Liturgical Novelty

In Letters To Malcolm, CS Lewis famously challenged the lust for liturgical novelty. The best worship is the worship we don’t notice, because if we don’t notice it, we also don’t notice ourselves:

“Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value. And they don’t go to church to be entertained. They go to use the service, or, if you prefer, to enact it. Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best — if you like, it ‘works’ best — when, through long familiarity, we don’t have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God. But every novelty prevents this. It fixes our attention on the service itself; and thinking about the worship is a different thing from worshipping.”

Worship is for worshiping God. Only Pharisees delight in watching themselves worship God.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/evangelicalpulpit/2015/11/divine-liturgist-human-liturgies/