This year's St. Michael's Liturgical Conference looks like a winner.In great contrast to the rock bands, skits, and dancing girls at the disturbingly-titled Worship Service/Mass Event at the LCMS National Youth Gathering (read and weep) in the New Orleans Superdome, the theme of the 13th annual St. Michael's Conference at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church in Detroit will be:
Augsburg Confession, Article XXIV: “Falsely are our churches accused of abolishing the Mass; for the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence.” The conference will examine the Mass in the Lutheran Confessions and the writings of Luther, stressing the practical contemporary application of our Confession “The Mass is celebrated among us with the highest reverence.”
The keynote address will be given by one of my former professors, the brilliant Lutheran scholar the Rev. Prof. Roland Ziegler:
of Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, will address the question “What does it mean when the Augsburg Confession claims that the subscribing churches retained the Mass?” This requires a historical investigation of the form of worship used among Lutherans around 1530 and the decade to follow, and what dogmatic relevance the form of the Mass had among Lutherans in the time of the reformation. Only then can we discern what this statement means for contemporary practice.
Now how much would you pay? But wait! There's more!...
Sectional presenters will be Fr. Burnell Eckardt, Pastor of St. Paul, Kewanee, and editor of Gottesdienst magazine; the Reverend Dr. Daniel Reuning, Kantor and church musician of Redeemer Lutheran Church of Fort Wayne, and Dean of Chapel at CTS for 31 years; Deacon David Muehlenbruch of Bethany Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, and of the Lex Orandi web site; and Fr. Mark Braden, Pastor of Zion Detroit.
Sectional presentations will treat of both the ceremony and the rite of the Lutheran high Mass, with special attention paid to the rubrics for the Celebrant, Deacon and Subdeacon, and the chanting of the Gospel.
At the Mass, Fr. David Petersen of Redeemer, Fort Wayne will preach, the Rt. Rev. David Stechholz, Bishop of the English District, will preside, and Fr. Braden will serve as Celebrant.
Zion Detroit sponsored the St. Michael Liturgical Conference from 1998 until 2005. From 2006-2008 the St Michael Liturgical Conferences were held at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
My family and parochial duties (not to mention financial limitations) will keep me a good thousand miles away, but I've been to St. Michael's conferences while studying at Fort Wayne, and they were always top-notch in both scholarship and hospitality. I highly recommend them to any Lutheran.
This year's conference will not only feature a District President (the Bishop of the English District), but also two Fort Wayne professors (Prof. Ziegler and Dr. Reuning). Fr. Braden (Zion's pastor) is also a classmate of mine. He is not only a scholar and an exegete, but also a beloved Seelsorger and brother in the ministry. Dr. Eckardt, Fr. Petersen, and Dcn Muhlenbruch are all remarkable scholars and churchmen.
If you can get to Detroit on Monday, September 27, 2010, I recommend you sign up now!
Now this is what a "Mass Event" ought to look like!
8 comments:
Father,
I think the Foxx Family is going to give this a serious try. We'll fly up after mass on Sunday and fly back Monday night or Tuesday.
Steve Foxx SSP
As an historian I am very interested in this presentation. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend. Do they make the presentations available later?
Great, I was searching for something along the lines of this. I was wondering
entertainment
I have no doubt the proceedings at the Zion event will correspond to out Confessions much more so than the other event.
I am, though, unaware that any of our overseers bear the title "bishop" and more than our districts bear the Roman Imperial designation "diocese", a neologism by which Diocletian renamed the districts of the empire and its state church used and its descendants still use -- anachronisms, right along with pointy court hats (mitre) and churches made from banks (basilica) with no root in either Word or Sacrament whatever, just secular history, and church history insofar as the church became part of secular history.
We need that junk from the past no more than we need the junk from the present.
Dear PE:
The English District president also carries the title bishop owing to that (non-geographical) district's formerly-independent status. The term "bishop" is, of course, both biblical and confessional.
I don't think he wears a miter, but he does carry a crosier and is called upon to give the episcopal benediction at the end of the Mass.
And speaking of archaic terminology, the title "pastor" is actually (as you and all Latin readers know) a technical term for a guy who carries a crosier-like stick, spends his nights sleeping in a field, and herds ovine mammals from one place to another.
Yet another example of an anachronism (I would bet that not one in a thousand current LCMS presbyters has ever actually herded sheep), of the church borrowing from the secular world.
Dear PE:
The English District president also carries the title bishop owing to that (non-geographical) district's formerly-independent status. The term "bishop" is, of course, both biblical and confessional.
I don't think he wears a miter, but he does carry a crosier and is called upon to give the episcopal benediction at the end of the Mass.
And speaking of archaic terminology, the title "pastor" is actually (as you and all Latin readers know) a technical term for a guy who carries a crosier-like stick, spends his nights sleeping in a field, and herds ovine mammals from one place to another.
Yet another example of an anachronism (I would bet that not one in a thousand current LCMS presbyters has ever actually herded sheep), of the church borrowing from the secular world.
Holy crap. Anybody do a decent Placeat tibi?
English District.
My proposal about returning our proceeding to German apparently wasn't taken up at Houston.
Back at die Abtei, as anti-German sentiment swirled during WWI, while theology classes remained in Latin, university classes were switched to English, but those who resisted had the motto bei uns draussen!
But I'm not a real German, I just play one in LCMS.
How about a road trip to Baton Rouge to hear that piano playing preacher they got up there?
I'll bet there's not one in a thousand current LCMS presbyters who can hoop a sermon either.
But if you're the first one, I'll get in my van and road trip to Gretna to accompany you! Then teach the rest using the Guidonian Hand, how about that?
(OK it's late I'm doing laundry hence the lack of my characteristic pacific restraint.)
PS. That's PLAH-chay-aht. Just in case.
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