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.

The organ has been at the center of our Lutheran church music for five centuries. The “king of instruments” had already established itself in the west centuries before Luther and the reformers. And since one of the objectives of the Reformation was to restore music and congregational singing to the worship life of Christians, it makes perfect sense that the organ would become so endearing and enduring to our Lutheran identity.

Instead of understanding that God rules all things and entrusts a certain degree of authority to Caesar, many live as though Caesar rules all and permits the church to operate in a small corner of society.