Worship as Offering

How might we help our people worship, not only enter into worship, but bring their worship? Yes, we live in a time when people expect to be entertained and amused, whether by a sermon that knocks their socks off, by singing their one or two favorite hymns, by a rousing choir anthem, or some other form of worship show. Folks come to church, get their program at the door, find their seat, and expect to be amused and entertained, well, maybe occasionally comforted or challenged, but that's probably the need of someone else.
How might we help our people prepare to offer their worship?
Before the service of worship ever begins, we begin our preparations to worship. Not only do we prepare our bodies (shower, shave, comb hair, dress), but we also prepare our minds and hearts. We prepare to enter into corporate worship with our sisters and brothers even as we bring our own worship of heart, mind and body. As we gather, we invoke God's presence. We gather in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This invocation reminds us that as followers of Jesus we live in vocation in this world. As Christians, we have a common calling and we have our own unique personal callings--in the realms of worship and Christian fellowship, work and study, state and nation, earth and environment, home and family, and in our calling to our own bodies, minds and spirits.
Worship doesn't happen to us as passive spectators, but worship is something we do, our work, our liturgy. It is our offering. I think of Cain and his problem with Abel (and God). Cain expected God to make a fuss over his offering, imagining that his worship offering was all about God doing something for him. Cain was depressed, his face fallen. Yahweh God came to Cain, "What's the matter? Why are you upset? Why are you depressed and your face so sad? If you do well, is there not already an uplifting?" In other words, if your worship offering comes from a heart filled with praise and thanksgiving, then already your joy is complete.
Cain did not hear and heed God. He killed his brother. Do our so-called "worship wars," at least in part, begin even before people show up at church? Do they derive from misdirected expectations? Do we come expecting to have our faces lifted up or do we bring our uplifted faces in worship of God?