The Dismissal consists of those acts of worship that send out people from the assembly to love and serve God and their neighbors in the world. It should retains the celebrative mood of the Eucharist and adds to it the sense of being sent forth. Like any meeting, whether formal or informal, the Dismissal contains acts of departure or going forth. So naturally, public worship, which has a beginning, must also have an ending....

There’s an old adage, typically used by educators, that “external order organizes internal experience.” When it comes to worship, the proper use of order facilitates how a church tells and acts out the story of salvation so that the congregation’s internal experience of being encountered by the story will be maximized. The ancient order of worship, one that is still practiced by liturgical churches today, was a unified four-fold action 1) Preparing to worship; 2) Celebrating the Word along with a response; 3) Celebrating the Lord’s Table along with a response; 4) The dismissal...