The Lutheran Zephyr

Palm vs. Passion Sunday

Help me out here, folks.  When did Palm Sunday become Passion Sunday?  And why?  Reading the passion narrative on Palm/Passion Sunday just seems to mess with the integrity of the whole week. 

I'll look into this on my own, but any insight from the faithful fragment who reads this blog would be most appreciated!

Thanks.

Daily Prayer for Lent 4

The Daily Prayer page has been updated to include the readings and prayers for the week leading to and flowing from the Fourth Sunday in Lent.  In addition to the Fourth Sunday in Lent, George Herbert (March 1) and John & Charles Wesley (March 2) are commemorated this week.

Note: The Daily Prayer page will no longer be updated after Easter.  My new Daily Prayer Delivered blog will be the new source for Daily Prayer in the Lutheran Zephyr mode (with daily RSS and email subscriptions available).

Let us pray.

Liturgy and Copyrights

I have requested permission from our friends at Augsburg Fortress Publishers to post some liturgical material from Evangelical Lutheran Worship on my Daily Prayer Delivered blog.  Specifically, I have requested to publish an amended version of Responsive Prayer (pg. 328-331 ELW pew edition) along with Propers from the Church Year (including Lesser Festivals and Commemorations - pg. 14-61) and citations from the Daily Lectionary (pg. 1121-1153).  That is, I'm requesting permission to post what I've already been posting for several months.  Shame on me for not doing this sooner.  It's a lot of material that many people worked hard to create, edit, and publish.

This morning I received an email saying that my request was being reviewed.  I am a bit nervous about this, and I anxiously await their response.

Copyright law is serious business, and too many of our churches violate copyright every week.  From photocopying sheet music rather than purchase enough copies for each choir member, or reprinting hymns in bulletins without proper licenses, we violate the Seventh Commandment all the time.

The Seventh Commandment
You are not to steal.

What is this? Answer:

We are to fear and love God, so that we neither take our neighbors’ money or property nor acquire them by using shoddy merchandise or crooked deals, but instead help them to improve and protect their property and income.
[From Martin Luther's Small Catechism, in The Book of Concord: The confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Kolb & Wengert translation, (c) 2000, pg. 353.]

When we copy or distribute copyrighted material without proper licenses - licenses that provide payment to the creators of the material - we are stealing.  Click here for Augsburg Fortress' Copyrights and Permissions page.

That being said, I agree with Father Chris who writes that liturgical material should be protected under a less restrictive system than our current copyright laws allow.  Liturgical material is for the whole church - congregations, church institutions, and the people themselves who constitute the Body of Christ - and as such I would hope that liturgical material could be shared and distributed in generously permissive manner.  If liturgical material is being created to facilitate the prayer and devotion of the People of God, we should seek out ways to distribute this material in as many and useful ways as possible.  This blog is one such way.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't fault Augsburg Fortress for requiring me to purchase a license to publish the material on my Daily Prayer Delivered blog.  It's their material and they need to charge a fee for their work - I know!  I used to work in sales for Augsburg Fortress!  But I also wouldn't be upset if they granted me permission to publish without any fee, with certain conditions or citations.

We'll see.  I'll let you know when I hear from the folks in Minneapolis.

Health Insurance for Clergy, for Church Employees, for All

The church is not immune to the health insurance crisis that is sweeping the nation.  From the worse-than-average health of clergy today to the huge ranks of retired clergy supported by church plans, the church is facing a crisis that pits the costs of health care against mission funding.  Today's Washington Post has a nice article on this issue (Escalating Health-Care Costs Hit Churches: Insurance for Pastors Draining the Coffers), including a quote from John Kapanke, president of the ELCA's Board of Pensions.

Particularly in this election season in which health care will be a major issue, we in the church should be involved in conversations about health care - both nationally and within our church, for the two are intimately connected.

Jesus came that we might have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10).  Quality health care for all of God's children is part of the abundant life God intends for us.  Let us work toward a future where heath care for all is no longer a dream, but the reality.

My Weekly Mix Tape

Ten songs, shuffled not stirred, from the over 1400 tunes from my collection:

Orgullecida - Buena Vista Social Club
S.O.S. - The Breeders
Linger - The Cranberries
The Night is Still Young - Billy Joel
I Want More - Chumbawamba
Mother in Law - Cubanismo!
Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) - Bob Dylan
River Constantine - Jars of Clay
When I Needed You - Erasure
Frío Frío - Juan Luis Guerra & 4.40

Life, Blog Updates

This weekend Northern Virginia is expecting an ice storm.  Oh, to live in a climate where rain is rain and snow is snow, and ice appears only in the freezer.  Oh well.  That's not where I live.  The storm is supposed to be pretty bad - they're calling for freezing rain to fall all day, on top of 1-2 inches of snow that will fall tonight.  Ice skating, anyone?

