My LCMS church uses lay readers, including women, and I just assumed it was a general LCMS practice. I am from a conservative presbyterian background. I had never considered the legitimacy of using lay readers, but having women up in front of the church reading the Scripture always troubles me. In over five years of attendance, it still makes me uncomfortable every time it happens, as I believe it to be a violation of Scripture.
Thank you for this post. A question, and forgive my ignorance, I’m still learning: When you mention that laypeople are not permitted to read the Scriptures in the Divine Service, does that also include deacons? I ask because in Karl Pieprkon’s Manual for the Conduct of the Divine Service, which seems to me to be quite faithful to orthodox liturgy and practice, he states that deacons may read the Scriptures in the liturgy. Could you please clarify this for me? And again, thank you for the post.
"Deacon" isn't a synodically defined office in the LCMS. Some of the districts have a definition and process for deacons (and until a recent Convention tightened the practice, some of them were basically serving as pastors without the name). And some individual congregations also have deacons to assist with distribution of the Sacrament, and sometimes also with the readings. I had such a position before I went to seminary. At most congregations (including my own now), the Elders end up assisting with Communion as _de facto_ deacons, and so the need for an official "deacon" office is sidestepped. But vicars and seminary students at field-work assignments are also functioning in the role of deacons. So it's all rather undefined, but yes, deacons are an exception.
Thank you very much, Pastor Eric. Your answer is exactly what I imagined, except that the post does not make the distinction, even though it is certainly an ambiguous issue. However, women as readers is something very questionable, even though this practice is widespread in the Synod. In the Hispanic context, this issue is a shame. Again, thank you for your answer.
I would have liked a dive into the arguments for lay readers, such as implied by the subtitle "stage for participation". I haven't heard any arguments for it beyond that (i.e., greater lay participation in the Divine Service), which so often seems to be the argument for so much innovation in the Divine Service. I've never quite understood the view that, "People will get bored with the Divine Service if we don't get them involved and engaged with different roles or otherwise adapt the Divine Service to serve the desires of the congregation." The congregation has a role and plenty to do in its role. I wonder if there are other proffered reasons for wanting to allow lay readers while the pastor sits there and listens.
And I do think that it can be somewhat jarring when there are lay readers, particularly when they switch them up to have multiple lay readers (one for the old testament, one for the epistle, and yet another for the new testament). Part of what I like about the pastor doing the readings is that he sort of blends more into the background if you will. I don't notice him as much as I do what he's saying or doing because I've gotten use to him filling the role.
But what I can't stand when I've gone to a church that does have lay readers is when the pastor is anything less that sitting in rapt attention as the Word is being read. Just because there is a lay reader doesn't mean someone isn't looking at you, and if you look lost in thought or bored or whatever, it is a terrible message you are sending to the congregation. I understand that perhaps you have read it many times in preparation for your sermon, but that's no excuse. It isn't break time for you just because you got someone else to do it.
Pastors, please also talk to your acolytes before the service as well to remind them that they are more visible than when they are in the pew, and that when they are up at the Altar they can think of themselves as soldiers attending the King's throne.
Thanks to Pastor Hollingsead for entering into this topic. The Office of the Holy Ministry is not to be taken lightly. We are ordained into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, from which ordained status we receive Divine Calls to serve a local congregation, the Body of Christ at X location with Y name in Z denomination (LCMS for us). For that reason I am privileged in my local parish service to proclaim the Gospel purely and rightly administer the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper. (AC7). Because of that lean and yet spectacularly particular ecclesiology in AC7 I am authorized to conduct all aspects of the Divine Service including the delegation of assisting minister responsibilities as the center of my Divine Call, which includes the Office of the Keys and Confession.
To delimit my ability to utilize assisting ministers in my LCMS congregation is in fact an outside usurpation of my carrying out the Office of the Holy Ministry. The altar as stage is improper. Is that a straw man? I don't know people who see the altar as a stage. Maybe Pastor Hollingsead does. The altar, font and pulpit are in fact the Axis Mundi, the center of the universe where God pours out his grace through the Church for the world.
There has been a tremendous amount of undercutting of the concept of adiaphora lately in our denomination in many cases by pastors very knowledgeable of the entire Book of Concord. For those not aware, the second Martin - Martin Chemnitz - empowered by the Spirit, held the early Lutheran movement together as written in the Solid Declaration and Formula of Concord and thus gave a graceful solution to Lutheranism's earliest major fight - the Adiaphoristic Controversy. Hardliners essentially were pulled back from the ledge on the right, and the softies were pulled from dissolving into a doctrinal puddle on the left.
Let an adiaphoron be an adiaphoron. There is no Scriptural mandate or Confessional mandate to eliminate lay assisting ministers from reading Scripture. Can this be abused or seen by some as performance? I would guess the answer is Yes. Can the pastor readily solve that with patient training? Of course. Should the pastor, not reading a lesson, listen to the lesson being read? How would that not be the case. Come on. Is reading the Word of God the same as the Proclamation of the message in the sermon? To indicate that reading the Word cannot be done in the Divine Service by laity is, when you think about it, to believe that the Word is weakened somehow unless a pastor is reading. Again, come on.
To me, the root of it is the lack of a convivium fraternum, a gathered group of the brethren mutually talking through from biblical and confessional perspective issues of importance face to face, and most of all mutually listening to one another. I'm all in for that.
Not to mention, reading is the first level of interpretation, which is the pastors duty. Reading is not neutral. To be sure, a pastor should eliminate lay readers if he is called to a parish with that practice. But he should do so as soon as possible, preferably before he even arrives, to stem the likelihood the lay readers will take it personally.
