there is hardly a method you know

it’s a broken poem / started up yesterday

this is an excursus, of sorts

I used to think that the rigid way worship was conceived had to do with the seminary I went to; two things, though, changed my mind.

the first is relatively innocuous, but informing

When I was planning a worship service for chapel I had kind of had it with the authoritarian grip on chapel services. So rather than submitting the boilerplate worship service I tried planning something different. Not radically different, but different. After sharing my reasoning, the Dean of the Chapel was on-board & helping me plan the particulars.

For as rigid as the authority figures can be, it turns out there is still room for deviation.

the other observation should have been more obvious sooner

If other seminaries are more flexible in worship training, how come every Lutheran service is basically the same?

Well, there are probably many reasons why worship is so generic, but one has to do with the worship commentaries of the ELCA.

not only are they bland, but they also speak with this weird air of authority

An excerpt:

“First this, then such-and-such, after you can do doodle-hay or doodle-hoe, but then you will finish with that.”

Okay, that’s not really in the commentary, but you get the picture.

the entire talk about worship lacks imagination

I might even say it stifles imagination by what it includes, as well as what it precludes.

While the commentary talks about flexibility, its general acceptance of many things leaves the impression that the service just won’t work if we don’t sing particular hymns from the hymnal at the right time.

This general insistence and lack of genuine alternatives simultaneous stifle imagination and bars innovation. Perhaps not explicitly or even intentionally, but to someone trying to learn and learn from the service, that is the outcome.

Okay, I know I haven’t spoken about the sending, but all the reading I’ve done has been highly unsatisfactory.

I think this project is going to take a little longer. The next four entries will go through the four parts of the service using formal resources. After those reflections I hope to examine something more, I don’t know, helpful...