Because Advent is the church's holy season of preparation for momentous events, I chose the four Sundays of last Advent to prepare myself personally for concord with members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in their church that may move closer to our own. As a person in the pew, theologically challenged but worship wise, I wanted to experience the likenesses and differences in our Sabbath.

There are two ELCA churches in my Nebraska town of 25,000, plus a campus Lutheran chapel, also ELCA. I visited the churches both on Saturday evening and for Sunday's major celebration. Motivating me was our annual diocesan council in November, when we reflected on the Concordat of Agreement with ELCA Bishop Jessen of Nebraska, our preacher and banquet guest. Motivating me, too, was a plaintive call from Montana, from a devout Lutheran Army colonel: "It's a clergy thing, isn't it? ... just sprung on the people," he said. "We had a local Episcopal priest try to help us. But if you can explain it, let me know."

No, Col. Upshaw, I cannot lay all your doubts to rest, nor mine. But I can reassure you of what you already know from your great war: I have met the enemy, and yes, they is us.

Both ELCA congregations warmly welcomed me. (It impressed them that I walked to share their table: 20 minutes to one, 35 minutes to the other, in December's 10-degree weather.) People who recognized me were curious, so I explained my mission. For many, it was remarkable news.

Not for the Rev. John Gosswein, pastor of Family of Christ Church. Subsequently, to my rector, he said, "If your people start visiting my church, I've got to take this more seriously." Because his church is small, I was more at home. My St. Luke's is huge, but Sunday's souls number 100. We have just moved our altar from the wall; his is almost in the round. There were no kneelers. The season was recognized: a large Advent wreath on a floor stand; an Advent folder for each family to take, full of well-chosen Advent activities involving children; Pastor Gosswein himself in a plaid clerical shirt, hand-crafted by his wife, for St. Andrew's Day!

Throughout his sermon and his celebration, he was also signing for the hearing-impaired in his front row. We passed the peace most cheerfully. His intercessions included our evening prayer, "Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep, this night ..." (After this 6 p.m. Saturday service, he told me he had found the prayer in our prayer book left at the hospital from our televised Office.) His call to open communion stirred me: "All baptized who truly believe that this is the Body and the Blood ..."

But the words of consecration went by so briefly as to seem perfunctory. Passages of responsive readings - the call to worship, the communion liturgy - sounded prosy and long-winded. The rhythms are all wrong, I thought. Episcopalians in the pew deliver nearly a choral reading: all the commas, all the caesuras, all the phrases precisely timed.

The rhythm of the church year was broken for one by the town's showcase First Lutheran. It's Fourth Advent. I've worshiped at 8 a.m. in a stripped church, heard a gravely rectorial homily on Mary's multiple names and her place in the divine plan. Now it's 11 a.m., in a church glittering with Christmas finery festooned everywhere. "It's not what Pastor wanted, when he came," confides my pew-mate. "But tradition over-ruled him." It's not Communion Sunday; that's only the first Sunday. The proper liturgical colors (blue); hundreds of people, splendid bell-choirs, all Christmas carols throughout (including "We Three Kings"). The sermon on Mary as "a poor peasant girl" in her namelessness, the emphasis on hopelessness. "What does that have to do with you and me today?" I walk home troubled. That army of God marches to a different drummer.

For a person in the pew, it is untroubling to consider the interchangeability of clergy. Clergy are the pawns on the chessboard, moveable, dispensable. Bishop-pieces, who move in a straight line - the historic episcopate? - are more important. I know enough to have concerns about bishops.

It comes down again to discomfort over rites, ceremonies, cadences and rhythms. You're interrupting my Anglican rhythms again, like 1967, like 1974, like 1979. I'm pew-struck.

I will trust that familiarity breeds comfort. The people, they is us. Take off that accent speakers are placing on "dat," and move it to "concord." I can learn to praise God "in a new song."

My Orthodox friends sing lustily "Amazing Grace" at the end of their Greek-and-Arabic Divine Liturgy. Given time I too can sing how Feste is my God in Luther's own burg. o