“We continue with the entrance hymn” is probably the strangest thing that I say on Sunday morning. There are great theological mysteries, and then there is the mystery of why we call this hymn the “entrance” hymn when we’re about five minutes into the worship service. 
The reason for this itself is simple. Like a vestigial tail, the term “entrance hymn” refers to something that we don’t really do in most celebrations of the Lutheran liturgy, namely, leave and come back after the Confession and Absolution. It used to be that Confession and Absolution was not considered a part of the worship service itself. Rather, Confession and Absolution was a prelude or sometimes even a prerequisite to the worship service. This is a hold over from our Roman Catholic roots when one was to go and see the priest in order to confess sins privately before coming to worship. Private confession gave way to the corporate confession of the assembled who wanted to worship. So for those who had not confessed their sins privately ahead of time, there was a simple service of confession and absolution right before the service to get it out of the way.
After the pastor pronounced the absolution and forgiveness, he would depart the altar area for a few minutes, letting everyone else get their seats and get settled. He would then come back in, and the service would begin with something called “the Introit” which was usually a chanted Psalm or other poetic piece of Scripture. Chanting by the pastor gave way to singing by the congregation, and we ended up with the “introit hymn” or “entrance hymn”.
So that’s the reason that we have an entrance hymn, but what is the meaning of it? For this, I will depart from historic Lutheran liturgy and consider the normal liturgy or sequence that you find in most praise & worship formats in American evangelicalism. If you’ve been to one of these gatherings, you may have noticed that the service begins with about 3 songs. The convention about these three songs is that there is an order of tempo – the first song is usually uptempo and exciting and it moves to the third song which is usually more downtempo and contemplative. The idea here is to “call to worship” with the exciting uptempo song and then settle people into a contemplative mood as the service moves to preaching and prayer. The goal is to “en-trance” people (in a good way) into a place where they are ready to hear God’s Word, having worked out the excitement of the moment and moving into the deeper meanings of God’s Word. Likewise, our “entrance” hymn is meant to do that – it is a part of a movement within the service that should have as its goal to excite you (which is maybe why we see our University Lutheran kids dancing a little) and then move you to a place where you have settled and are ready to hear the word.
So the goal of the entrance hymn is simply to get you ready to hear God’s Word. It is there to “en-trance” you into a place where you have put aside your grocery list and the cares of the day and are ready to hear Scripture. It is there to give “entrance” to God’s Word into your heart, removing the bars from the doors of your sinful mind to let Christ in via His Word. It is there to remind you that God is entering you via His Word and Sacrament in just a moment from singing that song. It may sound silly for me to say “we continue with the entrance hymn,” but maybe you’ll find some meaning in it this next Sunday.