Excerpt from The Duke Divinity School Review, Vol. 43: Winter, 1978

Just a decade ago some Presbyterian executives in planning manuals for each of the stated committees of the Session (ruling board) of each congregation, expressed strong feeling that little prescription should be offered to the worship committees of each parish. How a congregation worships (they reasoned) should be left to the desires of the minister and the worship committee; as if no tradition in worship were more sacrosanct than a specific tradition.

Although renewed interest over the past century in the historic liturgies of several Protestant denominations has produced denominationally approved service books with designated congregational participation, such established orders, litanies and prayers enjoy little popularity in free churches today. Offices of Worship and Music have had difficulty in getting started or supported in several such denominations because the need remains low on the list of denominational priorities. Until quite recently ministers and congregations simply have not felt the need to question what they have been used to doing on Sunday morning, nor have they sensed much desire within themselves to be informed and enlivened by their liturgical heritage.

For all the liturgical experimentation over the past decade, the average Protestant parishioner still comes to worship expecting the sermon to be the main event. Calls to worship, prayers, responses and readings serve mainly for such worshipers as preliminaries that lead to the sermon. In my first pastorate a middle-aged woman each Sunday purposely arrived at worship a half hour late. She asserted that she had no intention of putting up with all that fol-de-rol before the sermon. Since the initial Puritan influence on American worship three hundred years ago the sermon has dominated most Protestant worship,24 creating in congregations the assumption that worship is mainly a matter Of sitting and listening. Some communions betray this bias by calling the sanctuary the auditorium, namely a place of hearing. As James White points out, The question we have been accustomed to hear from someone who missed church was, 'what did he say?' 25 indicating how closely identified free church worship has become with the sermon. With some Protestants attending worship is tantamount to going to preaching.

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