Buchanan: There's a lot to read on the subject of worship, but Marva Dawn's "Keeping God as the Infinite Center of Our Worship," chapter 11 in A Royal "Waste" of Time, is, from my perspective, one of the most thoughtful and helpful. She offers five guidelines, which I pass along with my own editorial observations and amplification.

• The Tradition—don't throw it out before understanding it. And don't cling to it without understanding it. Teach people why we start with praise and move to confession, why sermons come before the offering and not after. Part of what it means to be a Protestant is the commitment to continuing reformation, to on-going response by the church to what's going on around it. Professor Brain Gerrish reminds us that the "inclination to revise theology as a response to what's happening in the world is a part of the theological methodology of both Luther and Calvin." The tradition itself is lively. You don't have to make it relevant. You simply need to be open, imaginative, and responsive to the world and to the Spirit.
  

• Don't sacrifice substance for style. This does not mean, don't use contemporary music at all. Just don't use trite music and simplistic resources that trivialize God and the whole experience. I love the fact that the Fourth Presbyterian Church Morning Choir can do an elegant Vivaldi "Gloria" and close the service with a Dave Brubeck "Amen."
  

• Don't confuse evangelism with worship. Marva Dawn is big on this one. Seeker services are not worship, she reminds us. Worship is directed toward God.
  

• Find good contemporary music. Taizé and Iona are starting points.
  

• Find a way between antiquarianism and faddishness.

I've been standing up in front of a congregation to lead weekly worship for forty-two years. For the past twenty-five or so of those years, I have asked the congregation to pray with me before the sermon: "Startle us, O God, with your truth, and open our hearts and minds to your word."

One of my mentors was the late Joseph Sittler, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago. Sittler was a good Lutheran, an eloquent writer and preacher and lecturer who thought and taught that the theological starting point for all of us is awe—at the mystery, the unknowingness of God—and consequently our own theological modesty. We should never claim to know too much, Sittler taught. He lamented that modern life, modern religion, modern churches, seem to be a conspiracy against awe and mystery. In a treasure of a little book he wrote shortly before he died, Grace Notes and Other Fragments, he said, "Our congregational life is so deeply sunk in monodimensional and totally secularized culture as largely to have lost ear, eye, and heart for a word or deed that asserts a totally different possibility."

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