Ask what a congregation gathers to do, and the instant, universal answer is that it gathers to worship. We speak of the worship service, the worship leader, the worship team and the order of worship, until the word stops being one description among several and becomes the name of the thing.

And the New Testament never uses it that way.

This is more than a quibble about vocabulary, because the purpose of a meeting determines its shape. If the assembly exists to render worship to God through designated people, then a room where a few perform and many receive is a reasonable arrangement. If the assembly exists to build up the people present, by their action on one another, that arrangement is structurally incapable of its purpose. So the question of what the gathering is for has to be settled first. Scripture does settle it.

The worship words, and where they are used

The primary Greek word translated "worship" is proskyneo. It means to prostrate oneself, a physical act of falling down before someone. In the Gospels it's what people do when they meet Jesus: the wise men (Matthew 2:11), the leper (Matthew 8:2), the disciples in the boat (Matthew 14:33). In Revelation it's what happens before the throne (Revelation 4:10; 5:14). Studied across the New Testament and the Greek Old Testament, it appears hundreds of times. It's never used of what Christians do when they assemble.

It comes near an assembly only once. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul describes an unbeliever entering a gathering where the members are prophesying, being convicted, and falling down on his face he will worship God (14:25). The assembly's activity is the edifying work of prophecy. The prostration is the outsider's spontaneous response to it.

The second family of words, latreuo and leitourgeo, means priestly and sacrificial service. Where the New Testament applies these to Christians, it applies them to all of life:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1)

Reasonable service is logike latreia, your rational worship, and Paul says it of the body, presented continuously, without a word about the meeting. Hebrews says the same: let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear (Hebrews 12:28). Like Paul's verse, it describes a whole life, which is a great deal more than an hour.

The closest text to an assembly is Acts 13:2, where five named prophets and teachers at Antioch ministered to the Lord, and fasted. It describes the activity of five men in priestly-service language and says nothing about the gathering of a church.

The claim is narrow enough to check with a concordance. In the New Testament, worship is what a Christian does with his life, and never the name of the meeting.

What the meeting is called instead

That would be merely interesting if the New Testament were silent about the meeting's purpose. It isn't. Again and again it states the purpose in one word, oikodome, which means building up, or edification.

The longest treatment of a Christian assembly anywhere in Scripture, 1 Corinthians 14, is organized around that word from beginning to end:

He that prophesieth edifieth the church. (14:4)

Seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church. (14:12)

How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying. (14:26)

For ye may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be comforted. (14:31)

Every regulation in the chapter is justified by whether it builds up the people present. Tongues without interpretation are restricted, though Paul doesn't call them illegitimate. His reason is that the church receiveth no edifying (14:5). Prophecy is preferred because it speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort (14:3). The criterion is stated eight times.

Oikodome is built on oikos, the word for a house, so edification is house-building. The assembly's purpose is described as constructing the household.

Even the singing faces sideways

Someone will object that singing, surely, is worship. Singing is commanded, but the New Testament describes it as facing a particular direction:

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:19)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. (Colossians 3:16)

Speaking to yourselves. Teaching and admonishing one another. The singing is addressed to each other, while the melody rises to the Lord from the heart. Even the singing is edification, one of the ways the members build one another up.

The one text that tells us why not to forsake the assembly gives the same reason:

And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another. (Hebrews 10:24-25)

We assemble to consider one another and to exhort one another, two reciprocal verbs with a mutual purpose.

Why this reorganizes everything

If the assembly's purpose were worship (a service rendered to God by the congregation through designated people), then a room in which most people receive and a few perform is a reasonable arrangement. The performance is the offering. The congregation's part is attendance and assent.

If the assembly's purpose is edification, the building up of the people present by one another, then that arrangement is structurally incapable of its purpose. You can't build up four hundred people by having one speak. Edification is reciprocal by definition; the word describes what members do to each other. And a reciprocal purpose requires a reciprocal form.

That's why 1 Corinthians 14 looks the way it does: many contributing, each one bringing something, the assembly weighing what's said (let the other judge, 14:29), turn-taking regulated because there are too many speakers rather than too few. The form follows from a purpose the chapter states outright.

What this is not saying

None of this means that God is absent from the assembly, or that praise and prayer are illegitimate. Prayer is commanded in the gathering (1 Timothy 2:1-8), and so are singing and the Lord's Supper. God is honored in the assembly.

My claim is only about what the meeting is aimed at, and the text states the aim: let all things be done unto edifying.

Nor is it a claim that the modern church is insincere. The people who sing on Sunday mean it. The vocabulary of "worship service" came down to us along with buildings and orders and roles that made sense of it.

But for centuries the vocabulary has made the passive congregation look like a worshipping congregation, when the New Testament would call it an unedified one.

The test for your gathering

So run one test at your next assembly. Count how many people did something that built up someone else: spoke, taught, prayed aloud for another, confessed, encouraged, corrected, brought a word. Leave the attendance figure aside and count how many edified.

Then compare the number to every one of you (1 Corinthians 14:26).

If the answer is one or two out of hundreds, the gathering may be many things, but by the New Testament's own criterion it isn't yet doing what a gathering is for. The recovery begins somewhere other than a new worship style, with a smaller room, a table, and the restoration of the one word the text uses for the meeting, oikodome. Build the house.