Throwback Thursday: The Role of Gottesdienst: My Turn
This was published March 13, 2012 — Ed.
While I certainly and wholeheartedly agree with Petersen's description of the role of Gottesdienst in the LCMS, I'm going to add two cents more.
Ever since the inception of Gottesdienst, I have considered the question of its role. In 1992, Jonathan Shaw and Richard Watters, and perhaps Doug Spittel and John Fenton (those two might not have been in on the ground floor, I forget offhand) launched this journal, asking Tom Von Hagel to be editor. They asked me to write an article for the first issue, on the historic lectionary. For the first couple years, it was something like eight pages long, and its purpose was to promote the historic liturgy of the Church, and in part to proclaim the Gospel by doing so and while doing so (sermons were in the mix from the start).
Then in 1995, the journal was about to fold, because Von Hagel was interested in other pursuits, and no one seemed to have the time to make it go.