What Does Worship Do?

Since my last post I've come through a rather nasty cold-and-flu-season episode (not the swine flu, but bad enough in its own right), and then turned my attention to William Dyrness's book A Primer on Christian Worship. This is a deceptively short book that condenses a great deal and makes it somewhat more accessible to a lay audience. In that sense, I suppose the name "Primer" fits, but it's a stretch.

I have much to think about as I begin the last chapter (including a number of criticisms that I'll save for another time), and I'm only going to mention one point in this post since the last three were longer than I'm comfortable with. The question at hand is in the title of this post, and it's not as easy to answer as you may think. Does (corporate) worship simply provide an opportunity for us to praise God and listen to the Word preached? Or is there something more? Dyrness, along with much of the Christian tradition, believes that worship should transform us in the presence of God as we rehearse the story of redemption. I'll quote a chunk:

At the end of the day, worship has a single role to play in the lives of believers: to retell, re-present, and thus refresh the story of God's love and call. The great dramatic climax pictured in Revelation is the scene in which people of every tongue and nation bow before the Lamb that was slain (Rev 7:9) Everything in worship is subordinated to this end and leads to this goal. Similarly, everything we do in worship, our prayers, and our response in faith and devotion has a single goal: to allow us to indwell this story and make it our own. In other words, these practices are effective when they encourage and sustain the relationships with God, creation, and each other that the Gospel makes possible. Likewise, we, nourished and renewed by the narrative of worship, have a single calling: to tell and live out this great story, to remind ourselves and those around us again and again that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

I am challenged and moved by this vision of worship as a corporate activity that enlivens the gospel to us, nourishes and strengthens us in Christ's presence by the Spirit's power, and sends us into the world as freshly gospelled people of God, energized by his love and forgiveness and bearing that message into the darkness. Is this what worship is supposed to do? As a descendent of the revivalist side of the Western evangelical heritage, I am more than a little disturbed by the realization that the vast majority of Christian history is basically on Dyrness's side here. I'm not sure what to do with that. But I'm thinking...