Today’s post is by Chad Hershberger, Executive Director of Camp Mount Luther in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania.

Sitting along a lakeshore, enjoying the quiet breeze of summer, kids intently listen to a pastor talking about the reach of God’s love through Jesus Christ. The pastor tells them that sharing God’s love will reach far, just like ripples when a stone is thrown into a body of water. Those words are not just spoken. After being told about how God’s love extends beyond our reach, the kids throw a stone into the lake and watch as their ripples extend to the edges of the shore. The message of God’s word comes alive as they commune with their Creator in this place set apart.

Camp worship has been happening all over the country this summer in 126 Lutheran Outdoor Ministry sites. I am blessed to serve one of them and got to throw my own stone into our lake recently as part of this all-camp worship service. I’ve been around my camp since I was nine years old and for me, camp worship is where God really comes alive and God’s presence is truly felt as I’m surrounded by the beauty of creation.

When we gather together at camp as the people of God and invoke God’s presence, we are an extension of congregational worship. We show campers the connections between camp worship and their home church’s worship. Our staff who plans worship are taught the basic shape of Lutheran liturgy. What I think is a little different at camp is that campers are encouraged to be actively engaged. We don’t treat worship as a spectator sport! It is participatory and God’s message comes alive, through our singing, our moving around doing motions, and when throwing rocks into a lake.

You may think from my description that worship at camp is always loud which is not the case! One of my favorite worship services is what we call “field worship.” Campers and staff sit in our field, usually in the dark, looking up at the sky and listening to music and scripture as they spend some time reflecting on God and engaging in silent prayer. My favorite field worship is when Psalm 23 is recited as we lay in the field and listen to soft piano music. Hearing the words “lying down in green pastures” while actually lying down in a green pasture is powerful. Field worship gives campers and staff time to enjoy creation and experience worship in a different way. Even in the silence, God hears our cries of thanksgiving and praise.

It has been my experience that a camp worship service can be very powerful. But as I write this, describing these worship experiences, I recall the words of one of my predecessors here at Mount Luther. Early in my tenure as director, I sat in the kitchen of Don and Betty Mincemoyer who served here in the 1960s. They related the camp mission to their staff in this way: “Every thought a prayer; every action a worship experience.” Having the chance to give expression to what the whole creation yearns to do—praising God from whom all blessings flow—is what we continually do every day as we swim, make crafts, eat meals, hike, and play games. Camp is a place where we continually make our thoughts a prayer and our actions a worship experience. And because of that worship, both on our lakeshores and in other spots of God’s creation, lives are changed as Jesus Christ is encountered in new and exciting ways.

Today’s post features words of five young people who spent time in Drawn In! Moving Out, the worship interactive learning space at the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering.

Last month on the blog, Annemarie Hartner Cook, pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Maple Shade, New Jersey, shared her perspective on the first ever worship interactive space as part of the ELCA Youth Gathering. Over the course of three days, hundreds of youth came to explore this center in a variety of ways. We hope you enjoy hearing about why the event was meaningful to them in their own words.

Sy Shipman (back row, third from left) worships at St. John Lutheran Church (Windfall) in Cardington, Ohio.

I really enjoyed how it brought us together…The procession we did was fun, familiar, yet also different. I have never seen streamers on poles as part of a procession and it was neat to see that this could be something we could do at worship in our church some time! This experience started some conversation about symbols in worship and will hopefully continue to open our eyes to the depth of what we do in worship.

Taknowledge Andrew Wagner (below) worships at Augsburg Lutheran Church and Christ Beloved Community Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

When my pastor showed me the “dress up as a pastor” section and I listened to the music they were playing, it was so joyful and I stayed there until I left. I fell in love with that section and it was so fun to be there. When I put on the pastor’s robes it made me feel so much like a pastor; that’s when I said I will stay here until I leave the interactive center. When the people told me I looked so good in the robe, I felt Jesus hugging me. But my favorite part is when I walked around the center with a lot of new friends and it was so amazing to feel welcomed by the new friends.

Courtney Ng (right) worships at Holy Trinity in Bellerose, New York.

