Good Sermons, Warm Welcome, and Maybe a Maniple

Legend has it that 70% of the new members at an average American church are there because they were invited by a friend.

For thirty years or more, this factoid has been passed around among the clergy like a joint at a hippie gathering, which is to say that it has been held reverentially, spoken of in hushed but appreciative tones, breathed in and then put aside until it is needed again -- all while, quite possibly, creating mild hallucinations.

The truth is that the supposed study behind this figure is hard to track down, and even if it exists it is very old.  American church life has changed dramatically in the past 50 years, and especially in the last 5.  Moreover, standards of privacy and sociability have also changed.  What was once genial may now seem intrusive -- ask any pastor who still drops in unannounced, or at least the people upon whom that pastor drops in.

The most recent information we can find that might support the old 70%-invited-by-a-friend comes from Pew Research, which is generally pretty creditable (as opposed to, say, Barna).  It also places that number in an important context.

In 2026, Pew released a report called "Choosing a New Church or House of Worship," based on data from a 2014 study.  This wouldn't be so very old, had not COVID intervened, but COVID did intervened, and so the results must be looked at skeptically indeed. Still, it will be a while before anything newer covers the same territory in as much detail.

The overall conclusion of the report may be the least surprising thing ever said on the subject, summed up in a headline:  "Americans look for good sermons, warm welcome."  (The report also ranks "worship style" almost as high as homiletics and how-d'ya-do, so don't forget your maniple, because nothing says style like a ceremonial hand-towel.) 

Location also matters, so choose yours wisely, as do programs for the wee ones.  All of these things -- sermons, welcome, style, location, programs -- seem to be ranked more highly on the list of reasons that worshipers choose a new church than personal connections.  But those connections do play a role.  The report offers this useful chart:

There it is in the second column: 69% of people seeking a new church have talked to members of the congregation.  That is not far at all from our 70% story.  And the numbers also back up an important corollary of the legend -- conversation with lay members appears to be more important than conversation with the clergy.

But where the legend is framed to highlight the urgency of personal invitation, the wording of the study implies that the person seeking a church may be more active, and the church member more passive.  More important still is the addition of "friends and colleagues," a category which is apparently separate from church members.   

Our conclusion is something like this:  The legend is spun to encourage congregants to invite people to church, and to make them feel a little bit guilty if their church isn't growing.  The numbers presented by Pew suggest that in fact a person looking for a place to worship will ask around rather broadly, and compile a sort of "local reputation score" consisting of what impression of a church they get from different sources, including but not limited to its members.  This seems natural.

It should be obvious that, since 2014, the internet has continued to take over every aspect of our lives, including our spiritual affiliations. How many of us live-streamed a decade ago?  How many of us even considered the possibility of what is politely called "virtual communion"?  In that spirit, it seems natural to assume that, were this study to be repeated in 2025, the "looked for information online" category would have eaten up numbers from the others, and probably swallowed the quaint old-fashioned "made a phone call" bones and all.

Anyway, it seems to us that the basics are unlikely to have changed.  A church that hopes to grow should certainly have good preaching, welcome new people with love, worship with zeal, and be located in an accessible place.  A good website doesn't hurt, and neither does a favorable reputation. 

To all these things we add:  Many churches possess all these attributes and do not grow.  Some possess most of them and still shrink. Such are the times in which we live.  Don't beat up on yourself, whether you are a pastor or a lay member.  And don't beat up on each other, either.  Ultimately, it is in God's hands, not ours.

Nearer, My God: The Unitarian, Anglican & Lutheran Versions

 First published in 1840, "Nearer My God to Thee" quickly became a beloved hymn on both sides of the Atlantic -- and in the middle as well, if those stories about the Titanic are true.

The hymn has an interesting backstory. Its author, Sarah Fuller Flower Adams (1805-48) was a daughter of the genteel school of English leftists. Her father was a printer and editor who served time for insulting a bishop, but he was also the nephew of the wealthy and connected bankers Richard and William Fuller. Adams herself moved in circles that included the the young Browning and, far more significantly, the influential preacher William Johnson Fox.  It was an environment marked by concern for such progressive causes as opposition to Napoleon, rights for women, and concern for the working class. (After Fox left his wife for a younger model, he also became an advocate for easier divorce). 

