Lutheran Missal Project

JM said:

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Very nice indeed.

Hopefully this might inspire a new wave of Lutheran composers such as graced the church during the Lutheran Orthodox period and the period immediately following, during the era of Dietrich Buxtehude and JS Bach and his sons.

Do you have any updates on this project?

JM said:

Latest was during Advent.

The Fourth Sunday in Advent

The introit “Memento nostri” for the Fourth Sunday in Advent from Cantica Sacra (1613), the Gradual and Antiphonary of the Lutheran Cathedral in Magdeburg. The Common Service of 1888 wa…

lutheranmissal.home.blog

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Hey @JM how is this project coming?

JM said:

The Propers, Part 1—The Sense of the Texts

The Propers (that is, the Introit, Gradual, Tract, Alleluia, Sequence, Offertory, and Communion) are an integral part of the Divine Service. More than any other part of the liturgy, they give shape…

lutheranmissal.home.blog

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Ah that is glorious to read.

The propers are so important to all liturgical rites, particularly those related to the Divine Office, since historically the Eucharist itself was largely invariant (much more so in the East than in the West, I would note, so in the West you get more propers for the Mass, whereas in the East the Scriptural lessons for the Divine Liturgy, for example, on Pascha, only make sense in the context of a service that begins with Matins and then progresses to the Liturgy itself, and if one attends the Vesperal Divine Liturgy (or in the West the Vigils Mass) on the morning of Holy Saturday (because in Holy Week, time was traditionally inverted for the services, with the mass being at midnight on Pascha and vespers in the Morning), which all catechumens attended, where the Old Testament lessons that foretold the resurrection were read while the baptisms were performed. Thus the neophytes have been prepared for illumination in the Paschal liturgy.

JM said:

My congregation is introducing the Lutheran Missal this Sunday for the first time.

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Lovely! Very good news.

JM said:

My congregation is introducing the Lutheran Missal this Sunday for the first time.

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My dear friend, Rev. Matthew Fenn mentioned that the main scriptural translation is the NKJV, and that the reason was the generous copyright access vs. the arm and two legs required to buy the rights to the ESV. We used NKJV back in the 80's in our Parish, for no other reason that our Pastor at that time had used it in Sem.

JM said:

When I asked on X I was told by many good sources that the ESV was cheaper than the NKJV for the LCMS Synod as a whole so we went that way.

Either way, I'm happy we are using the NKJV. I will be reading this Lord's Day and I'm looking forward to it.

"Bishop Jeff Miskus presided over the installation of Rev. Dionatan Ferreira (center) to serve the congregation of Our Saviour's Evangelical Lutheran Church, Chatham, Ontario. Pastor Ferreira also serves Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Amherstburg, Ontario (Lutheran Church—Canada). The service was well attended. Pictured here with Rev. Ferreira and Bishop Miskus is Rev. Marvin Bublitz, Regional Pastor of the LCC Eastern Region."

View attachment 371214

Servant to Servant 10-3-2025

Email from ENGLISH DISTRICT LCMS English District of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Living Our Baptized Life in Christ Galatians 2:20 Servant to Servant Greetings! October 3, 2025 Installations Bi

myemail.constantcontact.com

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Oh you have beautiful vestments, you and Mark’s church both are liturgically resplendant!

I find myself wishing there was an award that could be given to churches that do a particularly good job at liturgy, so as to recognize the appreciation of liturgical beauty, but not an award the awarding of which would be any kind of show, but rather just something that would pop out of no where to recognize the clergy, choirs and chancery or vestry or equivalent internal management structure of a church whose liturgy exuded beauty, as a means of glorifying God.

By the way I increasingly support open source Bible translations and those already in the public domain; one thing I admire about the Episcopal Church is historically they released all of their editions of the Book of Common Prayer into the public domain.

Also if memory serves, the Lutheran adaptation of the BCP that formed the basis for various historical Lutheran liturgies in the US such as the 1941 Lutheran hymnal was in the public domain, I think its called the “Common Service” and was a modification of the BCP to meet the specific Eucharistic and liturgical needs of the Lutheran churches, which at the time were primarily celebrating the Divine Service in the languages of the Old Country, such as German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and so on - especially in German. I wonder if any German speaking Lutheran churches still exist in North America or if German is now used primarily by Old Order Mennonites, the related Amish group, and other Radical Reformed groups? There is a seriously endangered Lutheran speaking community in Texas which I don’t think is affiliated with the Mennonites, but it could be.

