I prefer to keep my blog entries colorful and relatively short. This one, though, will need to be a little longer, and at the moment has no illustrations. Moreover, it is probably of interest mostly to those for whom liturgy and forms of worship are important topics.
Well, how's that for "selling" this blog entry? :) I simply want to say that what I'm posting today is certainly not typical.
And, so, the reason I am writing this is in order to take a "snapshot" of congregational life as it has evolved here over the past century, in particular since it is clear that the congregation is on the verge of making a significant shift in its worship practice.
In order to understand what the congregation has been doing when it meets, it is important to know where they've come from. And where they've come from has been, primarily, ethnic minorities (e.g., Finns and, in my case, Germans) in the Russian Empire. Despite having been in Russia for many decades or even multiple centuries, Lutheran congregations as a rule were made to worship in the traditional language of their people. That means that Lutherans in Novosibirsk had no strong tradition of church life in the language that all had in common - Russian. The repression of the church that started after the Bolshevik Revolution led to the closing of all the churches, but when large numbers of ethnic minorities were deported to Siberia in the late 1930s and early 40s, underground congregations began to gather again. German-speaking Lutherans in Novosibirsk, for example, were gathering secretly by 1941 and openly by the early 1960s. After their official recognition by the Soviet state, they revived an intensely pious spirituality that included at least three weekly meetings, with much of both Saturday and Sunday dedicated to church. At first they had an educated pastor in their midst, but later the congregation was run by a group of elders, in particular one to three "brothers" whom the congregation acknowledged as their leaders. As the brothers grew older, they passed on leadership to the next generation. By this time, though, the piety of the congregation's leaders was to a large degree focused on preserving the heritage of the past rather than bringing the congregation into the modern world and keeping its worship accessible to those who knew neither German nor the "brother" traditions. By the 2000s, then, while a large number of Russian Lutheran churches had updated their liturgical traditions and moved into Russian-language worship, the congregation in Novosibirsk remained relatively isolated from these developments. The general attitude was that as much from the past as possible much be preserved, even though many of the now elderly congregation members lacked the physical strength to make the hour + trip to church more than once a week.
Well, how's that for "selling" this blog entry? :) I simply want to say that what I'm posting today is certainly not typical.
And, so, the reason I am writing this is in order to take a "snapshot" of congregational life as it has evolved here over the past century, in particular since it is clear that the congregation is on the verge of making a significant shift in its worship practice.
In order to understand what the congregation has been doing when it meets, it is important to know where they've come from. And where they've come from has been, primarily, ethnic minorities (e.g., Finns and, in my case, Germans) in the Russian Empire. Despite having been in Russia for many decades or even multiple centuries, Lutheran congregations as a rule were made to worship in the traditional language of their people. That means that Lutherans in Novosibirsk had no strong tradition of church life in the language that all had in common - Russian. The repression of the church that started after the Bolshevik Revolution led to the closing of all the churches, but when large numbers of ethnic minorities were deported to Siberia in the late 1930s and early 40s, underground congregations began to gather again. German-speaking Lutherans in Novosibirsk, for example, were gathering secretly by 1941 and openly by the early 1960s. After their official recognition by the Soviet state, they revived an intensely pious spirituality that included at least three weekly meetings, with much of both Saturday and Sunday dedicated to church. At first they had an educated pastor in their midst, but later the congregation was run by a group of elders, in particular one to three "brothers" whom the congregation acknowledged as their leaders. As the brothers grew older, they passed on leadership to the next generation. By this time, though, the piety of the congregation's leaders was to a large degree focused on preserving the heritage of the past rather than bringing the congregation into the modern world and keeping its worship accessible to those who knew neither German nor the "brother" traditions. By the 2000s, then, while a large number of Russian Lutheran churches had updated their liturgical traditions and moved into Russian-language worship, the congregation in Novosibirsk remained relatively isolated from these developments. The general attitude was that as much from the past as possible much be preserved, even though many of the now elderly congregation members lacked the physical strength to make the hour + trip to church more than once a week.
All that does a bit to explain the way worship looked when I arrived there my first Sunday, the 2nd of September. That day, we had agreed that the German-language liturgy would be led, for the
most part, by Sister Emilya, a faithful 85 year-old member of the congregation.
But before the liturgy actually began at 11.00, the older women who had
begun to gather at 10.15 or so started to sing hymns. This was an adaption of the Saturday meetings the congregation had in the past, which (as I understand it) were very much focused on singing. The women sang from two of the three hymnbooks they have, always a
cappella, the hymnbooks having no notation. The largest and oldest hymnal, the German Volga Songbook,
is apparently what was primarily used at the beginning of the century
and then throughout the Soviet Period. In addition, they have two
small, modern hymnals of which I do not know the origin (only that
they are not the modern, official state-church hymnals used in other places). As I sat there an observed the way that
the hymns were chosen, I was not sure whether to be puzzled, disturbed or amused; whenever we finished signing a hymn, there was always some debate about what would be sung next. Now I've
been in Russia long enough to know that both the language itself and
the manner of expression make it seem like people are expressing
themselves in rude ways, and this not not usually true. However, it
seems like the way they choose the hymns is likely to cause some hard
feelings, even among these thick-skinned women; some suggestions were rejected for some reason (e.g., wrong time of the church year), but sometimes
suggestions were simply ignored, and whoever felt they had the authority to
decide or the guts to start signing first was the “winner.”
At 11 o'clock, when the liturgy officially began, Sister Emilia stood up in front of the congregation and
led opening prayers, a hymn of praise and the Psalm of the day more or less as they exist in our current, Russian liturgy. After this the congregation recited the confession of sins in unison (again, without any printed materials to read from - all the older members know it all by heart), though it seems that there were no words of absolution
(unless I missed it – since everything was in German, I was always sort of
guessing). Then we sang a song a had a reading from Scripture. After this we had the Lord's Prayer, a
concluding prayer and the blessing. In short, this was basically a full worship service without a sermon or Holy Communion. Afterwords, though, the church council president got up and read a 19th century sermon. This sermon was from a book that acted as the sermon book for very many Lutheran congregations during that time when they were without pastors. After that sermon, I was given a chance to preach, after which we sang a Russian hymn. Except for my part here, I think that this "middle" part of the service is what reflects what traditional Siberian congregations would do on Sunday mornings.
But we still had another whole part of the liturgy left to go. After the Russian hymn, sister
Emilia led the “prayers of the people;” these prayers had a
formal, general introduction, “let us pray for...” and then
almost everyone got on their knees (a few remained standing) and
prayed in a very interesting way – each person prayed aloud in a
half-whisper in either German or Russian. It was a bit like prayer in
a charismatic church insofar as everyone was speaking at the same
time, though everyone was speaking in a language that they, at least,
understood. After that we said the Lord's Prayer again, sang another
song, and then I gave a blessing to the congregation. Again, with the exception of my blessing at the end, this part of the worship service is also clearly left from the old tradition, and was either from another day (Wednesday) or perhaps reflects some of what would happen on Sunday afternoons.
And so - that's where we were at the beginning of September. After church, the council said that we would move into Russian language worship next week, which we did. I'll write something (shorter!) on that in a week or two. First, though (in the coming days) I'll write a bit more about the Siberian context in which I am serving.
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