“The solution to finding more care and healing in worship is to look more closely at the liturgy and to learn to see it as the time and location for providing the most personalized pastoral care. That’s right! Worshipers should be able to expect that the liturgy has been planned with needy folks like them in mind and is being led by folks who know human need, care deeply, and are skilled in knowing how to address those needs.”
—Howard Vanderwell, “What is Liturgy For?” © June 2018, ReformedWorship.org, CC BY-NC-SA.
Cultural relevance is good. Excellence is good. God and our community are worthy of both. But those are lesser things that can’t become ultimate things. It’s not about one dominant, charismatic voice; it’s about a community responding to God’s grace with one voice.
Because that blood in the tank, the blood nourishing the church, didn’t really come from the worship leaders; it doesn’t come from the Pastor, the elders or the deacons. We are only ever graced to be conduits.
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