New Book of Worship Coming Soon

"Evangelical Lutheran Worship" is the name of the ELCA's new service book and hymnal. At its last meeting, the Church Council voted to acquire the new "red book." The order has been placed, and we should be receiving shipment in the middle of October. Donations will be accepted to pay for individual copies-more information to come.

Sonshine Choir Blog

Mrs. Beal has started a blog for the Sonshine Choir, which is our younger children's choir. http://www.sonshinechoir.blogspot.com The Sonshine Choir will start rehearsals on Sunday, September 17 at 9:00 AM.

Chancel Choir begins practice for the season on Thursday, August 31, at 7:00 PM. We look forward to the opportunity to sing excellent music and the comaraderie. New members are welcome! The Choir will resume singing at the 10:45 AM Sunday services on Sept. 10.

This week we welcome Wilma Meckstroth, organist emeritus, at the piano for a piano organ duet with our organist Rachel Spry. They will play Pachelbel Canon, arranged by Bradley & Lindberg, during the prelude.

The Worship Committee met this morning, and we discussed starting a blog about worship at LCOS and our music program. For those of you who don't know our church, the Lutheran Church of Our Savior is located in Oakwood (Dayton), Ohio, and is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We are a medium-sized congregation, with an average attendance of about 200 people at worship each weekend. If you want to read more about our church, visit www.oursaviordayton.org

The main topic of the meeting this morning was to discuss the new hymnal "Evangelical Lutheran Worship," which is being released in October. Our organist Rachel and another committee member attended a workshop at Trinity Seminary last week at which representatives from Augsburg Fortress presented this new hymnal. They were both favorably impressed with the new "red book" (yes, it's red), so the committee has decided to recommend to church council that the congregation purchase the new hymnal. If they agree, we'll pre-order copies now, which will save $2.50 per copy. The price if you order now is $17.50. We're recommending to the council that we solicit donations from members of the congregation to buy copies. Name plates will be put inside of donated copies with the name of the donor and the name(s) of people in whose memory the donation is made. Shipping is supposed to take place in October.

We'll probably start using the new hymnal either on Reformation Sunday or the first Sunday of Advent. One of the settings of the Communion service in the new hymnal uses the same music as setting II in the LBW, and we'll probably use that setting at first. For more information about the new hymnal, visit the web site for Renewing Worship.

One of the other things that we discussed at the meeting this morning was the flowers that are on the altar. The cost for each vase has been $25 for quite some time. Of course, $25 today isn't worth what $25 was worth a while ago, and the florist has had to adjust the size and type of flowers over time accordingly. Because of this, we think it's time to increase the amount spent on the flowers, and decided to change at the beginning of 2007 to $30 per vase.

The new school year is approaching rapidly, and the choir directors are gearing up for a new season. We go back to our fall schedule of two services on Sunday mornings at 8:15 AM and 10:30 AM beginning on September 10. The first rehearsal of the Chancel Choir is Thursday, August 31 at 7:00 PM. I'll let the choir directors tell you more.