My lovely wife is sequestered in a hotel through Sunday, making a concerted and focused effort to get her (insert expletive here) dissertation done.  She is so close, but with a new full-time job and three children at home it is tough for her to find the time to write.

Two out of three kids in my family are sick enough to make sleeping difficult, but not sick enough for the doctor to be able to do anything for them.  Did I mention that my wife is in a hotel this weekend?

I've applied for copyright permission from Augsburg Fortress Publishers to use an amended form of Responsive Prayer on my new Daily Prayer Delivered blog.  A friend reminded me that I was probably violating copyrights by posting this material online, so I made my petition to my former co-workers at Augsburg Fortress.  I'll let you know what they say to me.  (For a good, short plea for a new approach to copyrights and permissions for liturgical material, check out this post - The Church and Copyleft - from Father Chris, an Independent Catholic priest who was raised in the Lutheran Church.)

I've been dabbling with a custom theme on this blog, but Typepad doesn't make it easy for amateurs like me.  If this blog looks funny to you, it's entirely my fault.  But I'm tired and I'm not fixing it for a few days.  Here's the banner I was toying with:

Have a good weekend.  For all who are battling ice and snow, please be safe!

Daily Prayer Updated for Lent 3

The Daily Prayer Page has been updated for the week's worth of readings around the Third Sunday in Lent. 

However, to receive a daily dose of prayer via email or RSS feed (ie, on your My Yahoo!, myAOL or iGoogle page), please visit my new Daily Prayer Delivered blog, where each day the prayer of the day, daily lectionary, and order of prayer is posted online and available via email subscription.  To subscribe to daily prayer, visit the sidebar over at the Daily Prayer Delivered blog.

Let us pray.

Inhospitality is Expensive

WTOP reports this morning that Virginia's Prince William County has dedicated nearly all of its remaining financial reserves to a mean-spirited and terribly flawed immigration enforcement program.  Between now and June 30, when the fiscal year ends, the county has only $3400 in reserves.  After spending $1.125 million in additional funds on immigration enforcement this year, the county may have to cut services next year - services for citizens and legal residents! - if it seeks to maintain its vigilance on immigration.

No word yet from county officials on how much money has been saved by denying services to illegal immigrants, or how the job market for legal residents has improved since the crack down.  Surely they just forgot to tell us about the great benefits of being inhospitable . . .

Illegal immigrants have violated the law, yes, and law enforcement officials have every right to enforce immigration laws to their fullest extent.  However, just because something is legal doesn't mean it is advisable - from a cultural, social or economic standpoint.  Surely the police, with extra officers and better technology, could more comprehensively enforce speeding laws, but that would result in a chaotic gridlock on our roads and highways, and would be a terribly expensive proposition (both from government expenditures and from the decrease in workplace productivity that would result).  Rather, we allow a major proportion of drivers to violate the law because a more rigorous crack down would be impractical and would offer a minimal return on investment.  Think of it as functional law violation, law violation that serves a societal purpose.  We do this is nearly every area of the law.  (I'm sure there's a theory for this idea, but I know not these things.)

So too with immigration.  The radical increase in expenditures to enforce immigration laws has a very low return on investment.  Just as our society tolerates - or even depends upon - drivers exceeding the speed limit, so too does our society tolerate - and even depends upon - a certain level of illegal immigration.  No harm, no foul (or at least, not much harm, no foul).

I would bet that within a year or so Prince William County gives up on its immigration crusade, having figured out that being inhospitable is expensive and inefficient.  That is, being inhospitable is just bad policy.

Daily Prayer Blog

For any who are interested and missed the initial announcement, the Order of Daily Prayer is now available at its own daily-updated blog, Daily Prayer Delivered.  Subscribe to it via email, RSS feed, or simply bookmark it for regular reference.  Prayer of the Day for Sunday and readings from the Daily Lectionary are included in each day's posting, along with an order of prayer based on Luther's suggestions for prayer.  Click on the link for more information.

Peace to you!

Diversity - the church's survival strategy?

