Why I advocate the historic Lutheran liturgy and why I am skeptical of the confessional subscription of those who do not use it, a thread:

1. The Word of God alone creates and sustains faith in us.
2. The purpose of holy worship is to receive Christ's forgiveness through the faith created by that Word of God.

3. Therefore, the purpose of a liturgy should be to structure the service in such a way that we use the Word of God to proclaim the faith-creating-and-sustaining story of salvation.

4. Likewise, the purpose of musical settings of liturgies should be to highlight the beauty and truth of God's Word. The music should serve the Word rather than the Word serving the music.

5. The liturgy that best does this is the liturgy that will most benefit God's people.
6. In my view, the historic liturgy of the Lutheran Church does this better than any other liturgy I've seen.

Some Lutheran advocates of so-called contemporary worship will still retain the liturgical texts but offer more "contemporary" musical arrangements of them. Others will ditch the historic liturgy entirely in favor of something else. Let's deal with the latter first.

What is their justification for doing so? In my experience, I've never heard advocates of this approach argue that what they're doing is SCRIPTURALLY better for people. Rather, they argue that it's EFFECTIVELY better for people.

So they won't argue that their novel liturgies do a better job of employing the Bible to tell the story of salvation in the service. Rather, they argue that their liturgies do a better job connecting people to God by removing the hindrances of the historic liturgy.

"We're reaching people who find the historic liturgy stuffy and rigid. We're serving people who find that more variety keeps them engaged and helps them connect to God more."

This is latent arminian revivalism and/or mysticism. I don't think those who argue this realize it, but what they're confessing is that the Word of God does not convert alone. Rather, people's will need to be engaged in order to come to God or, worse, find Him within themselves.

And therefore, the church's responsibility is to give them a liturgy that will stoke the fires of their will and/or creates inside of them a connection with God.

In other words, sure, the Word creates and sustains faith. But it doesn't do so alone. Emotions play a role.

Which means the human will plays a role. So while those who espouse this may not think they deny AC XVIII and FC II, it very much seems to me that they do.

Similarly, but not as egregiously, for those who maintain the texts of the historic liturgy but prefer to use more "contemporary" musical arrangements and instrumentation.*

*See a point of clarification in a follow-up thread that made this one too long.

So, how do these folks defend more modern arrangements of the liturgy? Because they're using the same texts, they don't argue for textual superiority, but for EFFECTIVE superiority. "Some people respond more to this style of music."

In other words, "the Word will be more effective at creating or strengthening faith in people if the musical style elicits an emotional response in them." And this strikes me as the same latent arminian revivalism and mysticism of the other group, albeit to a lesser degree.

Similarly, the practice of offering both "traditional" and "contemporary" worship services and encouraging people to attend whichever one they prefer seems to confess the same thing.

"All of us have different tastes. We all have different emotional responses to various musical styles. Therefore, pick the musical style that elicits that response in you, and the Word paired with that musical style will be more effective."

So again, I don't think that Lutherans who have this practice INTEND to deny AC XVIII and FC II. But it's hard for me to see how they're NOT effectively denying them.

Or more to the point, it's hard for me to see how they're not effectively teaching against them.

Granted, high church collar boiz can effectively teach their folks the same thing, so this problem isn't entirely limited to one side in the worship wars.

Buuuuuuuuuut let's be honest and admit that, by inadvertently teaching "aesthetics have equal standing with the Word of God", the COWO Lutherans have steered far more people into Evangelicalism than the collar boiz have to Rome or the EO.

So I'm open to arguments that other liturgies are TEXTUALLY better than what we have in our hymnal. And I'm open to arguments that other arrangements of the liturgy are MUSICALLY better at serving the liturgical texts.

But if your argument for not using the historic liturgical texts or historic arrangements is essentially "our way creates an environment where people can better connect with God," I'm going to have doubts about your confessional subscription.

I'm not accusing you of lying when you say you subscribe to the Confessions. I certainly think you believe you do. But when this defense of contemporary worship very much SOUNDS like it's driven by latent heterodoxy, I think the onus is on you to prove that it's not.

Especially when, historically speaking, we all had a hymnal we were commonly using and then a bunch of you stopped doing that.