In matters of religion, Adams was a lifelong Unitarian, although she remained attached to Fox, who was expelled from Unitarianism and wound up as what we would call today a post-Christian public intellectual. Her hymns first appeared in the hymnal of Fox's own congregation; by the 1870s, "Nearer" could be found in something like 70% of the hymnals surveyed by Hymnary.com.

Perhaps it was the aroma of Unitarianism that disquieted some more traditionally-minded churchmen to write their own versions of this popular hymn, in the same meter.

The first was by William Walsham How (1823-97), a greatly admired Anglican bishop and the author of "For All the Saints."  His version of "Nearer" appeared, placed immediately after Adams', in Godfrey Thring's 1880 A Church of England Hymn Book.  It subsequently enjoyed modest popularity; Hymnary.com finds it in some 44 hymnals all told, as opposed to a colossal 2505 for the original.

The second, of more interest to Lutherans, is by Henry Eyster Jacobs (1844-1932). If you do not know Jacobs, you really should; he is an important figure in our history, specifically as a part of the General Council Brain Trust.  The son of a Gettysburg College professor, Jacobs went on to teach at Thiel and Gettysburg before moving to the seminary at Mt Airy (LTSP, as it was; ULS/Philadelphia, as it is). He taught systematic theology and served as dean and then president, and edited several journals as well as the still-valuable Lutheran Cyclopedia of 1899, which is not to be confused with the later LCMS volume of the same title. He was a member of the Joint Committee on the Common Service. His 1905 Summary of the Christian Faith is, in his own words, an "attempt to restate the doctrines of the Christian faith upon the basis of the Lutheran Confessions" -- and a fairly approachable one at that.

Among many other things, Jacobs also taught the first course at a Lutheran seminary in the US devoted to the history and theology of worship.  It was an elective offered to especially gifted seniors.  Years ago, Gordon Lathrop described looking through Jacob's papers from that period, and coming across a note that the worship students did not seem especially gifted, save that "...young Reed shows some real promise."  One must say that Jacobs was an excellent judge of promise.

Jacobs' "Nearer" was apparently written in 1880 or thereabouts, but first published (so far as we can tell) in an 1898 hymnal, Christian Hymns: for Church, School and Home, prepared by the Norwegian Synod. It appears there, as How's does in the Thring collection, after the original, and is apparently intended as an alternative. It also appears in the 1917 Common Service Book, which you probably have sitting on a shelf in your office right now.  And that is nearly it -- in contrast even to How's 44, the Jacobs "Nearer" appears in a pitiful 12 hymnals, the last of these in 1926.

The historicals thus introduced, we come to the big question:  Why was an alternative to Adams ever felt to be needed?

This chart (if you can make it out) shows the three hymns in question:

The Adams hymn is Biblical, a reference to Jacob's dream in Genesis 28, but not deeply or narrowly so.  The narrator desires to be like one of the angels on the ladder, alternately stepping or flying toward heaven.  A cross has been inserted, perhaps as a the reality of which the ladder was a type.  We can charitably assume that this is the Cross of Christ, rather than a metaphor for the narrator's own difficulties. The details of how the narrator will draw near to God are left vague, but the desire comes through strongly. It is hard to discern anything especially Unitarian about it, nor for that matter any hint of the author's social concern.  It is rather a fine example of the hymnody that seeks in God a path out of suffering and darkness.

How brings to this same search some more explicit ideas, albeit not original ones.  The "cross" in question is the one borne by a disciple (Mark 8:34 etc), and while bearing it we are called to pray, to follow Jesus through suffering, and to await his eventual return and a place in his eternal mansions.   One struggles to find any distinctively Anglican doctrine here, but where doctrine is concerned that is in itself a distinctively Anglican characteristic.  While the language is lovely, we will say that the sentiment seems a bit trite, basically the old and rightly-mocked depiction of God's promise as "pie in the sky when you die."

