Hymn Format

Things I like about how the hymns were formatted in the Lutheran service book are as follows:
1) The doxological or trinitarian verses are marked so you stand to honor the Trinity
2) The hymns are put into keys that can both be played and sung easier
3) The bible verses that the song are based are printed with the hymns. This can help add to the service by looking that up before or after service or be a way to do a bible study by studying what the hymn means and where does it come from.
4) If there are a lot of verses, there are breaks put between the verses to make it easier to follow.


In addition to this, some of the hymns have been down dated (opposite of updated) so they can return to the more familiar wording. As a church musician, and the not the most talented at that, I appreciate how all the steps are made to make singing these hymns easier to sing without cheapening how they sound. Most congregation on the whole are not on the musical par as a trained choir so some of the more complex hymns would not be appropriate on the congregational level. I am not trying to look down on the laity for many of the more complex leave me behind as well. I am just trying to point out that more complex is not always better.

LSB-Pastorial Care Companion

This is the last of the books I am going to be reviewing as a whole. The rest of the series while be looking at different features but not the book or books as a whole.

The Pastoral Companion is a great book for when the pastor is on the go. It deals with hospital and home visits when people are hurting. It also deals with funerals, celebrations, lifetime changes and other times when a pastor is needed outside of his office or regular worship. It is part hymnal and part counseling aid. It a guide to comforting scripture and hymns to help with the big events in one's life. A lay person can get comfort from this from reading the section related to their life situation. It is by no means a replacement to the pastor but a tool that both pastor and laity both can make use of.

LSB-Agenda

The LSB Agenda is the one edition I am probably going to deal with the least. It is not because I don't like it but is the one I think that is least useful to the laity and since this is from a laity's perspective, i will be be dealing with this the least. The Agenda is a great book for worship that deals withe special events of the church and the house keeping aspects of the church. It is the blessing of items for use for home devotion or being consecrated for church use. It deal with the installation of officers on the church to the synodical level. It has the service for funeral, weddings, baptism and ordinations of pastors. I do enjoy having it around to help my understanding of how the special service should be run. I believe it was St Paul who said that the worship services should be run in good order and this book aids with that.

LSB- Propers of the day Compainion

This paper back companion is a welcome addition to the LSB series. It has the propers for the three year and one year series and is just the right size to use for daily devotions or for a reference while planning out service. I would would not enjoy trying to use the Altar Book for the same use. The size of it would make it cumbersome at best. It would be doable but not the best solution. Other than the propers, it has the church year , how to sing the psalms and a cross reference in the back to how look thing up. The only two complaints I have about this book is that it does not have the list of dates that Easter falls on so you know when the rest of the church year falls on and it does not have a hard back cover. I know I complained about the size and weight of the Altar book but I am also hard on my devotional and resource books but this book is small enough that I would have appreciated the hard cover version of this one. My apologies if I have missed the hardback version of this one. I got the paperback version and can see the advantages of hardback for me.

God Provides

Kim broke her leg back on Memorial Weekend. Things have been tough and tight lately because of it. Somehow, we have been making our bills and doing well. God provides. I don't want to sound Polly Anna and that it has been a cake walk because I am a Christian and therefore I am blessed and don't have to worry ever again. God provides but not always on my timing or on my plans. I am a child of God and being a child, I can be so far from God, my Father wants me to be. Thanks be to God that things depend on Him and not me. Being a Christian does not mean things will be all peaches and cream. If it were, I would be in serious doubt if God was good at all. Ever since the first since of Adam, we have been under the curse of being under sin. Please don't equate that God is getting you for a specific sin. Something bad does not happen to for a specific sin but because of the fallen state the whole world including you are under. The nice thing is that we are blessed with the good things of this world despite our sin. Praise be to God. Hold tight to God and his blessings in the hard times. It is hard to do. Superhuman in fact but that is also one of God's blessings. Hold on, God is near even when you don't see or feel him there.

ESV Journaling Bible

Even though I am putting this post under the label of bible translations, this is going to deal a bible format more than the ESV translation. I have used the journaling bible format to review that but I still have not read and dealt with the ESV to give a full review. I have used it enough to say I like the translation but not enough to do an intelligent review. I will be doing a review of the ESV later. Enough said, let us get on with the format review.

The thing that drew me to this edition of the ESV was having big margins to write notes in. Sometimes it is really nice to write in thoughts and ideals in the margins as I go through the bible. The down side is that the print has to be a bit smaller to accommodate this which for me and my weakening eyes can sometimes be an issue but not too bad of one so far. It has a brief topical concordance in the front.There are also brief introductions to each of the books of the bible in the back. There is also a reading plan, an explanation of the translation, and a section explaining God's plan of salvation. Of all of this, I appreciate the big margins the best so I can have a bible that has my reflections in it. This is something I usually don't do with smaller margin bibles. It will be interesting to go back over these notes in a few years which may make for an interesting blog post later.

Lutheran Servicre Book Agenda

The Lutheran Altar Book is an extremely informative book and has a lot of great resources for the running of the worship service. I will however, start this review with my one BIG complaint about the book: it is huge! It tops out at 1002 pages. I have heard one pastor say he would like a lazy suzanne for it to make it easier to access it from both sides of the altar and that keeping it open to the right page can be a challenge when it is towards one end of the book or another. I have given it the nickname of ballast due to its weight. However, having gotten this complaint out of the way, let us look at the up side of this resource.

One of the big aids it has is the propers for each of the years in the three year cycle as wells as the propers for the one year cycle. This is a large contributor to its size but I agree with the reasons behind it. Instead of having generic propers in the three year cycle and it not really fitting any of the readings for any of the years, they have custom fit propers that do the Sunday right.

It also has the complete Psalter instead of missing 43 like the pew edition does. In addition to this, there are the special service for the church year as well as the special life event services like baptism, confirmation, wedding and funeral. It is full of rubrics and page reference to the pew edition so you can have a connection between the books so you know from the altar book where you would be in the pew edition.

As with the pew edition, there is a lot more here than I think I can handle well in a single post. I will be returning to look at specific features as I get the quick first roung look done. Until then.