11.15.2004

an open letter

To my fellow Lutherans at St. Paul Lutheran, Villa Park, IL.

Growing up in the church and watching the rise and fall of churches in the Christian community, I'd heard of so many churches that were driven in schism by so-called "worship wars," and I suppose I was naive to think that it would never happen to my home church. When I became a member of St. Paul with my family over five years ago, I immediately felt blessed by the love and compassion of the congregation -- the care and warmth shown to me. I was drawn to the congregation because of the individual witness of each and every member. I was drawn because of the honesty of preaching, the strength of faith, and the wonderful programs and opportunities that were open to me.

I feel completely blindsided by the current attempts to shovel in a contemporary service, and I would like to spend a few minutes talking about the situation with brutal honesty. I am not seeking to offend, but as a member of the congregation and as a future pastor, I can't help but have an opinion about the current situation, and I feel no impetus to keep my mouth shut any longer.

The traditional/contemporary debate has been raging in churches all over the country, and I used to believe that music preference was a very shallow issue to be so schismatic. I wish that the current situaion at St. Paul was merely about music preference. But the current situation has woven a web of issues that need discussing: Lutheran identity and theology, Lutheran church structure and leadership, and respect and care for our congregation.

First, our Lutheran identity. One of the defining characteristics of the Lutheran church is its liturgy. I am sick and tired of the misconception that liturgy is boring or irrelevant. Liturgy, defined as "the work of the people," is a structure that allows the congregation to be active participants in the worship service, and in our participation, we truly become the "priesthood of all believers," as advocated by Martin Luther. There is distinct theological movement to the liturgy -- there is IMPORTANT theological movement to the liturgy. We first confess so that we are clean and blameless before God, so that we can then rightly worship him. And worshiping God is NOT about what we feel or what we get out of the service. Worshiping God is to put the focus on God, and not on ourselves. Moreover, Luther cited as the crucial movements in worship the preaching of the word and the administering of the sacraments. I ask those proponents of a contemporary service that seeks to throw out liturgy and sacrament, do you still consider yourselvses Lutheran? And can you possibly feel right about tossing out benchmarks of the identity of many many Lutherans in this congregation?

The Lutheran church is a meshing of a hierarchical church administration and a congregational church administration. I feel that the current contemporary service committee has failed to recognize either of these. Church hierarchy is in place as a unifying factor. It is a remarkable thing to know that on every Sunday morning, there are thousands of other Lutheran churches who are worshiping with the same liturgy and are reading the same Biblical texts as your are. Besides that, the church hierarachy is important for accountability and general organization. By attempting to push through a contemporary service without being completely honest every step of the way to the church staff, you are disrespecting them and their position. It is the responsibility of the ordained clergy to care for the well-being of the church personally, theologically, and administratively. And as members of the body of Christ, we all are held accountable to upholding and supporting those responsibilities. I ask you, how many congregation members have you surveyed to assess the need for this type of service? Do you not understand that it looks horribly underhanded to form a committee of proponents who do not even claim membership? It looks like you are telling the congregation that they are ignorant and unfit to be involved in the workings of their own church. Either that, or it makes you all look cowardly! It imples that you know that you don't have the congregational support for this service, and so you had to bring in outside people to support your case, since you couldn't find anyone else to do it. Either way, it is infuriating, as a member of the congregation, to have gotten no say whatsoever in the discussion of this new service. You have succeeded in insulting me and my opinions.

This leads me to the topics of integrity and honesty. I ask you, from where have you discerned the need for this service? And when I ask that, I am really asking you to give me a real reason that you are trying to fix something that didn't appear to be broken in the first place. A core of five or six people insisting that there is a need for a praise and worship service makes me suspicious when I haven't heard the same rumblings from the general population of the congregation. Are you too prideful and stubborn to realize that shallow evangelism or pop culture aren't reasons to upheave a church's functioning? You are tearing this church apart because you haven't been honest with the congregation.

