A Baha'i House of Worship is deliberately built to accommodate anyone, of any religion or none, who wishes to enter for prayer or reflection, and what happens inside is correspondingly minimal by the standards of most of the building types described alongside it: there is no ordained clergy to lead a service, no fixed liturgy, no sermon and no ritual comparable to the Eucharist, the Torah reading or the salat, only the reading or chanting, sometimes to music, of scripture drawn not only from Baha'i texts but from the sacred writings of other world religions, reflecting the faith's teaching that previous revelations share a common divine source. This absence of clergy and prescribed ritual is not an accident of underdevelopment but a considered expression of Baha'i teaching on the essential unity of religion and the direct, unmediated relationship the tradition holds each individual should have with the divine.
Baha'i scripture envisions each House of Worship eventually surrounded by a set of dependent social service institutions, potentially including a hospital, university, orphanage and other charitable establishments, so that the building of prayer sits at the center of a larger complex oriented toward practical service rather than standing alone as a purely devotional structure, though in practice most existing Houses of Worship have not yet developed this full surrounding complex. The building's open invitation and minimal prescribed ritual together make it function architecturally almost as a counter example to nearly every other entry in this section, each of which encodes a specific tradition's particular liturgical requirements into its plan.