At Atonement we are in the midst of our annual Lenten journey to the cross of Christ and the empty tomb. Just as Israel in the Old Testament wandered in the wilderness for forty years and our Lord Jesus Christ endured the temptations of Satan for forty days in the wilderness, so now we, the new Israel, are in the midst of our “forty days.”

The season of Lent is a multi-dimensional season in that it is shaped by the preaching of our Lord’s passion, penitiential relfection, and catechetical formation. Through the preaching of our Lord’s passion, penitential reflection, and catechetical formation, we are driven to humble repentance. Our hymnody also serves as a helpful aid in bringing about such repentance. One hymn that guides us in repentance through the Lenten Season is, “O Lord, Throughout These Forty Days.”

This particular hymn is a type of prayer. It is based upon Jesus’ successful battle with Satan and temptation in the wilderness. Since our Lord fought temptation and was successful, we pray in the first stanza that our Lord would inspire repentance within us as we battle with daily temptations. He who overcame Satan in the wilderness also claimed victory over the arch-enemy of God through his death on the cross and rising from the dead. He has freed us from our past and has the power to do so daily as we return to the promise of his forgiveness of sins granted to us in our baptisms.  

In the second stanza of the hymn we pray for the courage, skill, and trust of Christ in God’s eternal Word. We pray that he who overcame Satan and temptation with the written Word of God would grant us the strength to do the same, even as we gather together to hear, study, learn, and inwardly digest his Word.

In the third stanza we pray for God to bring about godly contentment in his Word and Will. We pray that God would help us seek not our own will and desires first and foremost, but that we would trust firmly in him to meet our needs and be satisfied with his provision for our bodies and our souls.

Finally, in the fourth stanza we pray that God would continue to be with us, even as he has promised to be with us and to never leave or forsake us. We pray that he would guide us through our Lenten pilgrimage and our season of preaching on our Lord’s passion, penitential reflection, and catechetical formation. We pray that he would guide us and be with us through all our days, just as sure as he has freed us from our past. We pray that he do this so that when the final Easter dawns and our Lord returns, we join in heaven’s praise.

In Christ,

Pastor Josh

As Christians, we are a people who have received “great joy for all people” (Luke 2:10). Knowing Christ Jesus as Lord produces the fruit of “rejoicing in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4). Therefore, we have the privilege of expressing this joy by “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in our hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16).

In recent months here at Atonement we have seized many opportunities to rejoice in the Lord by singing. We have been using different orders of service from Lutheran Service Book for our corporate worship on Sunday mornings. On the first Sunday of the month we worship using “Divine Service, Setting Two” (LSB 167—183). On the second and fourth Sundays of the month we worship using the “Service of Prayer and Preaching” (LSB 260—267). On the fourth and fifth Sundays of the month we worship using “Divine Service, Setting Four” (LSB 203—212). In these orders of service we have a number of opportunities to rejoice in the Lord through song. One particular way that we do this is by singing various Biblical canticles.

This month’s newsletter article is dedicated to Atonement’s transition to using the Lutheran Service Book in the Divine Service on Sunday morning. As mentioned in the letter that was put in your mailbox in the middle of June, one hundred copies of Lutheran Service Book and forty-eight Bibles have been purchased. The Bibles and the hymnals will be blessed and prepared for use during the Divine Service on Sunday, July 8. On that Sunday, the second Sunday of the month, the congregation will begin using the hymnal for the order of Matins.

The goal is for the congregation once again to worship with a hymnal. Worshiping with Lutheran Service Book will not only connect the congregation to a well-produced book that contains our Christian-Lutheran heritage and tradition, but it will also connect the congregation more directly to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), with whom it is affiliated. Atonement will more firmly “walk together” with other LCMS congregations that use the Synod’s current and official hymnal.

The orders of service that we have been using for the Divine Service on Sunday morning will remain the same for the time being. Here is a chart that details this information:

1st Sunday= LSB, “Divine Service, Setting II,” Communion, pg. 167.
2nd Sunday= LSB, “Matins,” Non-Communion, pg. 219.
3rd Sunday= LSB, “Divine Service, Setting IV,” (alternative songs) Communion, pg. 203.
4th Sunday= LSB, “Divine Service, Setting II,” Non-Communion, pg. 167.
5th Sunday= LSB, “Divine Service, Setting IV,” (hymn sing) Communion, pg. 203.

The congregation will soon discover while worshiping with LSB that there have been parts of the liturgy, songs and canticles, for instance, which have not been utilized in the Divine Service. With the pew addition of LSB, it will be easier to learn these parts of the service as well as other orders of service (of which there are thirteen in the hymnal). With the LSB it will also be easier for the congregation to learn new hymns to add to its repertoire and try other new things with the service such as the singing of psalms. As the congregation becomes more accustomed to worshiping with LSB, we can begin incorporating these different elements to enrich the Sunday morning Divine Service.

At the 1998 convention of the LCMS, our Synod’s Commission on Worship was given the task of preparing a new hymnal for the Synod. The 2004 convention authorized Lutheran Service Book (LSB) as an official hymnal of the LCMS. In 2006 the hymnal was published. It has been put to wide use in our Synod with over 800,000 copies ordered by congregations. Currently our congregation has the electronic version of this hymnal (Lutheran Service Builder) but not the actual pew edition. The hymnal that we currently have in our pews is an older Lutheran hymnal, Lutheran Worship (“the blue one”). For a number of reasons to be articulated in this newsletter article, we at Atonement should consider purchasing the new hymnal, LSB. To better understand why this is an appropriate goal, it is important to know a little about the history of hymnals within the LCMS.

History of Missouri Synod Hymnals:

Kirchengesangbuch (1847)
This was the first hymnal of the Missouri Synod in America after the immigration of German-Saxon Lutherans to St. Louis, MO via New Orleans and the Mississippi River in January of 1839. In 1847 the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod was formed and the Synod adopted this hymnal in the same year. As can be determined from the title, it is written entirely in German.