The object of these pages is to exhibit the Lutheran sources of the Common Service. The libraries at Philadelphia and Gettysburg can furnish much additional matter, for I am compelled to depend on my own meagre collection and notes; but they will only confirm and reinforce my positions. Let me ask those who have an interest in the subject to patiently read a few dry pages, in order that they may see how completely the Common Service sets forth “the common consent of the pure Lutheran Liturgies of the Sixteenth Century, and when there is not entire agreement among them, the consent of the largest number of those of greatest weight."

Since its inception Gottesdienst has included the title Father for clergymen and the term Mass for, well, for the Mass, as part of its style guide. This, along with the chasubles, chanting, and genuflecting will sometimes provoke the charge of "too Catholic" or "weirdos" or even things less complimentary.

Many of our readers either watched or heard about the highly advertised debate on contemporary worship between Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller and Rev. Stephen Zank, which was recently recorded at Luther Classical College and premiered on the On the Line podcast on Monday. There is much that has been said on the debate, and much more that could still be said, but I will confine myself to one set of repeated assertions from Rev. Stephen Zank, which generally equated the communion liturgy of The Common Service of 1888 (as found on p. 15 of The Lutheran Hymnal or in Lutheran Service Book, Setting Three) and its divergence from the German communion liturgy of the LCMS’ German Agenda with the various innovations and changes being introduced today under the name of “contemporary worship.” His argument on this front was, broadly, that the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod had adopted a relatively novel form of worship with the introduction of the Common Service in the beginning of the twentieth century, an introduction that marked a break with its received German-language tradition, and that refusing to adopt other relatively novel forms or modifications of the existing service today is itself ahistorical and untraditional, as we had previously been much more tolerant of divergences from the received liturgical forms.