St. Paul's Lutheran Church in East Windsor, New Jersey, is contemplating adding a contemporary service. Earlier this past summer, there were repeated announcements inviting the congregation to be a part of the committee that would be discerning the need for and possibility of a contemporary service. After those announcements, they began handing out actual surveys to the congregation after church on Sundays, which allowed the members of the congregation to speak openly about their thoughts, concerns, and ideas about this service. The surveys allowed the congregation to speak for itself, answering the question "do you think there is a need?" instead of a coercive "well, don't you think there is a need?" After a few months of perceiving interest and collecting surveys, the committee finally met for the first time -- a committee of congregation members, the senior pastor of the church, and the music coordinator. This allowed the meetings to be honest with both the congregation and the staff. Now, two months later, the committee has proposed a budget for this new service, should it happen, and this budget takes into account the knowledge that a service like this can only succeed if someone experienced is hired to do it, in order to guarantee quality and consistency. The committee is interested in this service, but is also functioning with the knowledge that the service may or may not ever happen. They are working harder to discern the need for the service than they are to impose it on the congregation. If it is a need, they are making sure to determine if this is the time or place to do it.

That is an honest, open way to entertain the idea of a major change to the church's life and mission. The committe in charge of the contemporary service back at St. Paul in Villa Park have not been open to the congregation nor to the staff. So bent are they on wanting this service for their own edification that they have not realized that there might not be a need or a desire for this sort of worship in the congregation. Are you honestly willing to alienate a good number of longstanding members of our congregation just so that you can have a worship experience in which you are more concerned with how you feel than what praise you are giving to God?

Given a choice between watching half the congregation leave over this issue and watching a handful of people who would prefer a different worship style take responsiblity for themselves to find a church that meets their needs, the choice seems ridiculously obvious.

I am wholeheartedly willing to participate in either a traditional or contemporary style of worship, provided that there is a theological basis for it, and provided that the theology presented within the service is sound. Music preference is a simple, shallow issue. It is an issue that doesn't divide a church. It is the deeper implications of the means to the end that divide a church. St. Paul has not been losing members over its current worship, nor has there been a general uprising about the style of worship or the theological teaching done therein. I ask again: Why are you changing for the sake of change? Why aren't you more willing to go about this in the right way, even if that takes more time, or even if the end result is that you learn that many people are satisfied with their current worship? It feels as if you are rushing in a contemporary service out of fear -- without a perceived need in the whole of the congregation, you feel you must rush into doing a contemporary service to "enlighten" the congregation to some "need" that they didn't know that they had?

Why fix what isn't broken? Why not take the blinders off and think for the good of the church and not for the good of yourselves? You are being dishonest, schismatic, and thorougly offensive in your attempts to tell me that I am or should be dissatisfied with the way things are. If you want a Pentecostal church service, join a Pentecostal church. If you want a Lutheran church without a liturgy, join a Lutheran church without a liturgy. If you want to become a member of St. Paul, then become a member because of what the church is and does already. That's how I came to St. Paul, and that's why many people joing St. Paul. I am infuriated by the coercive and prideful measures that have been taken to change a good church into something new and different, simply because a few people can't take it upon themselves to be open to tradition or honest about the true needs of our church.

We are one body with many members, the apostle Paul says in reference to the church being the body of Christ. I fully believe that all Christians are a part of the body of Christ, and that each individual church and denomination functions as a member of that body. I believe that denominations and churches can have different expressions of their faith and different emphases when it comes to worship, doctrine, and structure. What makes us unified is our belief in Christ, no matter the expression. So as we are united in Christ, so also should we be open and willing to respect those of different opinion and doctrine. It is because of this that I propose two solutions to the current problem. First, that each congregation member be honest with his or her self, looking to distinguish between personal preference and the good of the congregation. Also, that differening opinions would not be viewed vindicively as being right or wrong -- that we could be open in or difference. And in this, we could come to realize that St. Paul may or may not be the right church home for everyone's preferences, and that finding a church to suit your needs may be more important than trying to meld St. Paul into a fractured and spiteful conglomorate of incomensurable opinions. Second, that the church could recognize the turmoil in its midst, and table this issue for five years. And in five years, we can resurrect the issue with a greater honesty, openness, and spirit of Christian love. We must think in terms of caring for the body of Christ and caring for its members at St. Paul. Right now I see nothing but dissent and hurt feelings. Something must change, and I fear that if we continue the current path, change will only take the form of schism. Are we willing to take that risk?

In Christ's love and peace,
Melissa Johnson

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