To me the implications of this etymology for the worshiping public are vast: signals and impressions that come at us every day from nearly every angle tell us that we are to consume passively and to let the "experts" do it, and we apply this to our worship-lives as well.
And so at worship, most churchgoers passively consume:
• sermons preached by speakers with theology degrees (at least but by no means limited to one)...
• classical music performed by often-overeducated technicians schooled (and schooled, and schooled... because unless you get in with a significant orchestra, what do you do with a [fill-in-the-blank]-performance degree except go back to school?) in the techniques of a long line of European masters, mostly male, mostly white, mostly dead, mostly connected to the ruling class...
• liturgical dance performances viewed from the pews...
• choral anthems performed by the choir, which in many congregations is a good-singers' ghetto to which its members have unwittingly fled, leaving the "non-singers" to fend for themselves in the pews, surrounded by other "non-singers" who, at hymn-time (if there is a hymn-time) lack the confidence to make a peep but hope desperately for helpful peeps from their neighbors...
Most worship is not public service; it's a series of concerts. Concerts, of course, have important functions, but they are not the work of more than a very few people.
As a Neo-Pagan (hereinafter "Pagan"), I know that this performer-consumer division exists in non-church worshiping communities as well. As an Earth-centered religionist whose life revolves around music, I am particularly aware that since 1970 or so, a wealth of "Pagan music" has presented itself on the scene. An important portion of that music is designed to teach and affirm ideas and ideals important to Pagan religious theory and practice, and much of that portion is useful in ritual.
But Paganism has been affected powerfully by the communities of (note: Western European) Medieval and Renaissance re-enactors and/or sci-fi/historical fantasy readers, who refer often to a bardic tradition. Bards, historically, have been bearers of news, tradition, and verbal and vocal arts, but they have usually been solitary practitioners--the emphasis has been on performance, not on teaching and fostering participation. And so it is that many of Paganism's best known musicians have had this bardic bent, and even Bardic Circles, round-robin-type events that encourage "participation," tend to focus more on individual contributions of all participants rather than on teaching songs and poems so well that all participants will know them well enough to use and teach when they leave the circle.
If Paganism is self-consciously about self-empowerment, a proposition that I discuss in more detail on my "self-healing" page, then Pagans need to be equipping each other with the tools of our trade as intentionally ritualistic people.
The congregational tradition (that still vibrates particularly vividly within the Black church) has much to teach Pagans as well as Christians about the corporate work of liturgy and worship.
I provide links here to foundational members of Sweet Honey in the Rock Bernice Johnson Reagon and Ysaye Maria Barnwell, who speak and teach powerfully out of the Black church tradition. I also wish to link you to my colleague Nick Page, who carries on vital principles of congregational-singing tradition in urban and suburban settings in New England, and to my good friend Jerry Rockwell, referenced elsewhere on this web site, who generously included me in the process of formulating his web page about expanding the horizons of music educators to encourage innovation; innovation is at the heart of abandoning the belief that the arts are for those talented others and not for untalented me.
They say in the West that they say in Zimbabwe, "If you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing." And if you can dance and sing, you can worship with your body as well as your spirit. So may it be.