The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), numbering some 400,000 members, has congregations in every state of the U.S. and several provinces of Canada. The church body conducts foreign mission work and supports its own worker-training system. Local congregations carry out parochial education on both the elementary and secondary level. The synod requires all its pastors to subscribe without reservation to the doctrines of the inspired Scriptures and to the Lutheran Confessions of the sixteenth century.
Pietistic and Confessional
Founded in 1850, the Wisconsin Synod has its roots in the pietistic mission societies of nineteenth-century Germany. During its first quarter century, however, the synod enthusiastically embraced the Lutheran orthodoxy championed in America by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Although the Missouri Synod exerted a strong influence on its smaller sister in a variety of ways, WELS’s attitudes toward worship continued to be influenced by the synod’s pietistic roots for many years. Unlike Missouri, Wisconsin had no strong leader with the interest or desire to prepare and standardize a common liturgical rite. The synod did publish several German hymnals, but none contained an order of worship. Congregations continued to use the rites (in German or in translation) they had brought from their homeland. An English hymnal produced in 1920 included only a sampling of the Reformation chorales and a scant twenty pages of liturgical material.
While several synod leaders worked faithfully with Missouri’s representatives in the production of The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), and while the book’s confessional hymnody and the Common Service found quick acceptance in most congregations, there were voices still sounding in the 1950s against the new liturgy’s “high church” forms. The increase in liturgical appreciation that might have accompanied the use of The Lutheran Hymnal was hindered as Wisconsin’s pastors became convinced that the Missourians who were most interested in liturgical studies were also interested in fostering ecumenical discussions with Lutherans who were, from Wisconsin’s point of view, decidedly nonconfessional.
Although the synod’s colleges and preparatory schools placed a strong emphasis on church music of good quality, there was, even into the 1980s, little interest in liturgics, ecclesiastical art, or liturgical architecture. When the larger Lutheran church bodies produced new hymnals, the Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW) and Lutheran Worship (LW), neither WELS pastors nor congregations showed much enthusiasm.
Outreach and the New Hymnal
What did encourage an interest in worship renewal was a growing determination to attract and retain church members. Many argued that the Elizabethan language and the Germanic hymnody of The Lutheran Hymnal diminished the church’s appeal in contemporary society. The synod’s 1983 delegate convention authorized the production of a new hymnal. By 1985 a project director, a music editor, and a twelve-member hymnal committee were in place and working. Final manuscripts for the new book were completed seven years later. The hymnal, published in 1993, appeared as Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal (CW).
The synod’s hymnal committee did not approach its task with the kind of pragmatism that initially had encouraged the project. The Lutheran Hymnal, in the committee’s opinion, had been built on sound theological and liturgical presuppositions and deserved to set the standard for a new hymnal. While it was determined to contemporize language and incorporate new musical styles, the committee felt no desire to abandon the tradition of Lutheran liturgical worship. It hoped instead to build on the synod’s experience with the “Common Service” and actually to encourage a stronger commitment to the liturgy, the church year, and the Supper. CW’s liturgical section includes, besides a revision of the “Common Service,” a new liturgical order, “Service of Word and Sacrament,” a service of the Word, and new settings of Matins and Vespers. All were formed with a deep respect for the historic Christian forms.
With an eye toward encouraging more congregational participation, CW, in accordance Luther’s teaching that “confession and absolution are nothing more than a reliving of one’s baptism,” CW attached the rite of Baptism to corporate confession in all the major services. The orders for Christian marriage and Christian funerals also involve the worshipers.
As the committee prepared the new book, it hoped to encourage a new understanding of the catholicity of the church’s worship. Therefore, the book’s hymn corpus includes a representation of hymns not only from sixteenth-century Germany and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, but also from the African-American heritage, the Southern harmony tradition, and the contemporary folk contributions. The translation of the Nicene Creed and of most of the liturgical canticles are those of the English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC). Settings of the canticles that appeared to be of enduring value were borrowed from other Lutheran worship books.
Given the liturgical history of the church body, the hymnal committee did not expect that the synod’s willingness to accept new forms would be unlimited. A eucharistic prayer was considered but not included. The committee was impressed by the liturgical services of LBW and LW, but concluded that they were too sophisticated for the average WELS congregation. None of the hymnal’s services encourage or even provide opportunities for the kiss of peace, lay readers, or processions.
Many of the synod’s congregations received and used the new services and hymns with enthusiasm. The refrain/chant line settings of the Psalms (sixty psalms for worship appear in the book) became popular. A good number of pastors chose to chant the new Matins and Vesper services, both of which included the pastor’s chant lines in the pew edition.
More than any other factor in recent history, Christian Worship is exerting a strong influence on the worship life of the Wisconsin Synod. However, the hymnal will have to overcome long-held fears of “Romanizing” and lingering suspicions that all changes in form signal changes in doctrine.
With its long history of confessionalism and its loyalty to the Scriptures, the WELS is not likely to move too far away from its present worship practices. However, more than a few of the synod’s pastors, influenced by the times, contemplate worship from a pragmatic viewpoint. This is especially true of some who have become deeply committed to outreach. A feeling is spreading that the key to continued growth, both spiritual and numerical, is a renewed worship life that stands to be encouraged by the church’s new hymnal.