I read with great interest a front page article in Saturday's Washington Post entitled Southern Baptists Diversifying to Survive (with the subtitle, Minority Outreach Seen as Key to Crisis).  The article claims that several mainline denominations - not just Southern Baptists, but also United Methodists, Lutherans and Presbyterians - are reaching out to minority communities as a survival strategy.  From page A1:

By establishing churches in minority communities, changing worship practices, electing minorities to leadership positions and purging racism from their language and attitudes, the faiths are seeking to draw in communities of color as a way to boost stagnating or falling
_____________________
See BAPTISTS, A6, Col. 1

Argh!  How unfortunate that the jump to page A6 happened at such an important part of the article (yes, I still read the print edition).  It felt like a cliff hanger to me.  As I turned to page A6 I thought to myself, why is the writer lumping Lutherans into this crowd?  In all my time with church bureaucrats, seminary professors and lay and ordained church leaders, I have never heard it uttered that we should reach out to minority communities for survival's sake.  There are many other reasons to reach out to minority communities - to be faithful, to be evangelical, to more fully realize the Body of Christ, to seek the presence of God in the Other, to . . . there are any number of reasons that our predominantly white denomination should seek to grow in and be part of non-white communities, but "survival" isn't among them.  Faithfulness is.

When I reached page A6, this is what I read:

BAPTISTS, From A1

membership. The consequences of ignoring those communities, they warn, are dire.

"You can almost calculate the time when we close the door and turn off the lights if we don't become a more diverse church," said Sherman Hicks, executive director of multicultural ministries for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a 4.9 million-member denomination that is 97 percent white.

My jaw just about dropped to the floor.  Here I was saying to myself that diversity-as-survival-tactic is nothing that we Lutherans would suggest, and yet our own director of multicultural ministries makes that very point - that if we don't diversify our church we will close the door and turn off the lights forever.

I have to believe that this quote was taken out of context, shoehorned to fit the writer's main thesis about the Southern Baptists.  For surely Pastor Hicks (and perhaps our Southern Baptist friends, too) would agree that it would not be our failure of diversity that would kill the church, but that it would be our lack of faithfulness would kill the church.  For both diverse congregations - such as the one I used to attend in Philadelphia - and mono-cultural congregations - such as the one I grew up attending and which closed down a few years ago - struggle with faithfulness, mission, vitality, and viability.  Diversity ain't no cure-all, as I'm sure Pastor Hicks would agree.

This article unfortunately suggests that white denominations are seeking to diversify so that they can stay alive.  If that is the case, then it is a terribly misguided effort that is colonial and demeaning in nature.  Diversity-as-survival-tactic suggests that white denominations are seeking (church-going) minorities to prop up their struggling structures with time, money and prayers.  The white folk have failed, so let's reach out to the blacks and latinos for their blood, sweat and money.  How horrible.  (Several of the reader comments on the online version of the article make this argument.)

Our lack of diversity is horrible, shameful, sinful.  But our ministry with and outreach to non-white communities should not be a last-ditch scramble to preserve our white institutions.  Installing a few minority leaders in national organizations or highlighting a few multicultural congregations won't cure us.  What ails us is not a lack of diversity.  No.  Our lack of diversity is a symptom of what really ails us: our lack of faithfulness.  Do I hear echoes of Mark 9:24?  "I believe; help my unbelief!"

We lack the faith to live into the Kingdom, to live under the cross, to live in community with the diverse people of God.  We make an idol out of institutional preservation, and end up killing the very institution - and obscuring the proclamation of the Gospel - in the process of trying to preserve it.  The way of Christ leads to the cross, leads to death . . . leads to new life.  But are we willing to die - to let our churches die, our traditions die, our beloved trappings of denominational life die - to taste the new life that is promised us?  Faithfulness is walking that road with Christ, being willing to leave everything behind to walk with a new crowd into a new mission and into a new life.

I fully support the diversity agenda, but diversity is not an end in itself.  Rather, I see diversity as the good fruit that grows from a healthy, good tree.  And I'm sure that most church leaders would agree.  Too bad that the Post article focused so much on numbers and outreach techniques without adequately looking at larger issues of mission, theology and faith.  Once again, religion gets short shrift in the press!

So the question is not Do we have diversity?  Rather, the question is Do we have faith? A Yes to the second question will provide not only an affirmative answer to the first, but new life and vitality to the church.

Lord, we believe; help our unbelief!