The Lord does not gather you here, week after week, and year after year, in order for you to watch trained professionals conduct religious activities on your behalf. You are here as singers, as communicants, as learners, as worshipers, as disciples. You are not here as mere spectators, as simple observers.
Every person here has been summoned so that together, corporately, we all might do something. And this leads naturally to the question—what is that something?
Now a simple answer (and a correct one, as far as it goes) is that we are here to give glory to God. But we need to make our statement of it a great deal stronger than this. We are here to glorify God in such a way as to reshape the world. This does not subordinate the glory of God to a lesser thing, a reshaped world, because the point of reshaping the world is to bring even greater glory to God.
So what we do here does not evaporate when we are done. It does not disappear. It is more like laying a brick than gathering bits of fog.
Or let me compare it to two musical instruments—the piano and organ. The piano is a decaying instrument. You strike the note, and the note fades. But when you press the key on an organ the note remains—it is a sustained note.
When we give glory to God, that note that we strike in this worship service does not decay. God gathers it all up and He incorporates it into His symphonic rendering of all human history. And when the final crescendo is reached, we will all finally see that whenever glory is given to God, such glory cannot fade, by definition.
How could it? Psalm 22 tells us that God inhabits the praises of His people. Of course it is permanent. Of course it remains forever. It is the house of God. And as that house grows, it will reshape the world, to the greater glory of God.