Questions for ELCA members

[wnylib]

Have your services become more "high church" since the LCA became the ELCA? How do you feel about it?

I miss the simplicity of the LCA that I was confirmed in. We used to celebrate communion once a month. Now it is every week. We did not receive ashes on Ash Wednesday back then. Now all the ELCA churches in my community dispense them. The pastor of a large; old ELCA church now genuflects at the altar and crosses himself.

Nothing wrong with those practices for people who like them. Catholics have been doing those things for centuries. But for me; it is so different from what I grew up with that I feel like a hypocrite if I follow along with it. The litugy has changed; too.

Maybe I'm just an old lady who does not adjust to change well; but I feel like so much emphasis is now on ceremony that I miss some of the quiet contemplation and sincerity of the older; simpler services.

[3catwoman3]

1. I'm a UU, so can't speak to your questions, but I have a funny Ash Wednesday story.

I wasn't raised Catholic, so never participated in the ashes on the forehead thing. Every spring, at the pediatric office in which I worked for nearly 25 years, I'd be puzzled by mothers and kids coming in with what looked like bruises on their forehead. It would take a few patients before I'd remember the Ash Wednesday ritual.

Most of the time, what had been a cross had become just smudges and really did look like bruises. Had the criss-cross shape been detectable, I'd probably have caught on sooner.

[wnylib]

2. I grew up Lutheran in a very Catholic neighborhood

and mostly Catholic city. I was used to seeing kids and teachers at school with ashes on their foreheads. My siblings and I stood out among our peers with our clean foreheads because Lutherans did not do ashes in those days.

[deRien]

3. Our church

is not high church... communion assistants no longer wear "robes"... no railing to kneel at (this allows older people and people with disabilities to get communion without being the only ones standing while everyone else is kneeling around the altar)...
pastor wears a robe and simple stole unlike high churches that wear chasubles, etc... we use pottery for the communion ware vs. silver except for holy days... so yes, there are Lutheran churches that are less formal...

[wnylib]

4. Is yours an ELCA church?

Missouri Synod and other conservative synods are not high church; but they are too conservative for me.

[deRien]

5. ELCA

and we have communion weekly and do ashes on Ash Wednesday...

[exboyfil]

6. I came from the ALC side

In general the services have gotten a lot less formal over the years. I don't remember my high school Missouri Synod doing the ashes. It seems to vary by ELCA church now.

[wnylib]

7. I went to a Missouri Synod Sunday School for a few years

as a child because it was a German congregation and my German born great aunt lived with us until I was 11 years old. No ashes. No weekly communion. By the standards of a Methodist or Baptist church it would have seemed formal because the service was more liturgical than those churches. But compared with a Catholic or Anglican mass, it was simpler.

From age 11 onward I belonged to an LCA church, was confirmed there and married there. No ashes, no weekly communion. Generally, the atmosphere was more friendly than the MS church and not as narrow and literal as the MS church.