A Lutheran Theology Of Worship

Lutheran worship calls people to faith again and again through the proclamation of the Gospel through Word and Table. In this service, God acts and the people respond. In form, Lutheran worship is both evangelical and Catholic. The pattern of Lutheran worship becomes clear-even exciting-once one perceives that its meaning is dependent on a series of paradoxes. Lutherans desire to be evangelical in their worship, to see to it that everything serves to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ. They also desire to be catholic, to be part of the great tradition of liturgical acts which unite most Christians through the ages and throughout the world. And they believe that being truly catholic is the surest way to be evangelical and that being evangelical is at the center of being catholic. Or, to say it in another way, Lutherans fiercely resist making something required in worship which ought to be free, as if God would only be happy if we were to do a certain ceremony in a certain way. T…