From my anecdotal experience, I get the impression that more Protestant churches are moving toward weekly communion. This is a good trend. However, some don’t think so, and it will therefore be helpful to address common objections to weekly communion. To make the basic point up front: Every argument that I’ve ever heard against weekly communion is vapid at best.
Granted, weekly communion is not commanded in Scripture, but consider the few biblical hints that we have regarding early church practice. In Acts 2:42-46, it seems implied that communion was first practiced daily by the early believers. “Breaking bread” in v. 42 and 46 could refer simply to eating regular meals together, but the phrase seems likely to refer to communion in light of Acts 20:7, which speaks of the believers being gathered “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered to break bread.” Here it does not exactly say they broke bread on every first day of the week, only that they did on this particular occasion. In 1 Corinthians 11:17-20, though, Paul seems to speak in a way that assumes the Lord’s Supper was something done (or attempted anyway) every time the church in Corinth came together (“When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat”). But it is not quite explicit in this passage either. What we have here are some suggestions that the Lord’s Supper was probably weekly in the early church, perhaps daily at first. At most this is a pattern, not exactly a command.
But why would we not celebrate the Lord’s Supper weekly and take advantage of its blessings? There seems to me no good reason. All are agreed that the Lord’s Supper is an institution of Christ, given for the church’s nourishment and edification. All would also agree that it is simple to carry out, a tool of sanctification, and a clear and distinguishing mark of an explicitly Christian gathering. So it seems plain to me that just like reading and teaching the Word, and joining together in prayer and songs of praise, the Lord’s Supper ought to be an automatic and standard component of every formal, weekly gathering of God’s people. To me this position is the obvious default, with less frequent communion being the position that needs special defense. The non-weekly position should bear the burden of proof.
So I do not mean to say that the practice of non-weekly communion is sinful or necessarily implies unfaithfulness. But since weekly communion often brings push-back, I want to look at the most common arguments urged against it, show why they are groundless, and encourage the move that more and more Protestant and Reformed churches are (I believe wisely) making.
(1) Weekly communion will lead to it becoming a mindless routine.
This is probably the most common argument offered against weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper. A few things can be said about this objection. First, it is never given as an argument against weekly preaching, or weekly prayer, or song. In fact, in most conservative churches those things happen multiple times per week, often twice on Sunday, and on Wednesday night. Do they become routine and mindless as a result? Sometimes. But is that a reason to do them less often? I think we all recognize that a heavy responsibility falls on the worshiper himself when it comes to these things. Frequency is not the culprit here. Second, though, I think this objection is simply wrong. I have been in multiple churches that celebrate the Supper weekly, multiple churches that celebrate it monthly, and in at least one that practiced it only quarterly. I noticed no difference in the seriousness or reverence with which it was handled in any of these. If anything, far from becoming routine, the reverse is true—when the Supper is not seen as an integral part of every formal gathering, it can come to be seen as expendable and not very important. This objection, ironically, also sits uncomfortably and directly at odds with the next common objection to weekly observance.
(2) Weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper elevates it to superstitious level of necessity.
Sometimes the concern is expressed that when the Lord’s Supper is practiced every week, it begins to look too important and necessary. One internet blogger expressed it this way:
The weekly communion service, with the rest of the elements of high liturgy, elevates the supper to a place where it does not belong . . . It naturally turns the focus of worship from the invisible proclamation of Christ in the gospel to the visible proclamation in the sacrament. Faith is replaced by sight.
This, frankly, is silly. The Lord’s Supper is instituted by Christ himself and the church is commanded to keep it. Certainly it can be misused, and there has been no shortage of superstitious abuses in the history of the church, but this is not a matter of frequency, and the difference between practicing it weekly, or every other week, or monthly, will make no difference in this regard. In the biblical case given to us of abuse of the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11), Paul did not tell the Corinthians to correct the abuse by practicing it less frequently or to downplay its importance. In fact, he tells them to take it more seriously (1 Corinthians 11:27-28). In any case, a superstitious or idolatrous usage of the Lord’s Supper can just as easily be built around the infrequent practice of it. Think about it. If communion is only done quarterly (or even annually as has been the case in some churches), it can be made into such a special event that the danger of abuse is at least as high as it could be with overly frequent partaking.
(3) Frequent Communion (Mass) is Roman Catholic.
