Worship

“The phrase worship experience miss[es] the point. Worship, in the ancient tradition [of the Church], was not thought of as an experience at all; it was an act. Or, if there was an experience, that part of it was a mere corollary to the main point. [Christians] come together to make the act of worship. They [have] come to do something, not to get something. They [do] not come to a meeting... the worship of the Church... is not a meeting or a program to which we come only to receive something. It is an act, to which we come as participants, indeed as celebrants, if the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers means anything.

...The worship of the Church is an act—a most ancient and noble mystery—and almost nothing is gained by endlessly updating it, streamlining it, personalizing it, and altering it. The ‘ministers of worship’ retained on the staffs of big churches have their work already cut out for them if they only knew it. Worship is not something like an automotive engine or a computer, which can be perpetually improved upon. Like marriage and family, it stands at the center of the carousel of life, if we will only return to the center and find it.”

~Thomas Howard