[MN] Letter to Congregation

Wed Jul 26 18:20:31 UTC 2006

Friends,

Below is a letter to Messiah that you should receive in the mail  
before this Sunday:

July 26, 2006

Dear Friends and Fellow Members of Messiah Lutheran Church,

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I  
am helped.  (Psalm28:9, from last Sunday’s Introit)

Our Lord continues to shower his blessings upon us all this summer,  
as we enjoy good weather, generally good health in our parish, and a  
time of refreshment before autumn comes again with school and  
everything else beginning.  Thanks be to God!

I am writing you regarding two things.  First, a brief update of my  
health.  By the grace of God, I am slowly getting better.  We have  
finally found the right medication “cocktail” for the time being, and  
I am feeling much more like myself every day.  Our thanks go out to  
all of the congregation for their ongoing kindnesses toward us, both  
little and big.  And my special thanks continues to go out to Pastor  
Schellenbach, who has done an outstanding job in helping me and us  
through this difficult time.  Our current hope is that beginning in  
August, I will move to about 20% work, and that over the next several  
months we will continue to increase my workload until things are back  
to normal.  I can’t give you an exact timetable because I don’t know  
it.  But that is my doctor’s and my plan, and with God’s blessing, we  
will continue down this path together.  I would also ask that you  
keep Pr. Schellenbach and his wife, Tina, in your prayers.  As I move  
more toward full-time, that makes their financial situation more  
complicated.  There are no easy solutions, and obviously we can’t  
afford two full-time pastors (much as I would wish it!), but I ask  
for your prayers and serious consideration on how we as a parish can  
continue to support them in whatever ways we are able.  You may speak  
with me directly (or with Keith Kentala or Rick Holtz) if you have  
any questions or suggestions in that regard.

Enough about me.  Let’s get on to the important work at hand.  By  
unanimous vote, our Spiritual Life Council approved purchasing and  
integrating the new Lutheran Service Book into the life of our  
congregation at the earliest possible time.  What that means is that  
we have pre-ordered 202 hymnals for the pews, and have a need for an  
additional 65 for the parish hall and choir room.  Our plan is to  
cover the sanctuary hymnals in the first stage, and then work on the  
parish hall and choir room in the second stage.  Two anonymous  
donations have been given to help get us started on some of this, and  
on purchasing all of the supplementary volumes (for pastor, the  
chancel, the organists, etc).  However, there is much work to be  
done.  I’ll get to how we hope to do that in a little bit.  First,  
let me tell you some about the new hymnal.

First of all, it will not be that unfamiliar to us.  We have been  
field testing liturgies, hymns, psalm settings and other rites from  
LSB for about five years.  This has been an eight year project that  
our church body has embarked upon, and this will be without a doubt  
the most tested and carefully produced Lutheran hymnal to date.  It  
will incorporate the best from The Lutheran Hymnal (what many of us  
grew up on) as well as Lutheran Worship, which we have in our pews  
now.  Lutheran Worship will be twenty-five years old next year, so  
even though it may be the “new hymnal,” it’s really not that new.   
LSB will also make use of a great many of the fine hymns and other  
features from Hymnal Supplement 98, the little gray booklets we often  
use to supplement our hymnody.  So when we get LSB, we will no longer  
use Lutheran Worship or the Supplement.  Less paper, less books, less  
mess.  Simple is more.  It may even be possible that we can omit the  
inserts with the introit, etc.  We’ll have to actually see the books  
before we can make that determination.

What are some of the features of Lutheran Service Book?  Here are  
some of the best features:

1.     A simplified numbering system.  In both TLH and LW, you always  
have “page number” verses “hymn number” to contend with.  It can be  
confusing.  What LSB has done is starting the “numbering” with the  
Psalms, then the liturgies, then the hymns, with one continuous  
numbering.  So Psalm 51 is right where you would expect it.  Divine  
Service one p. 231 (or whatever) is right there, and hymn 578 is  
right there.  This will simplify finding things in the book.

2.     The hymnody.  There are 629 hymns in LSB (as compared to 520  
in LW).  They took the vast majority of the excellent hymns from TLH  
& LW, improved many of them, and incorporated the best from the  
Hymnal Supplement.  There are perhaps twenty hymns that (in my  
pastoral opinion) could not be used here.  But the same is true of  
both TLH and LW, so no real change there.  All in all, the hymnody is  
spectacular.  We’ve gotten to know some of them, we’ll learn some new  
ones, and some other “oldies” will be refreshed so that they are more  
like they were in TLH.  This will be the greatest strength of the new  
hymnal.

3.     The liturgies.  The Sunday morning services will remain  
largely as we know them.  We have field-tested several of them.  I am  
quite confident that we will be able to use the liturgies with very  
little teaching, right away.  The one with the greatest change is the  
change from DS I in LW (page 136) to the revision of TLH p. 15.  We  
have used that revision for several years now.

This is just some of what is come.  If you are interested in more on  
this, please pickup a copy of the newsletter about LSB by the  
donation box, or go to http://lsb.cph.org/.

Finally, how will we pay for all of this?  The hymnals for the pews,  
plus all of the additional books needed for stage one comes up to  
right around $5000.  One of the donations will cover all the  
additional books.  But we are asking the congregation to donate the  
number of books that each family actually uses.  If you can donate  
more, that’s wonderful.  But if you are able to at least do that  
amount, this would be a big help to our parish and the future of our  
church.

The hymnals cost $20 each including postage.  Please consider giving  
these hymnals to the church as memorials for loved ones, in honor of  
anniversaries or birthdays, baptisms, confirmations, or any other  
special event you may see fit.  You may write down the information on  
a separate page if there isn’t room on the reply form.

Please also note that you have the opportunity to purchase copies of  
both the pew edition ($20) and the personal/gift edition (smaller and  
leather-bound at $40) for your own use.  The more things we get pre- 
ordered at a time, the better off we will be with postage and the like.

You may either mail these to church using the enclosed offering  
envelope, put them in the offering plate, or put them in the box  
marked “Lutheran Service Book” in the Parish Hall.

God bless you!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Rev. Todd A. Peperkorn, Pastor
Messiah Lutheran Church
2026 22nd Ave., Kenosha, WI 53140
(262) 551-8182 Church
(262) 551-9081 Parsonage
Peperkorn at higherthings.org
PARISH: http://messiahkenosha.org/
ACADEMY: http://www.christlutheranacademy.com/
HIGHER THINGS: http://www.higherthings.org/
http://blog.higherthings.org/peperkorn/

"The sect cannot wait; it must have everything at once, for it has no
future. The church can wait, for it does have a future. We Lutherans  
should
think of that" (The Lonely Way, Volume II, 328).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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