Evangelical-Lutheran Liturgical Congregations: A Directory

If you are like me, a Lutheran layman who is tired of enduring the offenses

• of anthropocentric worship practices,
  
• of broad liturgical experimentation,
  
• of a decaying Lutheran hymnody,
  
• of ever loosening fellowship standards,
  
• of the use of females in authoritative capacity, whether as lectors, or as "music/worship ministers," or used in any Representational capacity during the Divine Service, whether visibly placed in the chancel area, or elsewhere,
  
• of pastors who abandon their pulpit and wander around waving their arms during the sermon, or who otherwise put on a show for their audience,
  
• of weak preachers who are too timid to authoritatively preach Law & Gospel, and prefer instead to "give talks" or "share messages," as if to primary-school children (including the use of power-point presentations as "felt-boards and glitter" for adults, in display of the insufficiency of the spoken Word) ,

and generally,

• of any execution of the Divine Service that is not purposefully calculated to represent the distinctiveness of our Lutheran Confession,

then you may be interested in the following service, which, in my business and vacation travels, I find myself making more and more use of:

The Directory of Evangelical-Lutheran Liturgical Congregations

This is a directory of Confessional Lutheran Congregations from various Lutheran church bodies throughout the world (including some WELS, ELS, LCMS and others), that have publicly committed themselves to Confessional worship practice -- namely, use of the Historic Liturgy (for an explanation of the Lutheran Liturgy, click here for Part 1 of a series of posts devoted to this topic). By being listed on this registry, these congregations have implicitly confessed what a growing number of us layman have come to recognize: unity in practice has evaporated to such a degree -- even among those Lutheran church bodies that claim strong doctrinal unity -- that a standard other than Synodical membership is required to predict a congregation's practice.

Such is true for myself, as well. As a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) -- a Lutheran church body which claims agreement in all matters of doctrine and practice (as Scripture and the Confessions enjoin us) -- I have found over the past couple years, particularly as my business travels have become much more extensive, that the Sunday morning drive to the local WELS congregation has become increasingly miserable, as, having no idea what to expect anymore, I anxiously wonder, With what form of innovation or offense will I be confronted this time? .

While being listed on this Directory, itself, does not cover all of the issues I list above (and there may be other issues), I am satisfied that, for those congregations which meet its criteria, there is a high likelihood that most other manners of offense will also be absent. Here is the criteria for being listed in this Directory (from their website):

• The congregation must be committed to the exclusive use of the Historic Liturgy of the Church, not an order of service unique to a Sunday or congregation. The order of service must have catholic flavor; that is, the congregation celebrates the Mass in accordance with Article 24 of the Augsburg Confession. This criterion is intended to exclude congregations which use what is commonly called a “contemporary service.” This directory is not intended to provide service times of “traditional” worship for congregations which use a variety of liturgies. If your congregation prints out the entire order of service from The Lutheran Hymnal or Lutheran Worship each week, this does not qualify as a disposable order of service. In my opinion, it may be a waste of time and paper, but it does not disqualify your congregation from being listed. A disposable order of service would be a special order of service provided by the synod or agency of the synod or one written by the pastor (or church musician). Also, “Creative Worship” would be a disposable order of service.

• The congregation must practice Closed Communion. On the debate whether the proper term is “closed” or “close”, refer to Rev. Dr. Francis Pieper. In his Christliche Dogmatik (St. Louis: Concordia, 1920), Dr. Pieper writes: “Auch die apostolische Kirche praktizierte nicht ‘open,’ sondern ‘closed’ Communion.” [The English words appeared in the midst of the German text.] In the English translation Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia, 1953), this sentence is rendered “Neither did the Apostolic Church practice ‘open’ communion (vol. 3, p. 381)”. The words “sondern ‘closed’” were left untranslated.

• The congregation must pass the “fussy-family test.” I want to be assured that, if my family attended any service at your congregation, at least the liturgy would be Lutheran so my family won’t give me grief for taking them there. This means real liturgy, Lutheran hymns, no “praise choruses,” no “song leaders,” and no women lectors or communion assistants.

Yes indeed, as I gain experience with the wide variety of worship that is available in my church body, I've come to appreciate the phrase disposable order of service (from bullet one, above).

Having grown up a charismatic, and having spent 30 years in the throes of false worship among Charismatics, Pentecostals and pop-church Evangelicals, the danger of their methods cannot be more clear to me. For myself, offense is not necessarily found in the single visit itself, or in one service that may be off-kilter, but in what these aberrations represent concerning the certain future of congregations which first grow accustomed to them and then habitually practice them, and in what this means for the individual souls of those who trustingly rely on failing Pastoral leadership, whose function it is to Shepherd, or guide and protect, their flock in the name of Christ. Their methods draw attention away from the efficacy of the Word alone, from the Holy Spirit's work through the Means of Grace, and, consistent with their theology, places increasing trust in man's work through which the Holy Spirit's work is thought to be augmented. Use of their methods leads to conflict between confession and practice, to confusion, to uncertainty, and in the end to disaster and ruin, as faith is taught by practice to turn inward and dwell on the subjective, rather than remain focused on the objective promises of Christ. This happens as the succession of practices, which incrementally and simultaneously remove the Marks of the Church from their centrality and deprive Christians of the Means of Grace, invariably do so in favor of anthropocentric priorities that are at the heart of the heterodox teachings from which these practices spring. As Walther so aptly states, "it is soul-murder." For my family, this means that as Priest of my home, I will not permit my children to be exposed to these practices, certainly not as if such practices are normative or acceptable from a Confessional standpoint, and will actively avoid congregations that engage in them.