The Liturgical Tradition: Relevent in All Ages

It seems like we live in a really different world spiritually from what is was when I first became a practicing Christian 12 years ago and certainly when I was a little kid. (To give some context here, the current Book of Common Prayer is 1 year older than me <g>)

While reading something about the emergent/emerging church movement lately, I found a couple of subtle references to the fact that the author felt traditional liturgies were “boring”, “dead”, or “irrelevant”. With contemporary-style worship being a focal point in Christianity today, I think we liturgists are going to have to do a lot of explaining about why we do things a certain way.

How would you explain liturgical worship’s relevance to someone unfamiliar with it?