Weekly Communion
Our practice of weekly communion comes out of our understanding of covenant renewal worship. The natural procession moves from confession to consecration, and from consecration to communion. We want this progression to occur every time we worship God.
The heart of biblical worship is organized around Word and sacrament. But we do not understand this as a fortuitous “pairing,” as though
Word and sacrament were like salt and pepper, or ham and eggs. Rather, we see it as one thing leading naturally to another—it is more like cooking and eating. With this understanding, we would see a liturgical service without a sermon as an example of an ecclesiastical “raw foods” movement. The food is not prepared as it ought to be. And traditions that have robust preaching, but no opportunity to commune with the Lord in His Supper, are akin to watching cooking shows with a master chef. You learn things, but don’t get to eat anything.
And so it is that our services culminate every week with an observance of the Supper. Understood the right way, this does not in any way minimize the importance of biblically-grounded exegetical sermons. A worship service is not a zero sum game, where more time for the Supper is less time for the sermon. They are not~ in competition,any more than Cooking or eating are in a competition. We are seeking to structure our services in such a way as to honor the sermons, which we do by eating and drinking them.
Our practice of weekly communion is related to another feature of our lives together. Our communion marks us as disciples, and so we also practice church discipline.
Some in our Reformed tradition have wondered about weekly communion because to them it “seems Catholic.” But at the time of the Reformation, it was the Reformers who were pressing for much more frequent communion, which they accomplished with varying degrees of success. For example, John Calvin strongly urged weekly communion, and we are finally in a position to honor and follow his counsel.
Canon Press Published this article.