Yearly Archives: 2009

Survey Says: LCMS Worship Practices & Attitudes

The LCMS Reporter website posted an article (no longer available) earlier today on the newly released LCMS Worship Practice & Attitudes Survey (no longer available).  The survey compares the responses of the Top 5% congregations (highest percentage and number of adult confirmations in 2006) and a random sampling of congregations on their worship practices and attitudes.

And the survey says . . . . nothing earth shattering.  I read through the 42 page survey results, yawned, and moved on.  A brief summary is:

For the most part, there are few statistically significant differences in worship practices between the two samples, and those differences are primarily related to elements of the different styles [of worship - my addition].

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Coil Binding! The Musician’s Friend

This morning I took four music books (Augsburg Organ Library) and my LSB Propers of the Day down to Office Depot to have their binding cut off and replaced with coil binding. Only $3.00 a book – not bad.

I’ve written about this in a previous post, but I think it bears repeating. Why do music publishers publish a book that will be put on a music rack that will not stay open on its own? It seems ridiculous to have to rebind the books before you can even use them.

P.S. I had my LSB Propers of the Day rebound just as a matter of convenience — so I’m not “unhappy” with CPH on that item. On the other hand, CPH could look at how they bind their Songs of the Gospel (preludes on Luther and Paul Gerhardt hymns) — those books were rebound as soon as I got them a few years back.

Pipe Organs: Q&A with Grime and Hildebrand

So how does the pipe organ work? Paul Grime, Kevin Hildebrand, and the multimedia crew at Concordia Theological Seminary have put together an introductory YouTube video on the pipe organ and answer 5 or so common questions. The content is geared for both organists and non-organists. Listen closely and you can hear the nice reverberation in Kramer Chapel.

So what did I learn from the video? That I should pull out the ladder to the organ chamber and go blow on some pipes! (The video did not explicitly suggest this, but I extrapolated it as a reasonable experience to get to know my organ better.)

Satan and the Church

Here’s a brief selection from an essay by Dr. Naomichi Masaki entitled “Liturgy and Culture: Can the Liturgy Be Made to Reflect a Particular Culture?”

Satan does his best to diminish Christ’s incarnation in the church because he knows so well that the flesh of Jesus is life itself, and that through the ever-fresh baptismal water, the living voice of Jesus, and the reception of His very body and blood at the Eucharist, life itself is given out to the faithful with forgiveness and salvation. (pg. 135, Through the Church the Song Goes On, LCMS Commission on Worship, 1999)

The Other Essential Lutheran Library – Musician Edition

As I was browsing at the music store in Portland on Saturday, a quote from Luther came to mind:

Many books does not make one learned, nor much reading either; rather to read a good thing and to read it often, regardless of how little it is, that makes one learned in the Scriptures.

I think something similar could be said for church musicians in relation to their musical repertoire and libraries. Publishing companies continue to entice us with their latest offerings; yet we still have existing music waiting to be learned or looked at. To buy or not to buy? The related and potentially better question is: What is the Lutheran musician’s core repertoire (besides the hymnal)?

A few weeks back, Paul McCain at Cyberbrethren wrote about The Essential Lutheran Library — a core list of absolute essential reading for every Lutheran.

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