Liturgical Resources
Welcome to the OLCC Liturgical Resources page. Here you will find a variety of tools and material designed to assist in your planning of the church year, as well as material you may wish to use in the liturgy.
Available now is a Liturgical Calculator, a valuable tool that will generate a table of festivals for any given year. Most modern liturgical systems are based on the Galican liturgical calendar which Rome adopted universally in 1570, in which ordinary time is delineated as Sundays after Pentecost. In the 1970s many Lutheran bodies adopted this calendar, whereas prior to this they followed the calendar used in Reformation times in Northern Europe, France, and England, and by extension, in the Lutheran Church. This calendar is nearly identical to the Sarum Rite used in the Church of England, in which ordinary time in the non-festival half of the Church year is counted as "Sundays after Trinity". Though the Galican system is older, it is not commonly in use by churches which follow The Lutheran Hymnal and other older English and German hymnals. Therefore this calculator is offered for those who wish to continue to use the liturgical calendar which was once in common use in the Lutheran Church. This is likewise the same calendar that is described in The Lutheran Hymnal on page 158.
The Lessons for the Church Year, including both first and second series are now complete. You can easily cut and paste these lessons into your church bulletin.
Available now: The Collects of Veit Dietrich, a contemporary and fellow-confessor of Luther. The translation is that which is found in The Lutheran Hymnary , published in 1913 by the three Norwegian synods which later merged to become the ELC. When the ELC merger took place in 1917, a group of Norwegian congregations refused to take part in the merger (due to the rampant pietism in these synods) and formed what later became known as the ELS. This hymnal was used by the ELS throughout the period of time when they were orthodox and in fellowship with the Missouri Synod (as part of the Synodical Conference). This translation was chosen because it is no longer copyrighted, and because it was trusted enough to be used by a then-orthodox Lutheran synod. The Dietrich collects are closely based on the Gospel of the day. Compared to the historic collects, the Dietrich collects have a much stronger doctrinal content. As a side note, a newer translation of these same collects appears in the new ELS Hymnal, The Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary . This translation has been altered in unacceptable ways. Aside from the fact that it is copyrighted and uses modern English which would be inconsistent with the language forms in our Lutheran Hymnal , it must be rejected because it errs in eliminating language which may be deemed "offensive", such as any negative references to the Jews (cf. the Tenth Sunday after Trinity).
NEW! Dr. Walter A. Maier's For Better Not For Worse - A Manual of Christian Matrimony. This is presently a work in progress, but several chapters are not available.