The Reformation of Worship

Extract

There are signs in nearly all the Christian communions of the Western world today of restlessness and dissatisfaction with our inherited patterns of public worship. This is indicated by the numerous experiments that are being made and by the movements for liturgical reform that are active in many denominations. A great variety of motives lies behind these movements for reform; but in general it might be said that we are conscious of living in a world that has changed more fundamentally in the last fifty years than in any remotely comparable period of the past, and feel that these changes, while not affecting the essence of Christian worship, must surely be reflected in its forms. This is felt by convinced and instructed Christians who have a vision of what worship might be as the expression of our highest and holiest activity and are disappointed at its meagre realisation in the normal practice of their church: it is felt even more by the semi-convinced who are genuinely seeking to know and experience more of what we mean by worship, and who find our services unilluminating and uninspiring. It is certainly not ill-will, and may not even be indifference, that keeps multitudes of potential worshippers from entering our churches. The blight that seems to afflict public worship in our day might be characterised in one word—irrelevance.

Now the charge of irrelevance is not to be disposed of by a series of sermons on the relevance of the Christian faith and of Christian worship.