Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Why We Take Communion Weekly

In another post, the question was asked how often do you take communion. I thought I would follow up with why we do it weekly. I will provide a written explanation as well as a spoken one from this past Sunday's sermon on Romans 13 by Lee Tankersley. Here is the written explanation below as stated on our website:

Taking Communion Weekly

There are mainly two reasons why we take communion every Sunday. The first is that Scripture shows this was a common practice in the early church. In Acts 2:42 we read that the early believers were devoting “themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers.” This is seen even more clearly in Acts 20:7 as Luke writes, “On the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread …” In this verse Luke lists communion as their purpose for gathering on the first day of the week. Also, when Paul writes to the Corinthians in order to give them instruction regarding communion in 1 Corinthians 11, he begins the section writing, “When you come together” (v. 20), showing that he anticipated them coming to the table every week as they gathered in worship.

The second reason we celebrate communion weekly is because it appears that the ordinances (i.e. baptism and communion) were given to the church in order that we might visibly proclaim that we have heard and received the Word of the Lord. In baptism, we do this in an unrepeatable event, showing that we have heard and received the Word of Christ. In communion, we have a repeatable ordinance that shows the same thing continually in the life of a believer. And because we hear the proclamation of God’s Word every Sunday and each believer is called to receive and obey that Word, we choose to proclaim our reception of the Word by that means given by the Lord himself – communion. In doing so, we welcome all believers who are in good standing with an evangelical church to join us.


The audio for the sermon is here (which includes the call to communion towards the end of the sermon).
The manuscript for the sermon is here.
You can read more on our corporate worship here.

Some questions:
-What are your thoughts on doing communion weekly?
-Currently we are preaching through the book of Romans, do you think the handling of Romans 13 was done correctly? What about the application at the end?
-Do you think scripture supports the idea of partaking in communion as often as we come together?
-Are there restrictions on communion that should be adhered to?
-If you listened to the sermon, do you think there is a benefit to preaching expositionally?
-Do you find it beneficial that the entire text that is preached is read?

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