For a number of years I’ve had lofty goals to catalog my music library — not just the books, but also the individual pieces within the book, associated hymn tunes, composers, when I used a piece, etc. While I haven’t made much progress on the cataloging, awhile back I did create the underlying structure that would link everything back to Lutheran Service Book and the associated hymn tunes. Through that project I had the data to create several indexes that had more detail than those provided in the back of the LSB editions — primarily around the hymn tunes used in LSB.
Tag Archives: LSB
The Concordia Organist
I received an e-mail today from CPH that startled me even though I “knew” their new product would be coming eventually.
Wanted: One Outstanding Church Organist.
Music adds much to our worship, but musicians can be hard to find. Well, look no further.
The reality is that many churches have a difficult time finding an organist or even someone who can play the piano for worship services. Enter CPH. They have created Concordia Organist, a 31-CD set of all the hymns in LSB which can be used to accompany hymn singing. CPH is having an “essay” contest (though the Official Rules say it will be a random drawing) to give away a free copy of the Concordia Organist (retail value: $699 with an introductory price of $499) to a LCMS or LCC congregation.
LSB 334: O Lord, How Shall I Meet You
Some of you may have already discovered this, but I’ll pass it along for those that don’t know.
The stanza numbering for O, Lord, How Shall I Meet You (LSB 334) is incorrect in the LSB pew edition (or at least the copies I have seen). The six stanzas are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7, but omit 5. The Hymn Accompaniment edition and the Guitar Chord edition have the stanzas numbered as 1-6.
If you ever choose to sing selected stanzas of this hymn, you should verify the stanza numbers in your editions to minimize confusion during singing.
The Liturgical Fruit Basket
“The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of with the least surprises . . . Today it is a liturgical fruit basket upset.” — David Scaer from the Advantage of Liturgical Ruts (Logia 6:2 pg 53-54)
At one time a typical American Lutheran church would be using the Lutheran Hymnal or Service Book and Hymnal depending on which acronym of Lutheranism it was affiliated with. The worship service each week was familiar (which to some meant repetitious). The young children learned the liturgy and hymns next to their siblings, from their parents and grandparents. New members to the church or the Lutheran faith learned from being immersed each week in the Divine Service and catechesis.
Now you have to contend with the likes of traditional, contemporary, blended, emergent, progressive, multi-generational and try to determine what it all means. Liturgical innovation is the name of the game. As a liturgical Forest Gump might have said, “Worship is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’ll get.”
I find a calmness in the predictability of the Divine Services in Lutheran Service Book. They all follow the same outline, granted with different musical settings and different texts, and offer opportunities for variety — elaboration and simplification during the rhythm of the church year. Some might lament five settings of the Divine Service in LSB, but I tend to like an intentional and planned use of the settings throughout the year. At first, learning a new service setting or hymn might be challenging, but soon the challenge fades away. It becomes like breathing — it just happens and is natural.
Ultimately, I think careful and deliberate worship planning comes down to a respect and reverence for the worship patterns that we have as Lutherans. Not that we “idolize” these forms, but we ask ourselves why we may want to deviate from them.
Just as Dr. Scaer provided the introduction to this blog post, I will also let him end it.
“We don’t notice a good shoe, which is often an old one.” (Logia 6:2 pg 53-54)
LCMS Approves 100 "Worship / Praise" Songs
In 2006, the LCMS through the Commission on Worship published its new hymnal Lutheran Service Book. Now it looks they have moved on to a new project – reviewing “worship and praise songs” for use in LCMS churches. According to a Reporter (official LCMS newspaper) article, 100 “worship and praise songs” have successfully made their way through the Synod’s doctrinal review process (13 of them appear in LSB or earlier publications). And more are on the way. In the future these songs will be sorted based on the church year.
And what are these 100 songs? The list has yet to be released — it isn’t on the Commission of Worship’s website. Evidently, they used CCLI data from LCMS churches to determine frequently used songs. I am interested to see what songs made the cut of the Synodical reviewers — what do these songs proclaim?
What bothers me about many “praise and worship” songs is what they often don’t say rather than what they do say. In particular, I recently reviewed a list of these types of songs to be used in a worship setting — out of the list of a dozen or so songs, Christ was mentioned once or twice directly, and a couple more times as indirect assumptions. Many tread lightly on sin and focus on the theology of glory rather than the theology of the cross. In comparison, I can randomly page through LSB and Christ and what He has done and continues to do for us is seen page after page. I assume there are some “praise and worship” songs that also do this, but these are not the norm from what I’ve seen.