Misplaced Priority In Worship

In many liturgical congregations, the church is viewed as an organization that exists for the liturgy. This author, writing from the perspective of the Orthodox tradition, offers a reminder that worship does not exist for its own sake, but as an expression of the reality of the church in relation to the world. His insights are useful to Christians of other traditions. Today's liturgical crisis consists, first of all, in the mistaken concept of the function and place of worship in the church, in the profound metamorphosis in the understanding of worship in the mind of the church. Let us emphasize the fact that we are speaking here about something much more important than the misunderstanding of the texts, ceremonies, and language of divine service. We are speaking here about the whole approach to worship and its "experience. " Worship-its structure, form, and content-remain what they were before and essentially what they have always been. In this sense it is right to speak of Orthodo…