Unsurprisingly, Jacobs is by far the most explicitly doctrinal of the poets.  His opening thesis is that nearness to God is achieved through "word and sacrament," familiar Lutheran language for the ministry of the Church, identified here with divine grace and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  This is rooted in God's eternal love, which predates the Creation, and in Christ's Incarnation, which is God's entrance into the created world. There is a nod to one particular atonement theory, and an invitation to the Trinity itself to make a home among the People of God.  The final stanza argues that the assurance of salvation obviates any fear of death, a questionable idea without which the hymn would have been better.

To answer our own question, it is hard to say just why How felt a need to reconsider the Adams original.  Perhaps he felt it was insufficiently clear about how "nearness to God" could be achieved, and wanted to make an argument for discipleship. 

The case is easier with Jacobs:  the professor of systematic theology seems to have wanted a hymn that approached "nearness" in a ... systematic fashion. Some readers may find this a trifle stale, but we don't think it harms the poetry.  On the contrary, it turns the image of "nearness to God" into a story, which is quite a good thing in a hymn.  And  unlike either of the others, Jacobs' version makes it clear that this nearness is achieved not by human effort, but by God's own work in Christ.

We weren't sure when we started this post, but now we are:  the Henry Eyster Jacobs "Neaer, My God to Thee" is a solid hymn, that deserves to be used from time to time in Lutheran churches.

Multiple "O"s

It is the time of year when pastors sometimes teach about the so-called "O-antiphons" which form the basis of the splendid Advent hymn, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

(It is amusing to reflect upon how much attention these little scraps of medieval poetry get even in churches where the Magnificat itself is rarely sung, much less its proper antiphons. But that is a discussion for another day.)

Father A. has been leading one of these little cottage classes recently, and was delighted, in his antiquarian way, to discover that there are a great many more O-antiphons than he had realized.  Most of us are familiar with the seven used in the Roman Breviary during the days before Christmas Eve and imitated, imperfectly, in the lyrics of the hymn:

1. O Sapientia (Wisdom)
2. O Adonai (Adonai, or Lord)
3. O Radix Jesse (Root of Jesse)
4. O Clavis (Key of David)
5. O Oriens (East, or Dawn)
6. O Rex (King)
7. O Emmanuel          

Some of us are also aware that Anglicans add another antiphon:

8. O Virgo VirginumO Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For never was there one like you, nor ever will there be.O Daughters of Jerusalem, why do you look wondering at me? What you behold is a divine mystery 

Now, this little gem was certainly written after the originals, probably during the flowering of Marian devotion during the 12th century. When sung last, it has the neat effect of changing the acrostic from ERO CRAS (I will come tomorrow) to VERO CRAS (truly tomorrow).

Fewer of us are aware however, that during the 12th and 13th centuries, and beyond, several more antiphons constructed on the same pattern were in use at many monasteries and some parish churches all over Western Europe. The Twelve "Great Antiphons" include those we have just noted as well as the following:

-->

9. O Gabriel, Nuntius Coelorum
O Gabriel, messenger of the heavens,
who has entered to me through the closed doors, and announced the word:
“You shall conceive and bear, and he shall be called Emmanuel.” 

10. O Rex Pacifice
O King of Peace, born before the world,
come by the Golden Gate, visit your redeemed ones,
 and call them back to the place from which they fell by sin. 

11. O Mundi Domina
O Lady of the world, sprung of a royal race,
now Christ has come forth from your womb
as a bridegroom from his chamber:
Here lies he in the crib, who also rules the stars. 

12. O Hierusalem
O Jerusalem, city of God most high:
lift up your eyes around you, and see your Lord,
who comes now to loose you from chains.

These are pretty neat, although -- like Virgo Virginum -- they are obviously quite different from the seven familiar Os. They are not directed only to Jesus, but to Gabriel, Mary and Jerusalem. This displays a rather different piety. And, without extensive research, it also seems to us that they are a bit less dense with Biblical allusions than their predecessors.  Still, they are lovely in their own way.

Oh, and here's a lovely trivium:  in the Friuli, O mundi Domina was intoned on Christmas Eve by the priest celebrant, after he sang the Gospel and just before the Te Deum. Neat, huh?

