Churches pour enormous resources into creating meaningful worship experiences. But what if those experiences don't carry the meaning we intend? Pastor and theologian David Fitch believes a worship experience by itself is not enough in our postmodern culture. Instead he calls us to think beyond sermons and music to create a new framework for understanding worship that may not be new at all.

At our theology pub last month we sat around and conversed on the issue of worship. I put forward the typology of "lecture hall" versus "rock concert" as the primary modes of worship for evangelicals, and I suggested that both were inadequate for forming truthful minds and faithful experience in Christians.

The people at our pub ranged in age from 16 to early 50's. Most seemed to agree that a worship service geared entirely towards a 55 minute sermon seeking to dispense information to Cartesian minds is inadequate for spiritual formative. Less obvious and hotly debated was rock concert-style worship's ...