Worship services for many are a morose experience. Worship is the sublime and awesome key to everything the church does. The mission of the early church was the fruit of worship. We too cannot meet the world until we have met God. According to the often-quoted words of William Temple, to worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.
Worship is a contraction of the old English word 'worth-ship'.
It's recognizing that which is worth most, in the ultimate sense. It's 'to glorify God and enjoy him forever'. Worship is the appropriate response to the God who gives everything life, to the Holy One, who inhabits eternity, to the King of kings and Lord of lords, who is God our Saviour. Saint Benedict founded an order with the motto 'laborare est orare', 'to work is to pray'. Worship is both individual and corporate, done both in 'the secret place' and in the redeemed community.