I went to the interactive center on the fourth day and it was a very exciting place to be for the day with all the activities and booths going on. As a piano player and growing up to have a passion for music, I was extremely delighted listening to other people play and experience the music section of the center. Everyone was open and great to talk to and it was a wonderful experience.

Natalie DiMundo (front row, second from left in green) worships at St. Paul Lutheran in Santa Monica, California.

The worship interaction booth at the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering was one of the most memorable components of the week. The musical area was my favorite, because I love playing music (especially with other people). This interaction booth was so memorable because it helped the group from my church bond and make connections. Because we needed to work together for the “service” or “acolyte olympics” to flow, we were able to become closer friends and fellow worshipers.

McKenna Moritz (left in purple) worships at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Dublin, Ohio.

The worship station was a fun learning experience for everyone who did it. We experienced an acolyte Olympiad and got to dress up like different members of the church community. I also liked the poster board set out to write prayers for different things around our world. Overall it was a great experience.

Thanks be to God for these young people and all who explored this center and attended the ELCA Youth Gathering! How can you continue to nurture the gifts of the young people in your assembly’s worship?

Today’s post is by Annemarie Hartner Cook, Pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Maple Shade, New Jersey. Annemarie served as a staff member for the ELCA Worship Interactive Center at this summer’s Youth Gathering in Houston, TX.

“It’s a worship playground, a lab, a place to explore and have fun!”  

This is how I would describe the “Drawn In! Moving Out!” interactive worship space designed for youth and their leaders at the 2018 ELCA Youth Gathering. For the first time in thirty-one years, the ELCA Worship staff had a presence in the interactive learning center during the gathering. In collaboration with the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians and Lutheran Summer Music,the ELCA Worship staff designed a 3,600 square foot space where experimentation, musical collaboration, creativity, and even a little competition could flourish.

An “Acolyte Olympiad” tested the accuracy and speed of acolytes old and new in a relay course complete with candle lighting, processing, and setting the table for communion. The “Vestment Photo Booth” allowed youth to try on albs, stoles, chausibles, dalmatics, and even birettas (hats) so they could envision themselves as worship leaders and take photos together. Anne Edison-Albright of Luther College remarked that, “a group of three young women showed me the photo they took, arms lifted in orans posture. They told me it made them feel like pastors, and we all got a little tear-y. This was a Godly play area for high school youth, and they needed it, and we need them to be able to imagine themselves as leaders in the church! It helped them try on a possible future, and they loved it.”

A collaborative music space was stocked with flutes, trumpets, percussion, piano, and even an organ. Professional church musicians provided leadership for the soundtrack to our conversations, exploration, and joy. Pastor Sami Johnson noted, “My student who has a hard time fitting in found his home in your booth. He gravitated to the trumpet and ended up teaching someone else how to hold the instrument and some basic fingerings, and then he kicked off a jam session. It blew my mind to see him take leadership like that. So, thank you!”

At its heart, this space was dedicated to inviting youth to understand that worship belongs to them as much as it belongs to the rest of the church. In many worshipping communities there are few roles for youth in the planning and work of worship. Often the committees or staff that handle those things invite and expect youth to participate in limited ways that don’t utilize their creativity and unique relationship with their faith. Youth have a passion for worship in its ability to communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ in ways that are both familiar and brand new.

The response to these opportunities was immediate and at times overwhelming. It seemed that in the act of giving permission to explore, touch, and play with items and instruments that they had previously presumed were off limits, there was joy. This worship playground enabled youth to literally see themselves as the leaders of worship and music for the church. They wrote beautiful prayers and asked thoughtful questions about worship and how they can continue to be involved. Our “Dismissal Buttons” gave them a chance to write their own dismissal, giving them a tangible way to be sent from this gathering back to their congregations.

Over the course of the Gathering we continued to have conversations and received inspiring stories from youth and their leaders about the impact that this space had on their vision for worship at home and even their own vocations (See the “Part Two” blog post highlighting the words from the youth themselves). Some youth would come back over and over again, hoping to beat their time in the Acolyte Olympiad, play the organ, or dress in an alb and stole. In the end, what started as permission to play became an opportunity for real discernment into how these youth can have a greater role as worship leaders at home and into the future.

