A blog of the Evangelical Lutheran Liturgy
Why do football stadiums basically look the same? There are certainly differences in size, whether or not they have a dome, and the external aesthetics of the building. They are individually known by different names. But that said, you can drive by a football stadium - whether at the local high school campus, the university, or in a big city that has an NFL presence - and you will know that this is a stadium…
Read MoreI’ve often heard the service of the acolyte being downplayed as “just lighting candles.” If that’s the case, why have them at all? And since we now have electricity, why have candles at all? For anyone in the congregation can flip the switch. Such denigration of acolyte service is unfortunate and ill-advised.
Read MoreDavid Scaer has gifted the church with an unexpected gift: a book length treatise on the resurrection of Jesus Christ cleverly entitled Jesus’ Resurrection (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2026). I say unexpected because I didn’t realize that we needed it.
Read MoreThe Rev. Mark Surburg has written a helpful overview of celebrating the sacrament of the altar every Sunday: viewed in light of scripture, tradition, the Lutheran confessions, and contemporary American Lutheran practice.
Two LCMS services for the Feast of All Saints, November 1, 2026:
Read MoreThe Hebrew chesed is normally translated as “mercy,” which doesn’t quite do it justice, because the term contains also elements of eager zeal and desire, that is, fierceness; and it is commonly used in the imprecatory Psalms.
Read MoreIn the great city where he lived, life was always gay. Every day many strangers came to town, and among them one day came two swindlers. They let it be known they were weavers, and they said they could weave the most magnificent fabrics imaginable. Not only were their colors and patterns uncommonly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.
Read MoreI’m against changing our pastoral formation paradigm not because I’m afraid of something. I just believe that pastoral formation is important, and like training lawyers, soldiers, doctors, and pilots, is not only about the acquisition of information, but of being formed into a way of life.
Read MoreFor the last few years, we’ve been testing The Lutheran Missal materials with a limited field testing audience, first the temporal lectionary, then the sanctuary lectionary, then the gradual texts, after that the collects, and now the complends (post-communions) and super populums (for weekdays in Lent).
We’re happy to announce that now anyone can access the mass texts for every day of the year in the new app for The Lutheran Missal, available for iOS and Android.
Read MoreFr. Eric Wismar has posted the entirety of Pro Ecclesia Lutherana, the journal of the Liturgical Society of St. James, online. Fr. Wismar's great-grandfather Father...well, Father Wismar (Adolph), was one of the founders of the society.
Read MoreIs a Bishop just a priest, or is a priest a Bishop?
If a Bishop has no other ability than the priest, then he is simply a priest. He has a higher dignity, but so does a pröst. [trans. note: This term could be used for a prior, the dean of a region under a bishop, or one who is a pastor in his own parish as opposed to being under a kyrkoherde. In any of these senses it is an honor given to a priest.] A monsignor and a cardinal, an archpriest and an abbot, these are all higher 23 dignities of the clerical estate, but all these high prelates are only priests. And there is a significant group of theologians, who cannot be denied the epithet catholic, in the present day, who believe that the Bishop is a priest.
Read MoreThe Praise & Worship genre is surprisingly old.
Read MoreOnce upon a time, I stood at the altar in Trelleborg's church together with Axel Malmberg, who is now the vicar in Klippan, and he greeted the congregation with the ordinary liturgical salutation: “The Lord be with you.” It was a situation that I had often experienced before and never thought anything about, but this time the question came to me: “Shall I answer with the congregation? Shall I answer with the words ‘With you also the Lord ’, [trans. note: the traditional response in the salutation in Sweden is Med dig vare ock Herren] or am I one liturgical person with the other priest at the altar, so that instead I should receive with my brother in the office the congregation's response.”
Read MoreThese guys argue that there are apparently liturgical Lutherans who find their righteousness not in Christ, but rather in their own decision to use traditional, liturgical worship and hymnody.
Read MoreIs the Bishop now the source of the Office? Is it so that the Office is a bishop's office, the Bishop has the entire Office and gives deacons and priests a different share of his Office?
That is what I have always believed. About this I have always been convinced. The strange thing is that I never thought that it is called, even in the best Catholic terminology, the PRIEST office, not the BISHOP office. I don't know why I didn't think of that. I believe that it is due to inadequate teaching during the preparation for the Office. Such things were never spoken of. That was not done in Germany at the time, and therefore it should not be done in Sweden.
Read MoreThe form and adornment of the Liturgy have developed in various ways throughout the Church's history, but its basic integrity must always be guarded and maintained. That is to say, the preaching of the Holy Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles as fulfilled in Christ Jesus, and the administration of His Holy Supper with His Word in accordance with His institution, are ever and always to be the central, controlling, decisive, and definitive factors.
Read MoreA couple of days after my ordination, I was standing outside the window of the Sydsvenska Dagbladet in Lund, reading the news on a sunny May morning, when a comrade came up to me and asked: "Well, how does it now feel to have the character indelebilis?" It was 1922, liberal theology was in its heyday, and it was in good taste to joke about such things. I fell into the jargon and answered effusively that it did not feel as if, as far as I noticed, I had received the indelible character of the Office.
Read MoreThe Rev. Andrew Preus interviewed the Rev. Dr. Burnell Eckardt regarding the 25th anniversary of the Yankee Stadium incident and the recent book by Dr. David Behke and the Rev. Gerald Kieschnick on this topic.
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