1) A good liturgy keeps thoughts focused.
This is true in two senses. First, it forces you as a member of the
congregation to participate, and that helps to prevent your own personal
thoughts from wandering during the service. Second, it prevents the people
running the service from taking all the time up with their interests that particular week. Some of their interests or
theological or practical preoccupations might be good, but it’s more important
to be sure that the basics are included -- e.g. thanksgiving, creedal
statements, confession of sins, and the like.
2)
A good liturgy takes you out of yourself. It’s very important to have private
prayers about our own concerns, but a good liturgy gives us the “other” part of
prayer, the part where we focus on God and on the timeless truths, not just on
our daily worries, and where we pray in the physical company of other
Christians.
3)
A good liturgy teaches important doctrinal truths.
4)
A good liturgy has the value that all great and beautiful literature has -- a
value in itself, apart from practical uses.
5)
The particular beauty of a good liturgy consists, in part, of its being
memorable. If we get used to it to the point that it is memorized, it will come
back to our minds at other times when we need to be reminded of things. In this
respect, knowing a good liturgy has the same effect that Scripture memorization
has.
6)
A good liturgy reminds us of the Communion of Saints by causing us to
participate in it actively. The use of a traditional liturgy means that these very words have been said by
other Christians in all sorts of circumstances for hundreds of years.
7) The words of the Anglican liturgy are like old coins or beautiful antique furniture. They have passed through many hands and seen many things. But because these are words, they have a meaning, and other Christians have used them to express that meaning for hundreds of years. We enact our unity with those Christians in the Body of Christ when we use those same words in our prayers, our praises, and our confession of sins to the one Lord we all worship.