Trinitarian, God-centered preaching and worship

Transformative preaching and worship is trinitarian and God-centered, facilitating joy-filled communion with the Father, Son and Spirit through our union with Jesus. Sadly, preaching and worship is often unitarian and person-centered. This is the concern of Michael J. Quicke in "Beware Tuneless Preaching." Following is an excerpt.

Too much contemporary preaching and worship misses out the Trinity. In a provocative analysis, James B. Torrance [in Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace] sharply contrasts what he terms unitarian and trinitarian practices of worship. Of course, orthodox preachers rigorously reject any association with the formal teaching of Unitarianism, that God is one person only, with unacceptable denial of the divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. However, Torrance demonstrates that ironically such preachers may actually practice forms of worship that are Unitarian, because they are closed to Christ’s continuing work and the Holy Spirit. Too much worship is made by human hands for all too human purposes

Much contemporary worship by its human orientation lacks awareness that it should be participating in God’s grace, flowing from the Father, through the Son by the Spirit, and returning by the Holy Spirit through the Son, to the Father. [According to Torrance], human 'unitarian' worship: "has no doctrine of the mediator or sole priesthood of Christ, is human-centered, has no proper doctrine of the Holy Spirit….we sit in the pew watching the minister 'doing his thing' exhorting us 'to do our thing' until we go home thinking we have done our duty for another week." 

If there is no conviction that God enables worship to happen through participation in relationships between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, preachers are likely to opt out of trinitarian language and exhort hearers 'to do their thing.' In some contemporary churches preaching does seem to offer moralizing sermons that concentrate on individual needs - giving good advice instead of Good News.