Meaningful worship

A worshipper attends a worship service. Perhaps the event is for her deeply meaningful. Or conceivably she will leave doubtful as to its point and purpose. Someone, a priest or minister or possibly a team of people, had planned and administered the service of worship presumably with the intention of undertaking some meaningful thing in the world.

What sort of meaning is this which some people construct and in which other people participate which we call a liturgical event? Or, to put the question in a slightly different way, what would a theory of meaning look like which could guide or facilitate the achievement of this kind of meaning? Or, to have yet a third shot at it, is it possible to give some account of the ways in which the meanings of worship are organized and transmitted by those who lead and are appropriated by those who participate in a worship service?

In many respects this question in its multiple versions is my quarry in all that follows. The subject matter, meaning, will lead us soon enough into various kinds of abstraction. But we are also to speak about an urgent practical assignment undertaken weekly (at least) by those who lead public Christian worship, and about a lived experience on the part of those who participate. (If this seems at this early stage to suggest an essential bifurcation between leaders and participants, let me indicate in advance my steady insistence that these are symbiotic engagements.