Meyers makes an excellent observation in his discussion of worship as experience. Modern gatherings on the Lord’s Day (none dare call it that anymore) have become nothing more than “religious sentimentalism” (The Lord’s Service, p.28). Parishioners enter the sanctuary (none dare call it that anymore) expecting to feel, sense and imagine a gentle Jesus. As Meyers observes: “It is almost as if the greatest achievement of corporate worship is to engineer within the worshipers some kind of praise-induced emotional or psychological ecstasy”(28). Thus, this experience becomes merely internal. This gnosticizing of worship is contrary to the many texts that call upon us to offer praise, to prostrate, to kneel, to bring gifts and to sing. Meyers concludes by noting that “worship is evaluated not according to the affect it might have on worshipers, but whether it is ‘acceptable’ to God or not.”
