10/01/2026
The Chicago Folk Service is a complete musical setting of the communion liturgy, written by Art Gorman. The service contains the full liturgy in a folk music style, including the salutation and response, a song of praise, an alleluia acclamation, the creed, a deacon's prayer, the offertory text "Create in Me," the thanksgiving, the Lord's Prayer, the Lamb of God, the Song of Simeon, and a closing blessing. It was first published by in 1972. It grew out of the folk mass liturgies of the late 1960s in the Roman Catholic church but was written for Lutheran congregations.
Art Gorman wrote the service for use at Grace English Lutheran Church, a small congregation at Belden Avenue and Geneva Terrace in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Grace had been organized in 1882 and had worshiped at that location since 1887. By the early 1970s, under the leadership of Pastor Phil Bigelow, it was a modest congregation with an active social conscience, running youth programs, a phone line for troubled young people, and efforts to shelter the homeless, alongside this weekly folk-style communion service held in its basement.
Grace closed in 1975, and its building now stands converted to residential use, though the church tower still rises over Geneva Terrace as a landmark of the congregation that once worshiped there. According to Mark Roock who led us in this liturgy a number of times, the service came to Christ Lutheran Church by way of Luther Memorial congregation and Rev. Karl Reko.
