Lutheran Church Service

Sunday morning church services are held at our church at 8:00 and 10:30 a.m., with Sunday School and Adult Bible Study held between the two services.  The 8 a.m. service comes pretty early on the weekend, especially after getting up at 5 a.m. during the week, but we attend this service almost every Sunday.  Our family belongs to a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, which is the middle-of-the-road in relation to strictness in the Lutheran religion.  Evangelical Lutheran Churches (ELCA) are the most relaxed and Wisconsin Synod are the most strict parishes in the Lutheran religion. 

We have attended the same church for approximately 16 years, with regular attendance for the past approximately 10 years.  For the first several years of our attendance, we were always early or at least on time for the 8 a.m. service, but the past couple of years our arrival has been just on time to a couple minutes late.  I have attributed this to having lost control of dressing and managing our 2 daughters, ages 9 and 12.  When they were younger, my husband and I woke them up, dressed them, fed them, and left for church.  And now, as anyone with children over the age of 6 knows, we attempt to wake them up (several different times), then end up threatening them that we are leaving in 10 minutes, and they need to get up NOW!  Anyway, back to the subject at hand, in relation to walking into church service, there are not formal assigned seats, but there are unwritten assigned seats.  Everyone always knows where every family sits in church, and it is odd when a family is not sitting in their regular pew, or within 1 or 2 pews of their regular seating arrangement.  Typically if a family is not in their regular seat, they are absent or something is up.  Yes, that’s right, somebody new to the service took their seat because the regulars were a couple minutes late. 

The dress code at our church is for the most part relatively dressy, but jeans and a sweater are fine and don’t look out of place at all.  Since we have attended this church for so many years, we know most everyone very well.  I mention this because we have become close friends with some families, so have done many different activities and been to several functions with them outside of church services and activities.  It is amusing to observe all of our personalities and behaviors in church versus in a relaxed casual atmosphere anywhere else.  The men, my husband included, clean up their language, while the boys clean up themselves and their behaviors.  The women and girls pretty much act the same except utilizing more ‘looks’ than verbal reprimandings to quiet the kids. 

During communion, standard operating procedure is for men to let their wives go ahead of them throughout the procession.  In our synod, women are not allowed to hold office, nor be a pastor, so all of the officials in our church are men.  It is the Elders of our church, who are, of course, men, who instruct us when it is our turn to go take communion, as well as the Elders who pass the collection plate and collect our money envelope.  One of the things in this religion that has changed over time is that girls who are in confirmation class (7^th and 8^th –grade) are required to acolyte, whereas only boys were required (or allowed) to acolyte when I was that age. 

According to McIntosh, men are privileged, but in my opinion within the Missouri Synod, this is an unfortunate privilege in regard to increased responsibilities and duties.  In church there are not really gender specific rules, except for the ability to hold office, which really does not offend me at all, because the way I look at it, the more offices you hold, the more meetings you attend, and I have very little spare time for meetings. 

Many people question the benefits to the relationship between church and government, as does Valenti in her article where the virginity movement was led by Evangelical Christians, the Government, religious leaders, and legislators.  The unwritten rules within the church are more related to behavior.  Sometimes the behavior within the church walls doesn’t exactly feel genuine, but that probably is not really an accurate description, as we all just clean up really well when going to church and know how to act appropriately while at church, whereas when we are together socially with our church friends, we are all immensely relaxed and relieved of our uptight good behaviors. 

We do have one black family who belongs to our church, and specifically within this family, I don’t notice any of Springer’s portrayals of the typical black woman, and in fact, the complete opposite comes to mind.  This woman is a member in the US Army, and on a number of occasions has worn different military uniforms, appearing to be and coming across as a woman with a strong personality who knows that her body is her own and not to be messed with.  In relation to other factors that would affect people’s behavior at a church service, I really can’t think of any except that the Missouri Synod does not accept/acknowledge homosexuality, so if there was someone of that orientation who was a member of our church, that might be different, but I can’t say that with 100% certainty.  I fully believe that our ‘church family’ is a very friendly group who is not hard to get along with, so for our church to ostracize someone for that just doesn’t realistically seem like it would happen. 

 

References

McIntosh, P. (1988). White Privilege and Male Privilege. In S. M. Shaw, & J. Lee, Women’s Voices/Feminist Visions:  Classic and Contemporary Readings (5th ed., pp. 75-82). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Springer, K. (2008). Queering Black Female Heterosexuality. In S. M. Shaw, & J. Lee, Women’s Voices/Feminist Visions:  Classic and Contemporary Readings (5th ed., pp. 207-212). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Valenti, J. (2009). The Cult of Virginity. In S. M. Shaw, & J. Lee, Women’s Voices/Feminist Visions:  Classic and Contemporary Readings (5th ed., pp. 181-185). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.