As the Dean of the Chapel at Wartburg Theological Seminary (Dubuque, IA), I am the primary steward of our community’s life around word and sacrament. Wartburg is one of the last remaining ELCA seminaries that still roots its communal life in daily chapel services. This is a long-standing tradition that continues to shape and form our graduates for service in churches that are also rooted in word and sacrament.
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Wartburg Theological Seminary has a legacy of faithful formation. For over 170 years the school has focused its attention on preparing leaders for ministry in the church. Things have not remained entrenched in tradition, however. The seminary has grown and evolved with the changing needs of the church from generation to generation. This includes:
Wartburg considers itself to be a “worship-centered community of critical theological reflection where learning leads to mission and mission informs learning” (from the mission statement of the seminary). Keeping worship at the center has included a robust program of ministry in the Loehe Chapel that includes services five days a week during the academic semesters. Each day brings something new, with a variety of styles and services planned by our community. Some of these services include:
Student participation is fundamental to worship in Loehe Chapel. As a worship-centered community, Wartburg invites students into the heart of its life together through daily chapel worship. Students actively participate in planning and leading services, preaching, presiding, offering music, and shaping liturgy, alongside faculty and staff. Gathered in word and sacrament, our community is formed, renewed, and sent for lives of service in the church and the world.
Daily chapel services with a population that is both residential and distributed create the need for a sturdy (yet flexible) system to organize our worship life. The rota (a schedule or list that outlines the order in which individuals take turns performing duties) is the guiding document of our seminary worship. It outlines dates, commemorations, observances, preachers, presiders, and lectionary texts to facilitate our collaborative planning process.
When I began as Dean of the Chapel in August 2024, the Revised Common Lectionary Expanded Daily Readings had just been published two months prior. As I prepared for the Fall 2024 semester, I wanted to adopt this new resource in guiding our prescribed scripture lessons. The beginning of a tenure was a natural time to make a change such as this. The chapel had previously followed the Daily Lectionary in its prior version (as found in Evangelical Lutheran Worship pg. 1121).
We made the change to the Expanded Daily Readings in the Fall of 2024 and have now completed two academic years with it as the source of our daily pericopes. Daily readings support the centrality of Sunday worship in an assembly. Texts on Thursday and Friday look forward in anticipation of Sunday’s texts. Texts on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday look back in reflection on the previous Sunday’s texts. This flowing arc allows the daily readings to lead us up to and down from the principal occasion of Sunday and the RCL texts heard then.
The Expanded Daily Readings were easy and natural to integrate into our chapel planning. The printed resource transferred into our rota document and has guided our planning. The addition of a daily gospel reading has been a welcome change. This updated version offers four scripture selections for each day, in a format like the RCL (Hebrew Bible, Psalm, Epistle, Gospel). The option of more scripture for each day has been helpful in keeping the word central to our planning.
Overall, the Revised Common Lectionary Expanded Daily Readings provides these positive offerings:
We have been impressed with the inclusion of this resource into our seminary’s worshiping community and look forward to following its guidance for a third year and beyond!