We feature a "blended" worship service that retains what we call the "shell" of Lutheran liturgy--things like confession of sins, assurance of forgiveness, songs of praise, Bible lessons, and professions of faith. But to the extent of our capabilities right now, we also enjoy using videos and audios, skits, and lots of contemporary praise music. It's clear that as a result of technology, people take in and process information and quite simply, think differently than did previous generations. Today, people tend to think "in pictures" and "in stories." In fact, we postmoderns think in ways that have more in common with the ways people thought and processed information in Biblical, largely pre-literate, times than in the ways we seminary-trained clergy usually think.

Especially Lutheran clergy like me are often what Marshall McLuhan called "linear thinkers." That is, we are people of the printed word. As in love as I am with my computer and with the access to information afforded by the Internet, I still print off those things I really want to read and study. For me, there's something more real about a printed page I can hold in my hands and on which I can put underlines and margin notes.

One reason for this no doubt is that like generals who sometimes fight the last war--and so, lose--seminary-trained clergy can do the same thing. The Lutheran movement of which I am a part, for example, came along just as an exciting new technology was coming to the fore: the printing press. A number of church and cultural historians have pointed out that Martin Luther was the first media superstar. Luther filled the print shops all across Germany and elsewhere with a flurry of essays, sermons, lectures, commentaries, teaching, and songs that foreshadow later generations' inundation with Harry Potter,

'NSync, Oprah Winfrey, and Pokemon products. Reformation theology is important in itself. But its importance and impact were magnified by all the "pub" it got back in the sixteenth century. As Rick Warren, among others, is fond of pointing out, one of the greatest causes of failure is success. The Reformation successfully brought the doctrine of justification by faith through grace to prominence. It "successfully" brought about many changes within Christianity. It was successful in helping millions of people who had previously seen God as a distant taskmaster to see and personally know Him as One Who enters our lives through Christ and frees all who believe in Him from sin, death, and futility. The "carrier" of that success was largely, the written word and a reformed worship liturgy that bore more than a passing resemblance to the Roman Mass.

Like the one-time high school baseball star in Bruce Springsteen's 'Glory Days,' Lutherans and other North American and European Jesus-followers have lived off the success and buzz created by our theological forebears. We've tried to replicate their impact by copying their methods. We have a bad case of confusing the package for the content. Christ never changes. The Gospel never changes. But as surely as most North Americans will come away from an encounter with the King James Version confused, they will also come away from the average mainline worship service if not confused, then untouched.

Because of the passion I have that people come to know and have a relationship with Jesus Christ, I've been willing and eager to find new ways to communicate with people in this time. But I have to make a confession. I sill am a linear thinker. I love footnotes.

That love affair began back when I was about twelve years old. I read Arthur Schlesinger's dense (and in retrospect, hagiographic) account of the Kennedy Administration, A Thousand Days. Schlesinger is among the best writers of history. I remember an appreciative reviewer from 'Time' magazine pointed out back in 1965, that Schlesinger's histories read more like novels than what we usually associate with history. (Some might suggest in fact, that his partisan histories actually contain more fiction or implied fiction than do some novels.) In his Kennedy work, Schlesinger didn't use conventional footnotes. But there were notes on source materials and background information throughout. I found it fascinating to see where things came from. Knowing that seemed to help me understand and appreciate what I was reading even more.

I became addicted to footnotes then when I was in high school. As a senior, our teacher, Mrs. Leuchter, assigned a major term paper to us. Not surprisingly perhaps, I did mine on the Cuban Missile Crisis, using Schlesinger's book among others and happily footnoting along the way. I relied on footnotes to both collect and disseminate information throughout my years as a student at Ohio State and later, at Trinity Lutheran Seminary.

If there is anything typically Lutheran about Friendship Church, it's that people wouldn't stand for the typical evangelical church sermon of thirty minutes or more. Most reputable Lutheran homileticians will tell you to shoot for twenty minutes at the max. My mentor at seminary, the late Bruce Schein, said that with shrinking attention spans, postmoderns could be relied upon to listen to us for no more than twelve minutes. (And that was nearly twenty years ago!)

