If we are waiting on a feeling for worship to occur, then it may never occur. Worship contingent on a musical experience that just stirs the emotions may not be worship, but instead nostalgia or novelty.

When congregations gather for worship they may be hooked on a feeling stirred by nostalgia or novelty instead of spirit and truth worship. So if those feelings are not elicited because they don’t know or don’t particularly like the songs, they can even leave the worship service believing that worship couldn’t and didn’t occur.

It doesn’t matter how good our worship is in here; it is still incomplete until it also includes how we treat our neighbors out there.

If we create worship just to accommodate our needs, then the god we worship looks a lot like us.

Worship leaders and the songs they sing can’t light a fire in us or usher us into the presence of God; the death and resurrection of Jesus already has.

If idolatry is extreme devotion to anyone or anything that isn’t God, then replacing the cross with our mothers, fathers, graduates, or the flag as the primary symbol of our worship on any given Sunday could cause us to stray into idol territory. God’s story and our response to that story transcends cultural and denominational calendars.

Why couldn’t we celebrate Mother’s Day, Graduation Sunday, and Memorial Day in the same seasons as Ascension Day and Pentecost? Without ignoring one or the other, it is possible to converge holidays significant to our civic and denominational calendars with those Christian holidays significant to the kingdom.

By limiting Scripture to a single reading prior to the pastoral exhortation, we may be unwittingly implying that we are placing a higher level of credibility in the exhortation than in the Word itself. It may then convey a lack of trust in the very Word professed to be foundational to our faith, doctrines, and practices. If Scripture can’t stand on its own, then we can’t possibly prop it up with our own words.

Scripture must be foundational to our songs, sermons, prayers, verbal transitions, and even ministry announcements. It must be frequently, variously, generationally, and culturally read and allowed to stand on its own. When that occurs, our congregations will leave in-here worship, with the text in their hearts and on their lips, for nonstop worship out there.