Bulletins and Hymnals at church
Well my church just changed over from using the hymnals during the service to printing up the service in the bulletin. I do not like it much. I have let a few people know that I don’t like it nor will I be using it. They have changed the liturgy. Also the Gradual, intro, and anything else I really need, except for the hymns they may use from outside the hymnal. So I will stick to using the hymnal for myself.
They are saying that it is to make it easer on the people in church, my opinion is rather then make it easer but teach people how to use the hymnal. The hymnal is a very powerful tool to use, not just for the church service and hymns, but there are other good uses for the hymnal. There is some nice service that can be used at home, such as Matins and Vespers (I do, do Vespers myself at home) It also has a list of reading for every day of the year.
Our church is hurting for money, yet there is a lot of talk about moving to the new LSB when it is published this fall. The way I see it, if we do spend this enormous amount of money on hymnals this fall, we should switch to using the hymnal instead of printing the service. Afterall, one of its biggest selling points is that it is “easy to use”. Not to mention, it would save money on printer toner, paper, etc.
Why not just use the huymnals that your church already owns? If your church has TLH you are in a great position, TLH is such a fine hymnal. LW is ok, and could be used also, but I am a major fan of TLH. I have looked at the liturgical section of the new hymnal, and I really don’t like it, they took page 15 from TLH and changed the language of the spoken parts. If your church as TLH I would say go with that. I don’t think the new LSB is really worth the money, from what I seen, I seen a sampling of the new hymns and the liturgical sections, and I don’t like it.
I should also note, find my a good confessional Lutheran church in the LCMS that is not hurting for money (some more then others)
But as it is, this day in age not as many are Christians as there once was, so we have a smaller pool of people that work for the church or give of thier money to the church.
But we are called to be good stewards of the money that God has given us. At our church we don’t have a janitor, the task of cleaning the church falls on to the members, that is a bit of a savings a year. I am sure if your church look at its books you could find something you could cut, with out hurting the church. But also remember, pastors are grossly under paid, so don’t look there. But do you need the new hymnals, maybe you could save money there by not getting them. Do you have a janitor? Could your church save money by getting the members to clean the church?