Worship Wars

When I first came to Luther Seminary I was excited to see how worship went on campus. I imagined campus chapel to be this grand place of innovation and experimentation. I mean, pastors trained here leave for a myriad of contexts...and worship seems like a pretty important part of the leadership pastors do in churches. I thought it would be important to get to try different things in a new way before heading to the parish, where experimentation might not be as well received. This place, after all, is primarily a place of learning.

I was most certainly disappointed in this respect. I came from a small to mid-sized congregation in rural South Dakota. Our worship varied from organ to bluegrass bands to (actually) contemporary Christian music, sermons to dramatic readings involving children, regular youth led music, piano, Holden Evening prayer, Hymns, praise songs, chanting Psalms. This rural congregation had a drum set in the sanctuary. We didn't have worship wars, because we tried just about anything and everything. This congregation did a lot of experimentation in worship based on the gifts of those who were part of the Body.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen this kind of attitude here at Luther. We have a group of fabulous musicians studying in the Sacred Music program. Their gifts are wonderfully shared during our chapel worship services. But the variety that happens here - happens between the organ and choral music. It happens in the choice of hymns. I don't see a ton of innovation. I don't see us lifting up the gifts of other, less traditional (or ancient) church music or musicians, at least not very often. We have (right here) in our student body people who have come from the music business in Nashville, Christian rap artists, folk musicians, and those leaving the performance industry in LA. We have talented guitar players, and pianists, and songwriters. And I'm sure there are many other gifts existing outside our boxes of what chapel worship should look like.

I'm not sure why our worship on campus seems so stuck. Do we have a really small, boxed-in, concept of that which is sacred? I hope that chapel can be both a place of authentic learning and authentic worship for the members of our community. It still seems like a place where people are living out the expectation that, as leaders, we have to get it "right."