I belong to an ELCA congregation that doesn’t do contemporary worship — the lame excuse I was given was that “contemporary” means “done now”, so any worship we do is “contemporary”, regardless of how many moldy German chorales we sing on Sunday morning. I have no problem with (I enjoy, periodically) traditional worship, but it cannot be the only worship style at a church with more than one weekly worship service. The church is far too diverse to offer only one option.

Worship in 2010 cannot be the same as worship in 1950, because the church (and the world) of 2010 is not the same as the church of 1950. People don’t listen to the same music that they did in 1950 (or 1517), and I think more people would be drawn to worship that reflected current tastes rather than traditional ones. Like it or not, the pipe organ makes everything sound old, and if the Lutheran church wants to attract a younger population to worship, the easiest way to do it is to use modern hymns/worship songs played on a piano or by a rock band.

I could go on for a while about this. Try not to let your frustration with the church get in the way of your relationship with God.

I also can’t understand why the Lutheran congregations in the region seem to lack any evening/afternoon worship opportunities, especially any geared toward young adults.

I’ve also been amazed by how hard it is to get the average congregation around here to take young adult input seriously…and to be willing to risk experimenting with it.

Yet, I don’t think that ELCA Lutherans in general are too rooted to be able to evolve and to let people test their wings. In northern Virginia, I wonder if this has become the case because of the history of our congregations, many of which have popped up since WWII as jobs have brought people in from the midwest. I suspect that the people who got here and decided they needed to create a Lutheran church (rather than worship elsewhere) were likely those with a more traditionalist mindset. That’s just my guess.

However, if we value tradition and familiarity over questioning, probing, and being willing to try new things, then we have lost what I feel to be part of the core of Lutheranism: a willingness to always re-examine our faith and practice, and to be continually reforming based on where God is leading us!

Like our namesake, we should be wrestling with scripture and it’s meaning, and striving to make it accessible to the common population in our time, place, and context. One example: Martin Luther set hymns to bar songs, and I haven’t heard of any local congregations re-writing popular music for God or re-appropriating it for worship.

Once again, thank you for sharing your struggles! You are not alone.