Staff and Volunteers for the Center

Today’s post is by James Boline, pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Santa Monica, California, a Reconciling-in-Christ congregation of the Southwest CA Synod.

Summer is upon us. Even though we won’t reach the season’s solstice until the 21^stof June, as we flipped the page in Sundays and Seasons after the Day of Pentecost, we arrived at the section marked “Summer” starting with Holy Trinity Sunday (aka Memorial Day Weekend this year). And with that turn-of-page and turn-of-month, school’s almost out, graduates are commencing, LGBTQ Pride season revs up, “June is busting out all over,” perhaps you find yourself yearning for a “leaner liturgy” in these months of travel and transition.

At St. Paul’s in Santa Monica where it is perpetual summer, we have the luxury of taking our time in worship with a 10:00 service and a year-round outdoor coffee hour which follows. The congregation rarely murmurs (much) about services which extend 15–20 minutes beyond the one-hour mark during the school year. Thus, every summer my colleague Cantor Barbara Hoffman and I try our best to shore things up a bit in order to give our saintly sinners/sinful saints at St. Paul’s a summery break.

We start with an abbreviated/streamlined gathering rite at the font, which at St. Paul’s is located in the very heart and center of the sanctuary. For us, this summer rite is often a brief seasonal Kyrie-infused confession found in a resource called Prayers for an Inclusive Church, by Steven Shakespeare (Church Publishing, New York, 2009). Occasionally, albeit rarely, we have gathered simply with a hymn, followed by the greeting and prayer of the day. One could also consider using a responsive reading of the day’s psalm here as well, letting the service flow quickly to the “Word” section.

As we are encountered by all the readings during the service of the Word, we use “Lord, Let My Life Be Good Soil“ (ELW #512) for the gospel acclamation all summer to accentuate the growing season of ordinary time. I have written a harvest stanza to which we segue in the autumn: “Lord, Let My Life Bear Good Fruit.” With all my heart, soul, and strength, I do try and keep the summer proclamation as brief as I can, with 5–7 minutes being the goal but 8–10 (or 12, deep sigh) usually being the outcome

We have chosen to omit the Creed during the summer months, so following the hymn of the day we move immediately to the prayers and the sharing of the peace. With great delight, our assisting ministers have begun to write prayers of their own instead of or in addition to the pre-printed intercessions, and our people willingly respond when asked, “For what else shall the people of God pray?” Parish announcements follow the peace and are frequently too long, but always convey the warm welcome and hallowed hospitality of the St. Paul’s community. It’s a constant challenge to keep them — along with the homily — on the shorter side.

A spoken Eucharist can set apart the summer season and keep things moving along. Distribution of communion is continuous at St. Paul’s, having phased-out kneeling at the rail years ago. In summer, we use “Calm to the Waves”(ELW #794), “Take, O Take Me As I Am” (#814), “Jesus, We are Gathered” (#529)”and other short, repetitive songs/canticles during distribution to get folks out of the hymnal a bit as they commune. (A helpful list of such repetitive songs can be found in The Sunday Assembly (Augsburg Fortress, 2008, p. 221).

All things considered, summer flies by all-too-quickly and maybe worship oughtn’t parallel that notion.  In the final analysis, a few extra minutes of basking in the beauty of holiness and soaking up the Sonlight may well bring a welcome Gospel infusion to our ordinary, mid-Pentecost lives. However you may lean into summer, a leaner liturgy might serve you and your community well for these illusive weeks.

Fabric squares for Ordinary Time by Jeanette Paulson, Adorn This House, Duluth MN

Fabric on processional cross from Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania

Today’s post is from Jim Honig, Pastor at Shepherd of the Bay Lutheran Church, Ellison Bay, Wisconsin.

The quirks of our family schedule meant that we were often on vacation in the middle of June. So, after a day of hiking or canoeing or biking, we’d be sitting around the table enjoying some grilled hamburgers and one of our sons would say, “Oh, Dad! By the way, Happy Father’s Day!” It was more a sign of busy fun than a lack of care.

