Or, in other words, our understanding of what the church is will help us know the what and the why of our actions when the church gathers.
From Zac Hicks:
Allowing ecclesiology to inform doxology really does cut through a lot of “fat” of what worship is all about at its core. When we gather on the Lord’s Day, we don’t gather to share; we don’t gather to build community and fellowship; we don’t gather to “become a better me” or improve ourselves; we don’t even gather to gain Bible knowledge or sharpen our theological swords. We gather to hear and respond to afresh God’s gospel call on sinners’ lives each and every week. We gather to renew God’s covenant with us. We gather to have our stiff necks massaged by grace and our hard hearts softened by mercy. The Good News always gathers a crowd, and that crowd is nothing other than the local church.
This is not to say that all the other aforementioned things aren’t important by-products of the gospel call in worship. In fact, they are, and when they’re absent we pastors have some questions to ask ourselves about the health and content of our worship services. But the problem is that we can all too easily push for worship to be about these things (this is the slippery slope that an over-emphasis on pragmatism often puts us on), such that we begin measuring our effectiveness based on these things rather than our faithfulness to rehearse, enact, proclaim, and embody the gospel call of the Triune God.
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