Hospitality and liturgical tradition

First Lutheran Church is a liturgical church.  Our members, those who have been attending for many years and those who have joined recently, expect and yearn for the liturgy, in its centuries-old historical form, to be done well and with integrity. 

Scan our congregation and see the people who are faithful pillars of our church, whether having attended for five weeks, five years, or five decades, and witness a testimony to the strength of our worship.  We need to have confidence that what we do every Sunday is attractive and hospitable to any guests that enter our nave with us. 

We must be confident that in our worship we are encountering God, through Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit, “in Word, water, bread and wine” to “serve our community and the world.”  We must be confident that in our worship, our guests and our neighbors will experience that encounter as well, by witnessing and participating in the actions we do. 

Our confidence should be inviting.  Frank Senn asks in his book New Creation this question:  “What is the witness of the worshiping community to visitors?”  He continues with this observation:

“Do the people join in the liturgy, making the responses in a way that seems second nature to them and singing the songs with enthusiasm?  Augustine testified that the sight of the people at worship and the vigor of their singing was a powerful factor in his own conversion. 

“There’s a sense in which nothing is more hospitable than a congregation that knows its liturgy well and does it with a lack of self-consciousness that says:  this is as natural to us as life itself.  This is our life before God.”  (New Creation, 113)

As hosts, we do well to celebrate our liturgy with joy and confidence.  We must learn and practice the parts we have as participants in corporate worship, so that we can be evangelists through our actions. 

At least two corollaries emerge.  First, we must be willing to provide means to teach our liturgy, both to members and guests.  This includes teaching by the example of how we worship and also teaching by means of time spent outside of worship studying texts, music and history.  Second, we can learn to welcome our guests through personal interaction.  Our gestures of hospitality can include personally inviting a guest to sit nearby, or showing where in the hymnal a hymn is found, or simply saying “Welcome, and ask me if there’s anything you’d like to know.”  These sort of personal gestures are nothing less than what we do when guests arrive at our houses.  We can practice them at church as well!