For many families, and I suspect many congregations, Father’s Day carries a different feel and different expectations than Mother’s Day. Still, congregational leaders may feel the pressure to put this cultural holiday front and center. And that pressure may be accompanied by expectations to hold up some sentimental image of fatherly perfection.

If that’s the image you want to project, then stay away from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures where the icons of fatherhood are a bit tarnished. Abraham was at the altar with a knife over his head about to engage in child sacrifice. The young boy on the altar became the old man Isaac who was duped by the younger of his twin sons into giving away the family inheritance. Or how about Eli, the high priest who is depicted as unable to control his unruly sons who were reported to “lay with the women who served at the tent of the meeting.” What to do with the fact that Jesus’ own father is hardly mentioned after the infancy and childhood stories.

Add to this the fact that for far too long in the church, “Father” has been nearly the only way we refer to God. It’s language that is carved in the stone of the three ecumenical creeds. Is this what has led us to the popular view of God as an elderly man in a white robe with a long beard who sits on a cloud benignly watching over things?

So, if the biblical record and church history give us a mixed record of what to celebrate on Father’s Day, what shall we do?

For one thing, Father’s Day ought not to be first, front, or center, which is a general rule for any cultural holiday that we decide needs at least to be mentioned in worship. Let the lessons for the day govern the theme and the proclamation of the gospel for the day.

Then, let whatever mention there is of Father’s Day have the ring of truth and honesty about fathers. In fact, the imperfections of the fathers in our biblical stories remind us that all fathers bring their simul justus et peccator brokenness and baptismal new life to the fatherly vocation. We give thanks for the gift of those who have fathered well, whether they happen to be our biological fathers or not. We acknowledge the hurt of those who have not been fathered well. And we all confess our sin and brokenness. Such both/and acknowledgment might be made in the Confession and Forgiveness or in the Prayers of Intercession.

Maybe a hymn during distribution can give a nod to the fatherly vocation. Consider singing the hymn,“Our Father by Whose Name” (ELW #640, text by F. Bland Tucker). This short 3 stanza hymn offers a sung prayer for fathers, mothers, and children, and points us to the work of the Spirit who binds us together in bonds that are stronger than flesh and blood.

And maybe that’s most important gift to which Father’s Day points. Our relationships in the body of Christ and the mission to which we have been called together are front and center for the entire ordinary season; they are the gifts that we will celebrate and reflect on not for just one day, but for as long as we are church together.

Today’s post comes from Rev. Christopher Laughlin, chaplain at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

I was an Army Reserve chaplain and a parish pastor; I served a small, rural parish in Michigan. I currently serve as a basic training battalion chaplain at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; I’m one of three chaplains who lead worship at the “Liturgical Protestant Service.”

Attendance at this service fluctuates between 50 and 200, and it’s the youngest, most diverse congregation I can imagine; it is truly representative of “every nation, tribe, people and language” (Revelation 7:9). While there are a few soldiers and families who are permanently assigned to Fort Leonard Wood in attendance, most are trainees who will attend our service for less than 22 weeks (many for only 9) while they complete Basic Combat Training (BCT) and/or Advanced Individual Training (AIT). They hail from every state and nearly every continent.

Some attend because this service is the most comfortable for them, coming from a liturgical or sacramental background (this was why I attended a similar service while in BCT and AIT). Others attend because they prefer hymns over praise music. Still others attend because of the relationship that they form with their chaplain, or because they are exploring different Christian traditions of worship. The singing fluctuates wildly in quality, as trainees are often hoarse from “being motivated” (yelling) all week.

Then there are those trainees who attend because congregations and individuals from all over the North/West Lower Michigan Synod send me cookies for the fellowship time which follows worship each week. This has been a real gift to the trainees – those cookies are a taste of home and comfort in what is, for many of them, the most difficult and trying time in their lives.

My opinions are my own and do not reflect those of the 2^ndBattalion, 48^thInfantry Regiment, the 3^rdChemical Brigade, the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence, the Training and Doctrine Command, the Chaplain Corps, or the United States Army.