ELCIC + Worship Matters is designed to support those who worship and to help those who plan and lead worship in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. Produced by the Program Committee for Worship, each issue is published in PDF format so that it can be easily reprinted for local distribution. The Program Committee for Worship recognizes that, in matters of our common life, our people are yearning for considered pastoral wisdom coupled with solid and accessible Biblical and Confessional scholarship. Worship Matters essays seek to meet this need. They can be inserted in parish newsletters, distributed at adult learning forums, or used to support council studies, committee work or pastors' classes.
Borrowed from the poetry of United Church of Canada pastor Sylvia Dunstan
(1955-1993), author of Bless Now, O God, the Journey (Evangelical Lutheran
Worship hymn 326), The Road Where Faith Is Found is the title of a series
of pastoral essays published beginning in December, 2006. The authors include
our national bishop and five synodical bishops together with a number of other ordained
people serving in a variety of ministry settings. The essays are designed to
support the reception and exploration of Evangelical Lutheran Worship in the
context of a church In Mission for Others. Each essay title is drawn from a hymn
in our new worship-book.
What's it like to take up the journey of the adult catechumenate? What does one encounter on the road to baptism? Clement Mehlman introduces us to the reflections of someone who knows first-hand.
In an Easter, 2002, pastoral letter entitled This
Is the Feast!, Bishop Michael Pryse encouraged congregations
to move in the direction of the every-Sunday celebration of Holy Communion.
In response, the Program Committee for Worship has invited a number of bishops,
pastors and teachers to write a series of pastoral letters under the title
"Reclaiming Our Birthright: Pastoral Letters on
the Every-Sunday Celebration of Holy Communion."
Introduced by Bishop Raymond Schultz, the letters have a two-fold thrust: They are designed to assist pastors and congregational leaders in their reflection and teaching on the matter of every-Sunday Holy Communion and to help the people of God to faithfully and deliberately reclaim their baptismal birthright.
We are challenged...