Sermon Illustration

Beyond “Experience”

The current phrase "worship experience" merely serves to confuse us. Those who worship with the expectation that the act ought to generate certain experiences for them will undoubtedly have many experiences. But they will probably not be the sorts of experiences that Christian worship offers to those who seek only the face of God through song and prayer, preaching and sacrament.

Liturgists can generate many powerful experiences, but when experience is the aim, this becomes cheap theater at best and manipulation at worst. Both are repulsive substitutes for an encounter with the power of the living God.

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