styles or community?

One of the discussions around the traps at the moment is about styles of service. There is a desire to see something rather more than "traditional" worship, whatever that means. What worries me is that people see styles as an optional extra, a difference that will enrich their lives somehow.

I think that authentic worship has to arise out of community. One of the reasons our worship is dry is that we have lost much of a sense of being in community in our attempts to maintain dignity, privacy, individualism, a sense of space, however you want to call it.

Worship that emerges naturally out of a community that journeys together has altogether a different flavor. The challenge is how to equip a community to begin to worship in this way when they are known a period of time where much of the work of worship has been kept from them.