We also veil all statuary, crosses, our beautiful needle-point altar rail kneelers, and such in purple during the entire season

I love this. I'm a fairly recent convert, and the first time I saw the Lenten veiled statuary, it knocked me out. In a good way. I always delight in thinking, well, Lutherans would never do this. (I know someone will now post a photo of Lutherans veiling something)

Well, Reval -
There are, believe it or not, Lutherans who not only would, but do do this. They are relatively scarce, but they do exist. Some, here and there, take very seriously their identity as 'reformed Catholics', and can be quite as high church as Anglicans, even almost as Catholic as Anglo-Catholics. (Of course ritualistic 'high church' and profoundly 'Anglo-Catholic' are two quite distinct categories.)

In my years of service with the Lutherans I always managed, somehow, to meet the ones who believed in transubstantiation, wore eucharistic vestments at 'mass', loved incense, called their pastors 'father', prayed for the dead, and asked the intercession of the BVM and other saints.

It has been reported that some Lutherans, eyeing the Ordinariates, would wish to convert and have a Lutheran rite or use. This is not going to happen. The Lutherans have not even kept the pretense of orders.

It is worthy of note, though, that historic Lutheran liturgies in some respects retained more faithfully than the BCP itself the shape of the mass, particularly with regard to the placement of Gloria and other details. Of course, unlike the BCP, any whiff of transubsantiation and the real, objective, presence of Christ in the eucharistic species has been systematically rejected. Most of them don't even have the most remote vestige of a eucharistic prayer, but merely recite the Words of Institution.

(I always find it a curious irony that some Lutherans as well as many others, will insist that every word, including a literal six-day creation, of the Bible is literally true and that, as a whole it is inerrant - yet, they conveniently overlook the Mosaic dietary laws, and when it comes to 'this IS my body' and 'this IS my blood' they cough and sputter, dissemble and fall all over themselves to explain it away.)

Most people (especially Lutherans themselves!) are unaware that Luther quite strongly favoured keeping the (highly edited) mass in Latin and only formulated his Deutsches Messe at the insistent behest of some his his 'more liberal' colleagues.

We sing a Latin chant Ordinary, Lenten hymns, and always have communion chants - a year-round thing. The organ is used only to accompany singing, except for "pink" Sunday when I can play appropriate pieces. Still, no preludes or postludes and the organ trumpets are silent until Holy Thursday.

At Walsingham we sing the Litany in procession instead of an Entrance Hymn on alternate Sundays. You might look into something like that.

Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by singing the Litany?

Sometimes, instead of an opening "hymn", I'd use more of a prose or responsory, i.e. Attende Domine or Parce Domine. As for the litanies, the BCP/DWTM litany surpasses most of what you can find these days online in the popular devotion sections.

If you can, do something a capella (some people find no accompaniment to be penitential, I sometimes disagree, but just throwing it out there.) I believe that the church teaches the simpler the better in penitential seasons, or is that just me?

Thanks MJO - - this is why I love hanging around here!

Matthewj, the pastor wanted to use SCG because I could play it on the organ and the congregation could sing along.

The chants I linked to above have accompaniments and are intended to have congregational participation. For one singer and a congregation and organ, I would definitely consider them far superior to the SCG - which could be nice once you get an SATB choir in place.

RR's Simple Choral and his other, Choral Graduals, are intended for SATB realization pure and simple. The SCG formulae are evocative only of eastern homophony, not western strophic hymnody with a harmonized melody at its core.
MJM, as per usual, is absolutely right, chanted propers (whether LC/SEG/Weber et al) are more suited towards monophonic use.

I think that only once or twice in my life have I seen 'rose' vestments that were actually rose - and they were absolutely, literally breathtakingly gorgeous.
By what twisted, saccharin taste and clouded maudlin judgment did we ever end up almost universally with pink (or, not infrequently, salmon) instead of rose?
It really irks me that even at Walsingham our 'rose' vestments are a rather awful (awful, as in 'hideous') shade of salmon.

God bless your efforts!
From what you say, you are fortunate to have the pastor that you do.
What he has required of you is certainly not by any means onerous or reprehensible.
There are some who would be delirious if their pastor would 'make them' sing from the SCG rather than the demeaning refuse that is required of them.

Maybe, in time, your pastor will, since he obviously has a degree of musical decency, become more open to your more advanced ideas.

Be thankful for what is being asked of you. It could be far, far, worse!

The Litany is one of the few things I often miss from the Lutheran Book of Worship (with WIE SCHÖN LEUCHTET and Vexilla Regis).