These days the word “ritual” often carries a negative connotation—and let’s face it, sometimes justifiably. Ceremonies that are long on pomp but short on circumstance tend to be archaic, hollow, and ultimately irrelevant. Still, I think we need to be careful about dismissing ritualism too hastily.

At its most basic level, a ritual is simply a pattern of repeated actions that remind us of, and connect us to, a deeper formative event. Take the Fourth of July, for example. Obviously, the formative event in this case is our nation’s independence. The rituals would be watching a fireworks display, or perhaps, a patriotic parade down Main Street. To cite another example, celebrating the anniversary of your birth is a formative event. The candles, cake, and singing of “Happy Birthday to You” constitute the rituals.

Where problems occur is when the ritual becomes disconnected from the formative event. In other words, the actions we keep repeating no longer remind us of anything, and thus we find ourselves just going through the motions. What was once a powerful experience has become an empty, meaningless ceremony.

That’s one of the complaints I sometimes hear about church. Worship is too routine, too ritualistic. But I would maintain that the problem is not with the rituals per se; the problem is that those rituals no longer evoke, or even stir, anything in us. Simply put, we have lost sight of why we are coming to worship in the first place.

Thomas Long, my preaching professor at seminary, used to compare it to going to the mail box to see if the mail has arrived. Some days, he said, the box will be empty. Other days it is be will filled only with junk mail marked “Dear Resident.” But the reason we keep going back, day after day, is because occasionally we find something very personal, addressed just to us.

He went on to explain, “We may think of going to the mail box as a habit. But it is actually more of a ritual. It is an action that we keep repeating, day in and day out, because we are convinced that, somewhere out there, someone wants to communicate with us.”

I believe that going to church is rooted in the same conviction. To be sure, there will be Sundays when we show up and don’t really get much out of it. We’ll go through the motions, but fail to find anything specifically addressed to us. However, what keeps us coming back, Sunday after Sunday, is our faith that God wants to communicate with us. Indeed, the rituals we perform during worship are all designed to remind us that, if we are trusting and attentive, God is prepared to deliver a very personal word meant just for us!