Renewing Worship

I've been looking at the provisional liturgies in the ELCA's Renewing Worship project. For those of you not in the loop, Augsburg Fortress is preparing a next-generation worship book at the request of the ELCA. Provisional (i.e., sample) materials from the new book have been released periodically for evaluation for over a year now, and a vote on whether to procede with the project to the next step - publishing a hymnal to replace the venerable Lutheran Book of Worship - will take place at the churchwide assembly next summer.
 
I'm pretty impressed with the communion liturgies, by and large. I think the single best feature about them is that each of the two proposed settings includes three unique arrangements of the music - a "traditional," organ based version; a "contemporary" arrangement featuring keyboard, drums, and flute; and a "jazz" version that could use your local jazz quartet, if you have one. This strikes me as practically brilliant.
 
See, I'm pretty sure that in the next five years or so, at least one of my congregations will be moving in the direction of using "contemporary" music in worship. With a resource like this, I can teach them the new liturgy, and we can sing it to the "traditional" arrangement to our hearts' content. When the time comes to try other styles in our worship, it would be possible simply to introduce the new musicians and their talents into our worship, without having to learn a new "contemporary liturgy. The words and tunes are identical - only the accompaniment will have changed!
 
I also think of my home congregation - Faith Lutheran in Hutchinson, MN - and their start-up church, Faith on Grove. The original church still tends toward traditional, liturgical worship, while Faith on Grove has adopted a praise-and-worship style service without much liturgical structure. If the two Faiths were to each learn this liturgy, they would all be able to sing together, and there would be a wonderful spiritual unity in their worship, even though the two congregations worship at different times, in different buildings, and in different musical styles. They would share words and songs, and worshipers from one congregation would immediately feel at home in the worship of the other congregation. In fact, the two congregations could even benefit from once in a while sharing each other's style.
 
There are lots of possibilities here. I hadn't expected to be this enthused about the new hymnal project, but I think it's really shaping up to be a solid, well-thought-out volume. I'm looking forward to the final product!