There is a bit of a debate about mission and liturgy which becomes particularly acute when considering something like ‘seeker services’. The debate revolves around whether worship should be only for the people of God or whether it can be wider. Well, ….
the secret is to design liturgy/worship to enable Christians to honour God and to renew our commitment to God, and to do so in a way that connects with the wider cultural context. If we do that, the oblique result can be that it is worship that ‘makes sense’ to outsiders and which enables them to glimpse the reality of God in their Christian friends and companions.
As the rest of that post points out: if we design worship to draw in outsiders, well, it ceases to be worship and becomes a presentation. But this really does mean, I think, that mission-shaped liturgy is not something we should directly aim for but rather note that if we get other things right it will have that effect. Here’s another reason why:
… we recognise what people bring into worship, including from their cultural formation, and try to help them to ‘speak’ their culture before and with God. This in turn helps the formation of mature Christians who have a ‘vocabulary’ for relating to and understanding God which can resonate in the beyond-church culture.
To speak our cultures before and with God means speaking in all the prayer registers: praise, petition, need, confessing, forgiving and self-oblation. Not to mention lament and celebration, fellowship and reverence ….