In contemporary Evangelical worship there seem to be two major streams: the intellectual and the ecstatic. The intellectual stream discloses God by providing a correct understanding of him. The ecstatic stream discloses God by feeling. The intellectual stream says too much about God; the ecstatic stream feels God too much. Both streams bypass faith, the true nature of which contradicts our experience rather than confirms it. Faith is not accepting true statements about God; nor is faith feeling God's presence. Faith affirms a God I cannot understand and affirms a God I cannot feel. The great loss in both streams is the sense of mystery and awe. If I understand God there is no mystery remaining. If I feel God there is no mystery remaining. The only mystery left is to seek more and more understanding and to seek to feel more and more. Both streams, in attempting to make God immediate to either our understanding or our feelings, loses God, who in truth is not understandable nor feelable. What we understand is a construct of our minds and what we feel are our emotions. Neither offer true transformation because in neither have we moved outside of ourselves. As a result, lives following the worship experience continue to be shaped by the culture which is experienced outside the sphere of worship, no matter how "wonderful' the worship experience may have been.

That which is said about God in worship and that which is experienced must leave room for that which cannot be said and that which cannot be experienced. It is this sense of "otherness" which will stay with us outside the doors.