Does the Church really exist for the worship of God?

What I need to say, right upfront, is that I support, broadly, the organisation Praxis which originated the following definition in support of its mission (this is the UK instantiation of the organisation):

The Church exists for the worship of God.
Worship is the only activity of the Church which will last into eternity.

Worship enriches and transforms our lives.
In Christ we are drawn closer to God in the here and now.
This shapes our beliefs, our actions and our way of life.
God transforms us as individuals, congregations and communities.

Worship provides a vital context for mission, teaching and pastoral care. Good worship and liturgy inspires and attracts, informs and delights. The worship of God can give hope and comfort in times of joy and of sorrow. Despite this significance, we are often under-resourced for worship. Praxis Home

I think the problem with this is a conflation and confusion of different meanings for the word 'worship' which often, I think, ends up misdirecting our attention and effort when it comes to what happens in church buildings.

I think I need to unpack what I mean more. You see, I think that the two meanings of worship play out in that statement but one tends to displace the other while relying on the displaced meaning for its justification.

I guess that still needs unpacking further. So let's start by saying what I think the two meanings are and how they relate to one another.

The first meaning is summed up in Romans 12:1-2 "... in view of God's mercies, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice to God which is your spiritual worship ...". This is picked up in Anglican communion liturgy in the prayer after communion in which we "offer our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice". That this is an important way to understand "worship" is accentuated by Matthew Myers Boulton's book God Against Religion, which (drawing on insights from Karl Barth) makes a case for understanding liturgical worship as a fallen artefact and understanding the message of the first chapters of Genesis as showing the more fundamental human calling to be to tend and till creation as created co-creators.

So, I think that there is a problem with "The Church exists for the worship of God" and "Worship is the only activity of the Church which will last into eternity", if "worship" is understood primarily as an assembly for the the performance of  rites, actions, words (what many would call 'liturgy'). Assuming the basic rightness of Boulton's (and Barth's) thesis, the church exists for the worship of God only really if we understand worship primarily as becoming and being part of God's work (and rest from) [re]creating. The problem, it seems to me, with the Praxis landing page blurb is that it seems to shift the meaning into narrowly liturgical events. Such meaning -by the Barthean thesis as picked up by Boulton- is precisely the wrong way to go: there is no temple in the New Jerusalem and the liturgical acts of Revelation chapters 1 to 20 are not to be understood as eschatological but as representations of present reality (as per the kind of approach to interpretation of the book of Revelation in David Wilcox's commentary). The only  kind of worship in the New Jerusalem seems to that which could be included in the wealth of the nations -which would surely be all human achievement rooted in God's own work of creation.

So what place liturgical worship in the Christian life? Well, I think that the blurb does give indication of that where it says:

In Christ we are drawn closer to God in the here and now.
This shapes our beliefs, our actions and our way of life.
God transforms us as individuals, congregations and communities.

 Liturgical activity in the form of "public worship" and it cognates of prayer groups, family prayers, so-called personal devotions and the like, should have the effect all being well of drawing us closer to God, shaping us Christicly and transforming us ("by the renewal of our minds" as Romans 12:2 puts it). Barth and Boulton point out that this can only happen because such a fallen artefact as liturgy is reoccupied (my metaphor not theirs) by Christ who redeems it by the Spirit so that it can accomplish such purposes.

So, when the blurb says; "Worship provides a vital context for mission, teaching and pastoral care." I am inclined to say that it should be more radically stated still: Worship is mission, teaching and pastoral care (Rm.12:1-2, applied), some worship is accomplished through liturgical acts much may be supported by them.

And this speaks to that last line: "Despite this significance, we are often under-resourced for worship".  It might be better to rephrase it "... under-resourced for liturgical events" to help us to recall that the resourcing of these events is meant to be part of equipping the saints. Perhaps even a major part given that for many church folk an hour in church most weeks is it for corporate formation. Thought about like that, perhaps we should indeed be taking with utmost seriousness the potential of liturgy to support and strengthen worship in terms of joining God in mission beyond the service.

Of course, this prompts a question as to whether a lot of liturgical worship really does a good job of promoting in-life worship. I have doubts that  it does, in many cases. I suspect that the confusion between the two meanings of 'worship' misdirects churches as to what we are meant to be about when we meet together round the Lord's Table or other 'services'. Believing that worship is preeminent in Christian life and interpreting it as wh at we do together when gathered for a service, we end up fetishising liturgical acts and the criteria for assessing them becomes detached from -or downgrades- equipping the saints and prioritises aesthetics and/or shared emotion.

That's not to say aesthetics or shared emotion are irrelevant to equipping the saints. However, we should recognise that it is really easy for them to become ends in themselves with little carry over into the service of life. They should play their part in inspiring, encouraging and making connections. They make good servants but terrible masters. So liturgy might be under-resourced, but I'm not convinced. I worry that there may be many churches where liturgy is quite possibly over-resourced in relation to the in-life worship of their members. Where what goes on in church is in effect considered the most important part of discipleship.That would be like considering medical school the most important part of a medic's life and work. It clearly is important but it is supposed to be focussed towards a career which will help many people to be well, become well or not to die so soon.