Of course we do have a few German and Scandinavian language churches such as those operated for mariners, but unfortunately in the case of the Scandinavian Lutheran churches if I recall all of these are associated with the churches in their own countries. If I recall the only Lutheran church in Europe that is part of the ILC along with the LCMS and the LCC is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia. Interestingly, since the downfall of the former USSR, while the liberal Estonian church has not been able to substantially increase its membership vs. the large number of secular atheists who fell victim to the massive Soviet propaganda campaign and its aggressive subversion of various churches (with minority churches like the Lutherans being much more heavily scrutinized), the more traditional Latvian church has regained 30% of the population of that country, which is a huge victory for European Christianity.

The Liturgist said:

Oh you have beautiful vestments, you and Mark’s church both are liturgically resplendant!

I find myself wishing there was an award that could be given to churches that do a particularly good job at liturgy, so as to recognize the appreciation of liturgical beauty, but not an award the awarding of which would be any kind of show, but rather just something that would pop out of no where to recognize the clergy, choirs and chancery or vestry or equivalent internal management structure of a church whose liturgy exuded beauty, as a means of glorifying God.

By the way I increasingly support open source Bible translations and those already in the public domain; one thing I admire about the Episcopal Church is historically they released all of their editions of the Book of Common Prayer into the public domain.

Also if memory serves, the Lutheran adaptation of the BCP that formed the basis for various historical Lutheran liturgies in the US such as the 1941 Lutheran hymnal was in the public domain, I think its called the “Common Service” and was a modification of the BCP to meet the specific Eucharistic and liturgical needs of the Lutheran churches, which at the time were primarily celebrating the Divine Service in the languages of the Old Country, such as German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and so on - especially in German. I wonder if any German speaking Lutheran churches still exist in North America or if German is now used primarily by Old Order Mennonites, the related Amish group, and other Radical Reformed groups? There is a seriously endangered Lutheran speaking community in Texas which I don’t think is affiliated with the Mennonites, but it could be.

Of course we do have a few German and Scandinavian language churches such as those operated for mariners, but unfortunately in the case of the Scandinavian Lutheran churches if I recall all of these are associated with the churches in their own countries. If I recall the only Lutheran church in Europe that is part of the ILC along with the LCMS and the LCC is the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia. Interestingly, since the downfall of the former USSR, while the liberal Estonian church has not been able to substantially increase its membership vs. the large number of secular atheists who fell victim to the massive Soviet propaganda campaign and its aggressive subversion of various churches (with minority churches like the Lutherans being much more heavily scrutinized), the more traditional Latvian church has regained 30% of the population of that country, which is a huge victory for European Christianity.

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More than just the Latvians; SELK in Germany; Mission Diocese of Finland, Iceland and Lapland; Free Lutheran Church in France (they use or Canadian French translation of LSB, as do a bunch of French speaking Anglicans in Quebec), Mission Province of Sweden; Ukrainian Lutheran Church; Ingrian Lutheran Church in Siberia, and a whole ship-load of others. LOL Oops, forgot the small, confessional Synod in England. Some of these we are in full fellowship with, some we are in discussion with.

My Pastor's former parish in Oshawa just installed a Latvian Pastor.

Confessional Lutheranism has never been this vibrant in many years!!

BTW, we love the translations that we gleaned from the BoCP, but there are some issues that remained and even crept into LSB. One of which is in the Te Deum from Matins.

MarkRohfrietsch said:

More than just the Latvians; SELK in Germany; Mission Diocese of Finland, Iceland and Lapland; Free Lutheran Church in France (they use or Canadian French translation of LSB, as do a bunch of French speaking Anglicans in Quebec), Mission Province of Sweden; Ukrainian Lutheran Church; Ingrian Lutheran Church in Siberia, and a whole ship-load of others. LOL Oops, forgot the small, confessional Synod in England. Some of these we are in full fellowship with, some we are in discussion with.

My Pastor's former parish in Oshawa just installed a Latvian Pastor.

Confessional Lutheranism has never been this vibrant in many years!!

BTW, we love the translations that we gleaned from the BoCP, but there are some issues that remained and even crept into LSB. One of which is in the Te Deum from Matins.

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Indeed, in citing the Latvians I was citing the main example I could think of of a former state church that remains the primary denomination in its country embracing the confessional path.

