during worship – to avoid this ever being an issue for God's people.
What about the Music? Liturgical music in the Church is the combination of melody and text which reminds us of and enacts God's Words and Promises. Nowhere in Scripture do we have a specific melody set down for us. But, we have the Word. We have the Psalms and we have Canticles of the Saints throughout the Bible and we have the songs sung by the heavenly choir recorded in places like the Book of Revelation. Because Hebrew and Greek poetry in the Bible wasn't written according to modern rhyme or meter, we either have to change the words and rhythms to rhyme like songs we're used to, or we have to change our music to fit the text. Paraphrases or rhyming music are called hymns, and music crafted specifically not to change the text is called chanting. So traditionally Lutherans chant because this allows the Word to be proclaimed without changing it, but we also sing hymns because this allows a musical melody and rhyme to stay with you and so keep God's Word on your heart.
Church Music
Now, let's take the elephant in the room: Church Music. It seems that nothing is so personal and divisive as music in the Church. People have left one church and gone to another simply because they played different music – or played the same music in a different style. There are some denominations in Christendom that refuse to use instruments at all and some churches that refuse to use certain instruments, while other churches use whatever and any instrument they can. There are some churches that refuse to sing certain songs from other denominations, even if they're old favorites, and there are some churches that sing anything. So how can you even begin to talk about music in the Church?
I like to start with the Bible. Paul says in Colossians 3:15, "Let the WORD OF CHRIST dwell in you richly, TEACHING and ADMONISHING one another with PSALMS, HYMNS, and SPIRITUAL SONGS." First, the aim of all music in the Church is the WORD OF CHRIST. If it doesn't speak Christ from Scripture, it's not doing its job and shouldn't be in the worship service about delivering the gifts of Christ. Second, Paul is very clear that music should TEACH and ADMONISH the Christian congregation. There are multiple ways to teach, from repetition to lecture to hands-on, and Paul says somehow that's what Church music should do. And it should admonish: which means to show us our sins and point us to our Savior – which is simply another way to say it should proclaim Scripture through Law AND Gospel, and not just one or the other.
Third, Paul specifically says that the Christian Church is a singing church. There is no way around it. You want to be a Christian according to the Bible: you sing. And what do you sing? You sing the words of Scripture. Psalms – that's the book of Psalms. Hymns – that's the canticles of the Bible. The Gloria (from Luke 2), the Alleluia (From Revelation 19), the Offertory (from Psalm 51), the Sanctus (from Revelation 4 and Psalm 118), and the Nunc Dimmittis (from Luke 2). You sing the songs that God inspired his people to write down in Scripture because you know that these songs are pleasing to God. And Paul adds Spiritual Songs as those songs which the Christian community continues to create, like some of our favorite hymns. Yet, notice, that 2/3 of what Paul impresses on us aren't our favorite hymns, but they're the songs of the Bible.
That means the primary thing about music in the Church is the Word of God. Some of our old favorites don't center around God's Word but focus on my personal experiences with God's Word added. That's not good. That's not biblical. And that shouldn't be used for worship. You start with God's Word not your word. That's why the vast majority of Christendom lets the words of Scripture stand and changes the melody around the words – rather than the other way around. We call that Chanting. So we chant the Psalms and the biblical Hymns/Canticles in order to preserve the Word of God. That's not "Catholic," or any other derogatory label one might use, it's simply putting God's Word first and making music the servant of the Word rather than making the Word of God slave to the music we like. Which one do you think is more God-pleasing?
But what about the other things that get chanted in the traditional, LSB setting 3 service? Why does Pastor chant prayers and responses and other pieces of Scripture used in the service? First, almost everything from the service is Scripture. So we want to preserve the Word of God and not change God's Word. Second, the example we have from Scripture of worship in heaven is singing. The angels and saints in the presence of God sing. In worship, we experience a little heaven on earth. So we who are now in the presence of God sing. It's really that simple. How we sing can vary, but we sing God's Word. Again for 2 reasons: God said sing, so we sing, and heaven sings in the presence of God, so we sing. Third, chanted sound carries better than spoken – and, for the over 1,900 years of the Church when there wasn't powered amplification, that's how you made sure the people in the back heard you. And, finally, it makes the service "pretty:" ascetically pleasing and enjoyable because it's unlike every other interaction we have with the world. (Why do you think musicals are so popular?) That's why throughout it's nearly 500 year history, Lutheran churches have chanted AS THE STANDARD. Only recent years have seen a change in that across Lutheranism.
Hopefully that helps to answer some questions out there about the what's and why's of music in the Lutheran Church. So let's get to singing and chanting.
