Seminary's Mark Mummert a featured composer in the ELCA's new worship book

SPECIAL EVENTS: Evangelical Lutheran Worship Celebration
Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Special Convocation, 11:30 a.m., Benbow Hall, The Brossman Center. As part of the ELW celebration, there will be a special convocation lecture and response on Tuesday, October 24 at 11:30 a.m. in Benbow Hall. The lecture will be presented by The Rev. Dr. Timothy J. Wengert, Ministerium of Pennsylvania Professor of Reformation History. The Rev. F. Russell Mittman, Pennsylvania Southeast Conference Minister of the United Church of Christ, will present the response.

Eucharist 5:30 p.m., Schaeffer-Ashmead Chapel

PHILADELPHIA, PA (September 26, 2006) -- For Composer Mark Mummert, a key planner for the development of the new Evangelical Lutheran Worship book (ELW), an unforgettable moment in the whole process came this summer in Chicago.

Mummert was teaching synodical representatives about the process taken to develop and test the book, a process that took several painstaking years. After the session, "a man from Texas came up to me with tears in his eyes," Mummert recalls. "He told me he had come to Chicago intent on disliking the new book. Now, three days later he approached me and said: 'Thank you for changing the way I understand this new resource, for helping me to see with different eyes this amazing gift.'"

For Mummert, one of three composers who created the first liturgical setting in the new book, it was a moment that filled him with a sense of gratitude. "We know the new resource is being looked at by some with deep suspicion sometimes based on rumor that is not based on fact," Mummert says. "All we're asking is that people judge the book on what is actually there. We did a lot of testing, a lot of listening to get where we are."

Highlights of the new ELW? It features ten liturgical settings of the Holy Communion of which only one, the first, featuring the work of composers Mummert, Thomas Pavlechko and Robert Bucklee Farlee, is brand new. The new resource features 250 more hymns than its 1978 predecessor, Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW), and all 150 psalms -- yet remarkably, thanks to thinner, modern paper and technology, the book is the same physical size as the LBW. In addition to serving as a key composer, Mummert served on the important development panels on hymnody, new hymnody and liturgical music. 

This fall, Mummert, 41, begins his 17th year as Seminary Musician at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia (LTSP). He has been the Chapel's organist, pianist and choir director. He's taught hundreds of seminarians about the critical role of music in worship. He's given leadership and emphasis to a new Master of Arts in Religion concentration on Liturgy and Music, which now has two graduates. He has a special love of the musical and theological aspects of Johann Sebastian Bach's church cantatas. "Music conveys theological meaning." Mummert says. "Music makes things happen, because it belongs to the same audible sphere as the spoken word; and we know what God's word, when spoken and sung, can do -- it brings things into being; it brings about faith."

Mummert has been involved in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's "Renewing Worship" project over the past five years. He explains the project
was formed to "discern how worship might be renewed in the church." The process, he notes, "yielded the next worship book and a new generation of resources, but it was not the aim of the project to do a new book right away." One issue that needed to be resolved was the role of electronic technology in distributing worship resources, something that wasn't on the table in 1978.

"We determined that while electronic resources are useful, it was still important to have a worship book as a sign of what we believe to be core worship materials," he says. The new ELW is a successor to the Lutheran Book of Worship, With One Voice and the (transitional) Renewing Worship Songbook (used to test new hymnody in recent years). "It does not in any way supersede This Far by Faith or Libro de Liturgia y Cantico, worship resources created for African American and Hispanic worshipping communities. However, materials from both of these last resources are included in the new ELW because we want people to understand that content from those two resources is part of our core worship materials."

Mummert was asked to compose music for a setting of the new book in February, 2005. He recalls spending countless hours over a three-week period composing at a piano in the LTSP Chapel. "Each of us invited to compose were found to have strengths and weaknesses in our music during a testing period," Mummert explains. Hence, parts written by all three composers were selected for the first setting in the ELW.

The new book's other settings are: Setting two is by Marty Haugen, a revision of the provisional setting he prepared for the Renewing Worship process. Settings three, four and five are essentially settings one, two and three from the LBW. Setting six is a hybrid from two settings found in This Far By Faith. Setting seven is in Spanish and English with music from Libro de Liturgia y Cantico. Setting eight is in popular contemporary idiom from various places including Augsburg Fortress's Worship and Praise Songbook. Setting nine is a revision of a provisional setting by Joel Martinson prepared for the Renewing Worship process. And setting ten is a hymn paraphrase setting.

Mummert gives extensive credit to the Rev. Dr. Gordon Lathrop, Charles Schieren Emeritus Professor of Liturgy, "for helping me to identify myself" over the years. "Gordon helped me to see my leadership qualities. He helped me understand why we do music the way we do, and he challenged me to compose," Mummert says. "He helped me see how music and ritual together yield meaning and to think theologically about the role of music in the assembly or worshipers."

Mummert acknowledges it was a great challenge over the years to wrestle with the diversity of a changing church and deal with many regional and ethnic concerns. "The question for us all was, 'What belongs in the core resource and what is peripheral?'" He said the ELW is not an attempt to be all things to all people. It features use of striking art, he adds.

"I think the new book is a form of stewardship," Mummert believes. "It is not the property of clergy or musicians. The ELW is a treasury of what we value about worship -- of what we all hold in common."

Plans call for a two-day celebration of the new resource at LTSP October 24 and 25. During an 11:30 am convocation on Tuesday, October 24, the seminary's role in the production of worship resources over the years will be recalled. The first setting of the new resource will be sung during evening Holy Communion that day at 5:30 p.m. in the Chapel. A Chapel hymnfest will take place October 25.

Learn more about Evangelical Lutheran Worship at the Renewing Worship Web site of the ELCA: http://www.renewingworship.org.

Before October 2, 2006, the ELW may be pre-ordered from Augsburg Fortress Publishers for $17.50; on release the price will be $20. Information on ordering Evangelical Lutheran Worship and related materials is available from Auguburg Fortress, http://www.augsburgfortress.org, or contact the Augsburg Fortress Bookstore on the LTSP campus - manager: Heidi Rodrick-Schnaath, phone: 215-967-1112, fax: 215-967-9990, email: philadelphiastore@augsburgfortress.org. A midnight release event is planned for the bookstore on the seminary campus at 12:01 AM on October 3. Contact the bookstore for more information.