Of course the main Lutheran denominations in several Lutheran minority countries also follow suit. I particularly like the Ukrainian Lutherans, who use the Divine Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, and in my view offer a testbed for how ecumenical reconciliation between the Eastern Orthodox and the Lutheran Orthodox might be reconciled. And in the interim, Ukraine provides confessional Lutherans access to the richness of Byzantine liturgy.

However in Latvia, we have something special - a country which is very similar to its neighbors Estonia and Ukraine, but whereas in Estonia the Lutheran church dropped the ball after the end of communism by continuing to embrace more and more of the liberal theology that has failed to work in Sweden and Norway and Denmark for decades, thus providing no reason for those who had been inculturated in atheist materialism by the powerful propaganda machine of the USSR to change from secularism and irreligion to faith, love and Christian charity, the Latvians, by embracing tradition, grew their church to three times its size at the end of the Communist regime, which is one of the best accomplishments of any church anywhere formerly behind the Iron Curtain, certainly the best performance of any Protestant church in former Soviet and former Communist territory.

And indeed the resurgence of the Lutheran Church in Latvia also benefitted the Latvian Orthodox Church, which has also been more stable and dynamic, in my opinion, than its Estonian counterpart, which was divided by a pointless schism, and Estonia is the most irreligious country in Europe, sadly.

And indeed that fact breaks my heart, because Estonia has such a beautiful culture, such a beautiful language, related to Hungarian, Finnish, Karelian and certain other minority languages of the former USSR. And Avro Part, the Estonian Orthodox composer, has composed so much gorgeous music according to both the Byzantine and Western liturgical traditions, his setting of Te Deum Laudamus, and of the Magnificat, and Nunc Dimitis, and his Great Canon of St. Alexander of Crete and his Trisagion and other Orthodox hymns are truly exquisite.

There were several Lutheran Missal projects in the works because some of the micro synods were working up books as well. By the way, I am preparing a presentation for a convention to be held at the end of May in which I will compare the Lutheran and Anglican Rites, both traditional and modern. I will also compare the modern rites of Lutheranism and Anglicanism to Novus Ordo texts. My thesis is that the "shape of the liturgy" in the Lutheran and Anglican tradition is essentially the same with modest reordering. This may not seem like earth shattering material but for Continuing Anglicans it really is. By God's grace, C. George Fry - a bishop with both Lutheran and Anglican patrimony and an original faculty member of CTSFW - will be in the audience.

Also the current plan for that convention is to celebrate one eucharist according to the 1928 BCP and on the second day according to the 1958 Service Book & Hymnal of the old ALC.

Shane R said:

There were several Lutheran Missal projects in the works because some of the micro synods were working up books as well. By the way, I am preparing a presentation for a convention to be held at the end of May in which I will compare the Lutheran and Anglican Rites, both traditional and modern. I will also compare the modern rites of Lutheranism and Anglicanism to Novus Ordo texts. My thesis is that the "shape of the liturgy" in the Lutheran and Anglican tradition is essentially the same with modest reordering. This may not seem like earth shattering material but for Continuing Anglicans it really is. By God's grace, C. George Fry - a bishop with both Lutheran and Anglican patrimony and an original faculty member of CTSFW - will be in the audience.

Also the current plan for that convention is to celebrate one eucharist according to the 1928 BCP and on the second day according to the 1958 Service Book & Hymnal of the old ALC.

