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Held Together
This Fall, Grace will be offering an opportunity to help purchase new ELW hymnals. In the meantime, we will be learning our first worship setting from the new hymnal.
Why a new hymnal? Lutherans across our country share a commitment to faithful worship. This leads to a shared responsibility to continually evaluate what is new and re-evaluate the familiar so that we can meet the changing needs of worship.
The ELCA is an increasingly diverse denomination: the extremely divergent Swedes, Danes and Norwegians and African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and East Asians.
In the fall of 2000, the national church council authorized the development of a new and common approach to worship resources that reflected the ENTIRE ELCA. The vision was to involve the whole church in the work of renewing worship.
With help from thousands of individuals and hundreds of congregations, the Renewing Worship project led to the development of a new primary worship book, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW). For the majority of Lutherans, a book remains essential to their worship life. Even for congregations like ours, that make use of projection, a printed book provides access to the broad spectrum of music.
With a hymnal in your hand, you can walk up to the Music Director and point out what you might like to sing in worship sooner than later. (Just don’t pop your Music Director on the head with the hymnal, please.)
At a time when worship practices are varied, ELW provides a grounded center…things everyone can share in common. No matter how far we explore the fringes of worship music—from Gregorian chant to Rap, from good old English, to Latin, to Spanish, Swahili—we can return to the center and remember that in Jesus Christ we are held together as one.
For more information, contact Scott Stivers 763-421-6520.