But wait, as the K-Tel advertisements used to say, there's more! It seems that, once this style of antiphon became popular, people couldn't get enough of it. Local variations began to pop up everywhere -- O Thomas Didyme for the feast if that saint replaced O Gabriel after the 13th century, at leas in some places. In Paris, we are told they sang O sancte sanctorum and O pastor Israel, of which we cannot even find texts on the mighty Internet.

And in some French churches, specifically those that followed the custom established by Lanfranc of Canterbury, O mundi Domina was replaced by this long and curious marvel:

O beata infantia 

O blessed Infancy,
By which our race
Was restored to life; 

 O sweet and loveable wailing,
by which we have escaped
eternal sobbing 

 O happy swaddling bands
By which we have wiped off
The soil of sin 

 O splendid manger,
In which not only lay
The hay of animals,
But was also found the supper of angels.

-->

Cool, huh?  It's a little late now, but maybe some of our readers can integrate these into their planning for next year's Advent observances.
--> --> --> --> --> --> --> --> --> --> --> -->

How Much Did The Reformation Cost?

The old joke runs:

Two priests are visiting Rome. As they look up in awe at the splendor of St. Peter's basilica, one asks, "How much do you think it cost?" 

His companion answers, "Oh, about half of Europe."

The joke, of course, is that the Reformation was prompted in part by John Tetzel's sale of indulgences, and that the money from the indulgences was meant to pay for the construction of St. Peter's.  German princes, unhappy about sending their treasure across the Alps to support the lavish spending of a Medici prince, were at least somewhat inclined to support a troublesome monk who made a case for keeping German gold in German pockets.

But how much money are we talking about, here?  How much cash had to cross the mountains before the situation became intolerable to those in power? How much were the indulgences actually worth?

It's hard to say, but we can at least begin to estimate.

Tetzel was working for Albrecht of Brandenburg, a prince and bishop who needed money to pay off a massive loan to the House of Fugger.  Albrecht had taken out the loan in order to pay Pope Leo X for the archiepiscopate of Mainz. The sale of the archiepiscopate was big business, which like most big deals required financing.  The financing model was that the pope would license a campaign to sell indulgences in Albrecht's territory, and that the profits would be divided evenly between Leo himself and Albrecht, who would pay the Fuggers.

Ultimately, of course, this means that the plan was for the indulgences to bring in double the cost of Albrecht's loan.  So the critical question is:  How much had Albrecht borrowed?

This information is not readily available, but that doesn't mean it is unavailable.  Ludwig Freiherr von pastor's History of the Popes, vol. 7, p. 331 (in the English edition) says that the see of Mainz cost Albrecht 14,000 ducats, and then another 10,000 ducats of "extraordinary fees" for the privilege of occupying not only Mainz but also the sees of Magdeburg and Halberstadt.  He cites Albrecht's "bond for 29,000 Rhehish gulden" in Aloys Schulte's 1904 Die Fugger in Rom 1495-1523.

So, assuming he had borrowed the entire cost of his new position, Albrecht owed 24,000 ducats or, perhaps, 29,000 Rhenish gulden.  Nice to know, but as Americans often ask when traveling, "How much is that in real money?"

Marc Carlson is a librarian at the University of Tulsa and, apparently, a man fascinated by vast quantities of random information. Although he admits it is very, very rough, he presents a table estimating the approximate value of various ancient and medieval currencies.  According to Carlson, both a ducat and a gulder, in 16th-century Germany, were worth approximately $500 in money circa the year 2000.

So, whipping out our calculators, we find that Albrecht borrowed between $12 million and $14.5 million to finance his ecclesiastical ambitions. In which case, Tetzel was apparently expected to bring in between $24 and 30 million.

That's a lot of money, to be sure, especially for one guy with a wagon and some cheaply-printed sheets of paper.  It is even more money when you consider that, if Luther was right, Tetzel had absolutely nothing to sell.

On the other hand, consider this.  An historian named John James (see page 10 of Amy Denning's fascinating BA thesis) has devoted vast energy to estimating the construction costs of medieval French cathedrals, and comes in which a price tag of $548 million (in 2011 dollars) for Chartres. Barcelona's Sagrada Familia cathedral has been under construction for over a century, and is estimated to have cost $1.3 billion so far. A modern nuclear power plant costs several times as much.