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The Service Book and Hymnal is my favorite of the old Lutheran liturgical books of that era, in part because it was the first English language Lutheran hymnal to feature the Great Ektenia, also known as the Litany of Peace, which had been introduced into Lutheranism from the Byzantine Rite (my favorite contemporary Lutheran liturgical text, the 2006 Lutheran Service Book, also brilliantly integrates this litany, even to the point of duplicating the Greek practice and translating it into English - the Greeks sing the choral or cantorial response Kyrie Eleison so that it lines up with Kyrie at the end of each petition, and the LSB rubrics encourage the same in English, which I have not seen in any English speaking Orthodox parish* or in any Eastern Catholic parish, so what I initially incorrectly assumed was an attempt by the LSB to be clever, it turned out was actually the successful translation of a nuance of a very ancient Byzantine hymnographical technique which does work in Greek and English, but in many other languages does not work. There are several happy accidents in the Byzantine liturgy, for example the famous hymn “A mercy of peace” which many in the West have heard of, takes its name from the Greek word eleos for oil resembling the word used for mercy in the context of that Scriptural phrase, and then being translated a such poetically into other languages; this is similar to the Latin word Salve and Salvation and Salvator having a profound impact in the West, for the word Salve originally referred to a balm or ointment and indeed still does, and in healing those who believe in Him Christ applies a salve to us; he also does this literally in the Gospels in the case of the man born blind, so it is in appreciation of this poetry that the LCMS managed to delight me. Alas the 2006 edition still features the erroneous contemporary English response “and also with you”, inherited from Lutheran Worship, the “Blue Hymnal”, the adaptation for LCMS needs of the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship, or “Green Hymnal” which is, to put it mildly, a very loose translation of the Greek text historically translated as “and with thy spirit”, however I seem to recall @MarkRohfrietsch mentioning a traditional language version of the 2006 LSB and also my understanding is that an individual LCMS parish can also change that as needed, and some LCMS parishes still use the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal, (also known as the Red Hymnal), which is still in print, or the 1984 Blue Hymnal, or even the Green Hymnal).

By the way, Cokesbury, a predominantly Methodist-oriented church supplies vendor, a few years ago, had two hymnals for sale in their catalog: the UMC Book of Worship from 1989 and the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal, and I have heard of non-Lutheran Protestant churches using the latter because it is a traditional hymnal and service book still in print and one greatly admired for the quality and comprehensive scope of its musical settings. Alas I am not qualified to compare it with the 1958 Lutheran Hymnal and Service Book in terms of the quality of orchestration; both books, along with the 1917 Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary published by the ELS, share a very large amount of liturgical text (indeed the 1917 ELS and 1941 LCMS/WELS Lutheran Hymnal are practically identical in terms of the liturgical text); this being derived from the 19th century Common Worship material, the Lutheran adaptation of the text of the Book of Common Prayer for Lutheran needs, which is the material you will be dealing with very specifically and my interest in which makes me *really* interested in that conference, particularly your services. Is the conference sold out or private? And is attendance at the liturgies restricted to attendees, in that case? Alas I probably won’t know until April if my health will permit my attending, but that would be the kind of event where I would be delighted to be present.

*This is probably because this would not work in Church Slavonic and much of the English language Orthodox material follows practices that originated with translations produced by the Russian Orthodox Church before it broke into many pieces with the October Revolution (for example, the separate Ukrainian churches emerged in the 1920s as a result of the failed Blue Army resistance to the Soviets, and the Antiochian Orthodox Church in North America is the result of the reunification of two jurisdictions which were like so much else separated by schism following the death of Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow in 1922 - part of the Russian Orthodox Church, established in cooperation with the Antiochian Orthodox Patriarchate, to cater for Arabic-speaking Orthodox immigrants to the United States, who arrived at Ellis Island primarily from Syria and Lebanon in large numbers until the change in immigration law in the 1920s implemented the Quota System;

The Liturgist said:

Is the conference sold out or private? And is attendance at the liturgies restricted to attendees, in that case?

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The convention does have a business meeting or synod portion, which is restricted to delegates although I believe observers are permitted. However, the presentations are open to observers and the liturgies are open to the public. I negotiated the agreement for the facilities and public liturgies was a contract item. The site is Logan, Ohio - about an hour SE of Columbus. And it's a Thursday-Friday schedule so people have time to get home and unpack for Sunday.

There is going to be a fee for attendance to cover the expenses but it has not yet been set. I will also be serving as the lunch cook but I doubt I will be the celebrant of any of the liturgies with 5-7 bishops in attendance. The other academic presentation is going to be made by C. George Fry himself.

Shane R said:

The convention does have a business meeting or synod portion, which is restricted to delegates although I believe observers are permitted. However, the presentations are open to observers and the liturgies are open to the public. I negotiated the agreement for the facilities and public liturgies was a contract item. The site is Logan, Ohio - about an hour SE of Columbus. And it's a Thursday-Friday schedule so people have time to get home and unpack for Sunday.

There is going to be a fee for attendance to cover the expenses but it has not yet been set. I will also be serving as the lunch cook but I doubt I will be the celebrant of any of the liturgies with 5-7 bishops in attendance. The other academic presentation is going to be made by C. George Fry himself.

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Well the liturgies sound worth a visit; possibly the presentations as well. Are there plans to stream any of it?