My LCMS church uses lay readers, including women, and I just assumed it was a general LCMS practice. I am from a conservative presbyterian background. I had never considered the legitimacy of using lay readers, but having women up in front of the church reading the Scripture always troubles me. In over five years of attendance, it still makes me uncomfortable every time it happens, as I believe it to be a violation of Scripture.
Thank you for this post. A question, and forgive my ignorance, I’m still learning: When you mention that laypeople are not permitted to read the Scriptures in the Divine Service, does that also include deacons? I ask because in Karl Pieprkon’s Manual for the Conduct of the Divine Service, which seems to me to be quite faithful to orthodox liturgy and practice, he states that deacons may read the Scriptures in the liturgy. Could you please clarify this for me? And again, thank you for the post.
"Deacon" isn't a synodically defined office in the LCMS. Some of the districts have a definition and process for deacons (and until a recent Convention tightened the practice, some of them were basically serving as pastors without the name). And some individual congregations also have deacons to assist with distribution of the Sacrament, and sometimes also with the readings. I had such a position before I went to seminary. At most congregations (including my own now), the Elders end up assisting with Communion as _de facto_ deacons, and so the need for an official "deacon" office is sidestepped. But vicars and seminary students at field-work assignments are also functioning in the role of deacons. So it's all rather undefined, but yes, deacons are an exception.
Thank you very much, Pastor Eric. Your answer is exactly what I imagined, except that the post does not make the distinction, even though it is certainly an ambiguous issue. However, women as readers is something very questionable, even though this practice is widespread in the Synod. In the Hispanic context, this issue is a shame. Again, thank you for your answer.
Right. Women have been deaconesses in the Church, but never deacons. The public reading of Scripture in the worship service is an authoritative act.
What is your opinion about women reading Scriptures during Bible Study?
I would have liked a dive into the arguments for lay readers, such as implied by the subtitle "stage for participation". I haven't heard any arguments for it beyond that (i.e., greater lay participation in the Divine Service), which so often seems to be the argument for so much innovation in the Divine Service. I've never quite understood the view that, "People will get bored with the Divine Service if we don't get them involved and engaged with different roles or otherwise adapt the Divine Service to serve the desires of the congregation." The congregation has a role and plenty to do in its role. I wonder if there are other proffered reasons for wanting to allow lay readers while the pastor sits there and listens.
And I do think that it can be somewhat jarring when there are lay readers, particularly when they switch them up to have multiple lay readers (one for the old testament, one for the epistle, and yet another for the new testament). Part of what I like about the pastor doing the readings is that he sort of blends more into the background if you will. I don't notice him as much as I do what he's saying or doing because I've gotten use to him filling the role.
But what I can't stand when I've gone to a church that does have lay readers is when the pastor is anything less that sitting in rapt attention as the Word is being read. Just because there is a lay reader doesn't mean someone isn't looking at you, and if you look lost in thought or bored or whatever, it is a terrible message you are sending to the congregation. I understand that perhaps you have read it many times in preparation for your sermon, but that's no excuse. It isn't break time for you just because you got someone else to do it.
Pastors, please also talk to your acolytes before the service as well to remind them that they are more visible than when they are in the pew, and that when they are up at the Altar they can think of themselves as soldiers attending the King's throne.
Thanks to Pastor Hollingsead for entering into this topic. The Office of the Holy Ministry is not to be taken lightly. We are ordained into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, from which ordained status we receive Divine Calls to serve a local congregation, the Body of Christ at X location with Y name in Z denomination (LCMS for us). For that reason I am privileged in my local parish service to proclaim the Gospel purely and rightly administer the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper. (AC7). Because of that lean and yet spectacularly particular ecclesiology in AC7 I am authorized to conduct all aspects of the Divine Service including the delegation of assisting minister responsibilities as the center of my Divine Call, which includes the Office of the Keys and Confession.
To delimit my ability to utilize assisting ministers in my LCMS congregation is in fact an outside usurpation of my carrying out the Office of the Holy Ministry. The altar as stage is improper. Is that a straw man? I don't know people who see the altar as a stage. Maybe Pastor Hollingsead does. The altar, font and pulpit are in fact the Axis Mundi, the center of the universe where God pours out his grace through the Church for the world.
There has been a tremendous amount of undercutting of the concept of adiaphora lately in our denomination in many cases by pastors very knowledgeable of the entire Book of Concord. For those not aware, the second Martin - Martin Chemnitz - empowered by the Spirit, held the early Lutheran movement together as written in the Solid Declaration and Formula of Concord and thus gave a graceful solution to Lutheranism's earliest major fight - the Adiaphoristic Controversy. Hardliners essentially were pulled back from the ledge on the right, and the softies were pulled from dissolving into a doctrinal puddle on the left.
Let an adiaphoron be an adiaphoron. There is no Scriptural mandate or Confessional mandate to eliminate lay assisting ministers from reading Scripture. Can this be abused or seen by some as performance? I would guess the answer is Yes. Can the pastor readily solve that with patient training? Of course. Should the pastor, not reading a lesson, listen to the lesson being read? How would that not be the case. Come on. Is reading the Word of God the same as the Proclamation of the message in the sermon? To indicate that reading the Word cannot be done in the Divine Service by laity is, when you think about it, to believe that the Word is weakened somehow unless a pastor is reading. Again, come on.
To me, the root of it is the lack of a convivium fraternum, a gathered group of the brethren mutually talking through from biblical and confessional perspective issues of importance face to face, and most of all mutually listening to one another. I'm all in for that.
Not to mention, reading is the first level of interpretation, which is the pastors duty. Reading is not neutral. To be sure, a pastor should eliminate lay readers if he is called to a parish with that practice. But he should do so as soon as possible, preferably before he even arrives, to stem the likelihood the lay readers will take it personally.