So, yes, St. Peter's was expensive.  But if its cost had been limited (as it was certainly not) to the value of Tetzel's indulgence campaign, it might have at least been a decent value.

Double-Dipped Collects

"Double-dipping" is a funny expression.  In accounting, it means to obtain income from two sources, perhaps illicitly; in snacking, to stick a half-eaten chip into the sour-cream-and-onion.  Neither of these is very nice.  But we at the Egg love our ice cream cones dipped in cherry sauce, of the sort that forms a thin hard shell, and we can only imagine how good a double-dipped cone might be.

And lately, we have discovered double-dipping in the world of liturgical prayer.

One of our hobbies, over the past year, has been comparing the Prayers of the Day printed in Evangelical Lutheran Worship (2006) to their originals.  Our guide to this antiquarian endeavor is the book Keeping Time by Gail Ramshaw and Mons Teig, especially Index B, which offers a citation for each prayer, along with a modest (*) for prayers that have been altered or (**) for prayers that have been heavily altered.  Those acquainted with the language of our still-new service book will already know that asterisks abound.

Like most Lutheran service books printed in the United States, ELW's prayers are drawn from a variety of sources and languages, both ancient and modern. The greatest number are probably from the Gelasian Sacramentary, but many are taken from other sources -- including a fair number by important historical figures, previously anthologized in Dorothy Stuart's 2002 Westminster Book of Christian Prayer.  Curiously, Keeping Time doesn't offer any citations to the Reformation church-orders, although it is possible that prayers from those sources have slipped in through the LBW or Herbert Brokering's adaptations.

Today, we were looking at the propers for this coming Sunday, identified in our books by the ungainly title of Lectionary 26 A.  The Prayer of the Day is:

God of love, giver of life, you know our frailties and failings. Give us your grace to overcome them, keep us from those things that harm us, and guide us in the way of salvation, through Jesus Christ, etc. 

According to Ramshaw and Teig, this one is from the Gelasian Sacramentary, specifically #1213 in the Mohlberg collection (and III:ix:x in Henry Austin Wilson's older edition).  Somewhat absent-mindedly, we turned to the appropriate page and began to translate:

Custodi, domine, quaesumus, aecclesiam tuam propitiacione perpetua, et quia sine te labitur humana mortalitas, tuis semper auxiliis et abstrahatur a noxiis et ad salutaria dirigatur: per ...

Let's see.  Watch, O Lord we beseech thee, over thy Church -- standard stuff. And since without thee, human labor -- no, that's a passive verb, is sliding or gliding.  Hey.  Waitasecond.  Some of these forms are odd, and I'd swear I saw them just the other --

Yup.  A quick glance at Index B reveals that Old #2013 was indeed the basis for an entirely different Prayer of the Day, proper to Lectionary 23 A.  In other words, the one we prayed just three weeks earlier!

And yet the two English prayers derived from the one Latin source are quite different.  The Prayer of the Day for Lectionary 23 A reads:

O Lord God, enliven and preserve your church with your perpetual mercy. Without your help, we mortals will fail; remove far from us everything that is harmful, and lead us toward all that gives life and salvation, through Jesus Christ ...

23 A is far, far more literal than 26 A.  The former is a single-asterisk prayer, where the latter is decidedly double-asterisk.  Indeed, we would be inclined to regard 26 A as an original composition.  It adds substantial material (the pairings of love/life and frailites/failings; the all-important word grace) and removes the central image of the original (labitur humana mortalitas, which is not easy to translate but may mean something on the order of "humanity inclines toward death," and seems best rendered in phrases like Cranmer's "the frailty of Man cannot ... but fail").

It may seem to reflect a lack of originality on the part of the editors to have used the same prayer twice in a few weeks.  But of course they didn't use the same prayer; they used two quite different prayers with a common inspiration. We Lutherans do not, generally speaking, share the Anglican conceit of producing a Latin edition of our English service book.  If we did, it would require us to create an entirely new Latin prayer based on 26 A.  But we don't.

So it seems curious, but also strangely creative, that ELW has taken this route.  it is double-dipping, but not in the pejorative sense used by an accountant.  Rather, the same tasty cone has been dipped in two flavors of sauce, to create something new and unusual.