My question for the day arises from a section I read in Frank Senn's book The People's Work. He writes:
"Liturgy has been used to promote confessional identity because liturgy encodes meaning. For this meaning to be communicated, liturgy must be performed. This seems like a simple and obvious thing to say, but it should not be taken for granted, especially in our own secular age, when the temptation is to lose confidence in the liturgy because it no longer seems to be meaningful to people. But we should consider the alternative. We have records or descriptions of the rites performed in ancient Ur or Thebes. They possess only an antiquarian or anthropological interest, because they are no longer performed. They are liturgies of the dead. Liturgies are living when people inject their own living bodies into performing them. Liturgies must be done in order to be real." (My italics.)
My question for today is this: For the people at First Lutheran, what should be the character of the liturgy we perform (a living liturgy), if it promotes and demonstrates our confessional identity? What actions do we want to emphasize, or project, that allow us to remember and live out our mission statement and some of the unwritten corollaries? (For example, our commitment to "green" living, or our commitment to welcoming all?)
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