We got them! Our new worship books came yesterday afternoon. Well, 136 of 172 that we ordered. The rest are on back order. We'll be retiring the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) on January 21 and dedicating Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006) on January 28.
My wife doesn't understand my excitement. There are (holy schmoley!) 10 settings for Holy Communion. Settings 3 and 4 are the settings we know from LBW (1 and 2) so the transition should be seamless since people don't have to learn a completely new setting. That doesn't mean we won't eventually learn one. We're looking at possibly using Setting 10 in the Easter season. That setting uses familiar hymn tunes. For example the "Glory to God in the highest" is set to HYMN TO JOY, "Worthy is Christ" is NUN DANKET ALL, the Gospel Acclamation "Alleluia" is UNSER HERRSCHER, "Holy, holy, holy Lord" is LAND OF REST, "Lamb of God" is TWENTY-FOURTH.
The new worship book also includes Luther's Small Catechism, a Healing Rite, all 150 Psalms, the Ash Wednesday and Holy Week services. It's got a much better (in my opinion) Service of the Word than LBW. We really only use that when I'm away and we have a lay led service. Otherwise we have Holy Communion.
The only problem for us, here in Canada, is the name. Not that Evangelical Lutheran Worship is a bad name. It's very good. But the acronym messes us up. You see, the women's auxiliary groups in our ELCIC churches are called Evangelical Lutheran Women and for years now ELW means our women's groups. The spine of the book simply says Worship and up here, so far, we're calling it "The Worship Book." When we had Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW) and the unauthorized supplement that practically every church used With One Voice (WOV) there was a need to distinguish between the two so the acronyms were used. Now we'll just have one book in the pews so we'll never have need to use (and confuse) the ELW acronym.
Is my giddyness coming across in these words? I love any new book. I love walking through bookstores, leafing through the books, yearning for the unlimited funds to buy whatever tickles my fancy. So getting boxes and boxes of these new books is just so much fun. I can hardly wait until we start using them.
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1 comment:
Yep, still waiting on that box to come from AF. I honestly never thought that the press runs would be gobbled up so fast.
You need to post some of your insights when you have used it "live" and let people know how it is going.
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