These days the word “ritual” often carries a negative connotation—and sometimes justifiably. We have all experienced our share of ceremonies that were long on pomp and short on circumstance, and it is understandable that we find them tiresome and hollow. However, we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water, because in some respects, I believe that we are becoming a ritually impoverished people.

At its most basic level, a ritual is a pattern of repeated actions, which remind us of, and connect us to, a deeper formative event. Consider the Fourth of July, for example. The formative event is our nation’s independence … the rituals attached to it are the backyard barbecue, the evening’s fireworks, and perhaps a parade down Main Street. To use another example, celebrating our birth is a formative event … the candles, the cake, and singing “Happy Birthday to You” constitute the rituals.

The danger with rituals is that over time they become disconnected from the formative event. In other words, the actions that we keep repeating no longer remind us of anything, and thus they become empty, meaningless ceremonies. On the other hand, if we have no rituals, then we have no way of reliving that formative experience.

The knock that I often hear against the church is that we are too ritualistic. But I would maintain that the problem is not with the rituals per se; the problem is that those practices no longer evoke, or even stir, our corporate memory.

Thomas Long, my preaching professor at seminary, used to tell our class that the sermon is like going to the mailbox to see if any mail has come. Some days the box is empty. Other days the box is filled with junk mail and mass-circulation flyers marked “Dear Occupant.” But we keep going back, day after day, because occasionally we find something addressed to us, something very personal with our own name written on the envelope.

Going to that mailbox, said my professor, is more than just a habit. It is a ritual, based on the formative experience that, somewhere out there, someone wishes to communicate with me.

I believe that going to church is based on the same thing. To be sure, there will be Sundays when the box is empty, or filled with generic, one-size-fits-all messages. However, what keeps us coming back, week after week, is the faith that God wants to tell us something. And if we are patient and trusting, then eventually we will discover a very personal word meant just for us.