As we learned in the previous post, the church retained two different calendars side by side: the lunar and the solar. Thus there was a clash between two ways of dividing up the year. But there is also another clash in the church’s time-keeping. We think of the new day as beginning at midnight. So…
Liturgical Titbits: A Tale of Two Calendars
The Christian Church was borne out of the mixed soil of the Old Testament Scriptures, first-century Judaism and the Græco-Roman world. This mixture of influences is still with us today when it comes to measuring and marking time in the Church’s life. The worship of the Old Testament, and much of the Judaism of Palestine…
Liturgical Titbits: The Idle Congregation
“Why don’t we get to do more in the service? Why does the pastor get to do (almost) everything? All that the congregation seems to do is to sing hymns and say ‘Amen’ a lot. Why? It makes it feel like the pastor is more special and important, and makes us feel devalued.” This way…
What’s with all the Psalm chanting
From last Sunday's service bulletin at Our Saviour Lutheran Church Where do we have Psalms in the service? The Introit, the Gradual and (often) the Alleluia Verse are portions of Psalms. Sometimes, a whole Psalm takes the place of the Gradual. Also, some of the hymns we sing are paraphrases of Psalms (such as The…
The Structure of the Collect
The following was printed in the service bulletin at Our Saviour Lutheran Church on 25 August 2013 (Trinity 13). As far as I'm aware, the mnemonic was invented by the Rev. Bosco Peters on the site Liturgy. At any rate, that's where I learned it. The Collect always takes the same form. This form of…
This Way and That: Liturgical Orientation
Another liturgical titbit, from last Sunday's service bulletin at Our Saviour Lutheran Church: Liturgical Titbits: Liturgical Orientation One of the noticeable things about the liturgist in a Lutheran service is the fact that he doesn’t stand still. One moment, he’s facing the congregation, another he’s got his back turned on them. What’s that all about?…
The hymns in the service
From last Sunday's service bulletin at Our Saviour Lutheran Church: Hymn singing in church is actually a fairly recent innovation: traditionally, hymns were mainly sung at Matins and Vespers, but not in the Sunday main (Communion) service. The practice of hymn-singing in the Communion service was a Lutheran innovation at the time of the Reformation.…
Stand to pray, sit to sing
The latest Liturgical Titbit: Lutherans, unlike everyone else it seems, stand to pray and sit to sing. Why? The reason for sitting for hymns is almost certainly entirely prosaic. Lutheran hymns were traditionally long, and often sung very slowly. If hymns last 20 minutes or more, sitting down is quite sensible. Since that’s rarely an…
Whole body worship
From time to time, I add a little section called 'Liturgical Titbits' to the service bulletin at Our Saviour Lutheran Church. The idea is that, over time, the congregation's knowledge and understanding of various aspects of the liturgy will grow—and bring about a growing appreciation thereof. These pieces are, as the name suggests, very brief,…
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