A recent meeting of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers of Greensboro College turned to a discussion of worship liturgy and forms of worship. Members of the Council talked about the comments of visitors who were looking for "blended worship experiences". One member of the Executive Committee noted, "These people want worship services which reflect the integrity of the United Methodist Church, with teaching sermons and a message for today."

John Wesley's legacy to the modern worshipping Methodist community consists of the principles that he established and the types of services he described, not in the forms he used. For example, he insisted on only two hymns in a preaching service, and would have wondered why modern Methodists sit in fidgety silence waiting for their turn to move to the communion rail when they could be singing their way through the 166 hymns provided for just that purpose.

For John Wesley The Book of Common Prayer was only just a bit less inspired than the Bible. Wesley said, " I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England." His own writings are laced with quotations and allusions from the Common Prayer. He was reluctant to separate evangelism from liturgy, or from the sacramental life of the church, or from the social revolution.

Wesley wanted to deepen the fellowship and increase the joy for Methodist societies, bands, and classes. For Wesley, the New Testament knew nothing of solitary religion. His church structures and worship forms involved the church as a community worshipping together in order to better serve together. Worship is always corporate. When we engage in worship on our own, we are in fact worshipping with the whole Church; we bring into play the thoughts and words of other Christians; we remember their concerns and we draw on their experience. Whether alone or with others we are responding with all Christian people to the love of God in Christ, brought home to us in the reading and preaching of the Bible, the prayers and the sacraments.

No set of liturgical texts is beyond adaptation and revision, and such a process is a constant necessity in the life of the church. However, there is value in worshipping with a set form of service and with the use of words which Christians have valued for ages. There is also value in spontaneous worship. There is little value in using words that do not relate to the present situation.

Worship begins with God's offering to us. It is first the celebration of God's love to us, not the presentation of our offering to God. Worship is then, and only then, about the offering and transformation of ourselves. Worship has a twofold intention: first, our adoration of God, and second, our transformation by the grace and power of God. Worship is prior to mission; yet, mission is the natural, even inevitable consequence of worship.