And yet, on any given Sunday, there is so much more that I want to communicate about that day's Biblical theme. I know that for some, that day's message will be of limited help. They need to explore more deeply. And besides, I love footnotes.

So, a few years back, I began a practice which continues to this day and for which I've gotten good, if limited, feedback. I footnote the worship celebration.

We don't yet have projection capabilities. So, we print out the entire worship celebration each Sunday. The words of every song. All the readings and responses are in a worship program people receive as they arrive on Sundays.

During the course of the celebration, worshipers are asked to sing along with praise songs and hymns. They're asked to join in prayers and make professions and confessions of faith. But even the newest praise song we've introduced at Friendship, "Shout to the North" has lyrics which the average unchurched, spiritually-disconnected person will find mysterious and needful of interpretation. That's what I do with footnotes. About every-other-Sunday, the footnotes appear, helping those who might have questions to understand what it is we're doing and why.

Let me give you one example. A few weeks back, our worship service focused on Mark 12:28-34, where Jesus told an inquiring scribe that the greatest commandments were to love God completely and to love neighbor as we love ourselves. When the scribe endorsed Jesus' response, He told the scribe that he wasn't far from the Kingdom of God. (In The Message, Eugene Peterson has Jesus telling the scribe that he was "on the border." I like that!) Jesus' response poses the question, "If the scribe liked Jesus' answer and agreed with Him, why was he only close to the Kingdom? Why hadn't Jesus commended him for hitting a bull's eye?" The answer of course, is that the command to love only causes us to realize that none of us loves with the completeness demanded by God's law. The law cannot justify. It can only show us our need of God.

If we allow it to, the law will force us to the place we need to be in order to enter God's Kingdom: we need to turn from sin and receive Jesus Christ as our forgiving Lord. The realization that we don't measure up to the demands of God's law forces us onto our knees, seeking the grace and forgiveness that only God can give and which is the only sure cure for our sin.

In support of this theme, we sang the spiritual, "What Wondrous Love is This?" The first verse contains the line, "What wondrous love is this...That caused the Lord of bliss, To bear the dreadful curse for my soul..." I footnoted that line:

"This song reflects the awe and incredulity we must feel when we consider Jesus leaving heaven in order to become human and die in our place on the cross. Jesus endured suffering and death in order to take our rightful punishment for our sin: death. To contemplate Jesus on the cross in spite of His moral perfection and absolute goodness should keep us all from arrogance of any kind and stop all self-justifying excuses we make for failing to give ourselves totally to the God we know through Jesus or for failing to love our neighbors completely. This was the effect it had on Paul..."

I then went on to quote Paul in Romans 5:6-8.

Through the footnote, I went on to more fully explore the theme of the day: the incredible, undeserved gift of grace we receive from Christ. For those who want more meat, the footnotes are there.

As I say, I add footnotes every other week. There is an average of about fifteen of them on each Sunday they appear. Personally, they help me to sing the songs and participate in worship with greater engagement. And, preparing me steeps me even further in God's Word, surely a good thing.

The footnotes range in style each week from devotional to pedantic. Sometimes, I just cite a series of Bible passages. The reaction of the congregation has been good. Several people have told me that they take the footnotes with them and use them for study times back home.

One member of our congregation says that she takes the worship programs home, sings the songs with her kids before they go to bed at night, and then uses the footnotes to help with family devotions.

They've become one more method of discipling people. While admittedly an expression of my quirky personality, they represent a way for this linear thinker to compromise and live with a clear conscience as I reach out to a world that, increasingly has many different kinds of literacy and ways of learning.

Mark Daniels is Pastor, Friendship Church, in the Cincinnati area (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) My wife is Ann. We've been married twenty-six years. We have a son who's a freshman in college and a daughter who is a sophomore in high school. I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Social Studies Education from The Ohio State University (1975) and Master of Divinity degree from Trinity Lutheran Seminary (1984), both institutions are in Columbus. My focus is communicating the Good News of Jesus Christ so that people can live with God in their daily lives and be with God forever. If you'd like a copy of a Friendship worship program containing footnotes, just contact Mark Daniels at MarkLuth@aol.com.

Web site: http://www.elca.org/syn/cong/oh/45103/