A Mainline Protestant Concern
Worship renewal is a corrective to the individualism of much Protestant worship. The liturgical movement is restoring the corporate nature of worship as well as the balance of Word and Table.
The liturgical movement addresses itself wholeheartedly to the problem of exaggerated individualism which has tended in the past two hundred years to reduce many Protestant churches to little more than private devotional assemblies. Its answer to pietism, rationalism, and liberalism is an attempt to restore the supernatural authority of revelation and the truly divine-human character of worship.
If leaders of renewal work to restore historical forms of worship, this is not because they derive some quaint delight in dabbling with antiquities. Rather, they see such liturgies as proclaiming the ancient faith in a truly magnificent manner. These liturgies proclaim that the worshiper is not an isolated soul in the sea of the saved, but an integral part of a community that witnesses to its faith and worships its God as a family. If the liturgical movement has an apostolic insistence to it, it is this: it wants to reclaim the disassociated Christian and put him or her squarely where the worshiper belongs: in the corporate Christian community.
If preaching has been overemphasized, at times to a sentimental extreme, there should be an attempt through liturgy to bring preaching within bounds and restore a proper balance to worship. Hence the many attempts to restore the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to the focal point of worship. The gospel is to be proclaimed in every worship service; nevertheless, the gospel can be proclaimed by sacrament as well as by Word. Churches are returning to the conviction that the ideal Christian service is one that contains both elements; thus the message and deed of the redemptive act of God in Christ are not only proclaimed by word of mouth but are demonstrated before the eyes of the faithful through the sacramental action. Liturgists in all traditions are calling for more frequent celebrations of the Eucharist.
In general, the liturgical renewal, like all movements, is toward something. It is toward the corporate in worship, the sacramental in worship, and theological balance in worship. The movement in its best form maintains that Christianity is not a personal, private affair between the individual and God. Nor is the church conceived as a collection of individuals who happen to have a taste for religion. It sees Christianity and the church rather as a grand, corporate adventure inaugurated by the God-Man himself to league all mankind in intimate union with himself. Liturgical Christians are not people who live their lives in isolation. They look upon themselves as a family, true members of Christ, integral parts of his body, people lifted to a new level of creation where their lives must reflect in work and worship the belief of their unique containment in Christ. Liturgical Christians live as part of Christ's body and realize that they must, therefore, be in their portion what Christ is and was. Thus it is understandable why the liturgical Christian makes the Eucharist, the cause and expression of unity in Christ, an important part of his or her worship.