The first reason for restoring the story sequence of Preparation [Gathering], Word, Table, and Dismissal [Sending] as a pattern for worship is that worship is a meeting between God and his people. Like all other meetings between two people, a certain amount of form is necessary. . . . God has already established the structural ingredients needed in a meeting with him, and we cannot improve on these forms. We simply need to understand what they are and practice them in faith, believing that we really are meeting God in his Word and through his Table.
-Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God’s Mighty Deeds of Salvation, Second Edition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Pub., 1996), 131.