Often, when Protestants express the concern of #2 above, they have something like Roman Catholic Mass in mind. Roman Catholics do practice communion (or Eucharist, as they call it) weekly, and in fact many parishes offer it daily. The first point to make here is—so what? Roman Catholics also read and teach from the Bible. They also meet on Sunday morning. They also pray to Jesus. They baptize in the name of the Trinity. Should we not do those things simply because Catholics do them? No; we should be thankful for truth and Christ-directed piety wherever we find it. Now granted, the frequency with which Roman Catholics practice the Eucharist is driven in part by their theology of it, which makes it out to be a kind of magical medicine, in that partakers are thought to physically ingest the incarnate body and blood of Jesus. But theology and practice should be driven by the Word of God, not by fear that we will “look like” the “wrong” people. Maybe we ought to see the frequency with which Catholics practice the Eucharist (and I am referring to their practice, not their theology of it) as a point in their favor that we could learn from.
This objection is also historically short-sighted. There have been long periods of Roman Catholic church history in which participation in the Eucharist by the laity was in fact quite rare, it being thought that the most important thing was for the priest to partake, and the people in the pews could be content to watch, or perhaps to receive the bread only, and not the wine. Thankfully that is no longer the case, but if it were, what then? Would the solution for Protestant churches be to provide an excess of wine (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:21)? Belief or practice that is purely reactionary will almost certainly result in belief and practice that is ultimately warped, misguided, or even harmful. Confident Protestantism worth its salt does not require Roman Catholicism as a foil.
(4) It will take up too much of the service, and push out other things like prayer and sermon length.
Well, the service could be longer then. Or the sermon could be shortened. Honestly, I think most sermons are too long as is. At any rate, the Lord’s Supper can involve prayer and teaching as part of its administration. Why not teach during the Supper on topics relevant to it? This would be easy, since everything in the Bible ties into it in some way. The Lord’s Supper touches on Christian love, hospitality, church unity, the death of Christ, the coming of Christ, the biblical theology of memorials, biblical theology of bread, of wine, of sacrifice, of the body, of Christian fellowship, of Jesus’ eating with sinners, of what the cross does to human social distinctions, the Passover and the exodus, the intersection of the physical and spiritual, etc.
Really, there is a whole other issue here of the place of the sermon in the formal gathering of God’s people, and I do not want to get too far afield, but here are some things to consider: If the Bible does not exactly command weekly communion, does it command weekly preaching? Should the pastor’s/elder’s exposition of the word be made the dominant element of the worship service, over against the prayers, confessions, and songs of God’s people, or the reading of the Word, or the other institutions (like Communion) that Christ has established?
In the early church, and really for most of the church’s history in most places, printed Bibles, printed books, good teaching, and even literacy itself were not easy to come by for the average church-goer. In such cultural contexts, the hearing and exposition of God’s word was vital because, among other reasons, for much of the congregation the weekly gathering was literally their only access to it. Now, it is still vital that we be exposed to the hearing and teaching of God’s word. But we can also all read on our own, and we have access to the Bible and virtually any resource on it that we want 24/7 through the internet. The church has never been so blessed with almost universal literacy and access to information.[1]
What we very often sorely lack in modern America, and which earlier generations had much more of, is precisely fellowship and communion. It might be worth considering whether in our cultural setting, a long sermon ought to partially give way to a sanctifying communal practice like the Lord’s Supper, which perhaps should be more fellowship-oriented and meal-like, as it apparently was in the early church.
(5) If it is every week, we might not have time to prepare our hearts properly.
I am not really sure how to react to this objection. On the one hand, it seems to assume there is not an equal necessity of preparing our hearts to hear the Word, but there is. “Take care then how you hear” is a command of Christ (Luke 8:18). But in any case, if it is preparation of your heart that you are really concerned about, shouldn’t you want to be pushed to it more frequently rather than less? Will not weekly communion encourage a more general and consistent pattern of care? “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). Frequent fellowship in the Lord’s Supper can be a great help toward this.
(6) It can be awkward for visitors or for people who do not come forward.
I did find one article online that suggested that weekly communion, since not required by Scripture, is an unnecessary obstacle to visitors: “[W]hy would we want unnecessarily to introduce a new practice that makes us even stranger to average people?” The argument seems to be that Christian worship should be as normal and average as possible within the bounds of what Scripture allows. This just is not compelling to me. If your goal is to be as similar as possible to the broader world, why should the broader world bother with you? What would you have to offer? And if your goal is really to attract people, then maybe offering something unique and distinctive is the better way. But “attracting people” has nothing to do with the purpose of the Lord’s Supper anyway. It is first of all a memorial and proclamation of the death of Christ for his people before God the Father (1 Corinthians 11:24-26), and is also a means of marking out or even constituting the unity of the body of Christ and its head (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Whether or not it is weird for visitors is not really relevant.
(7) What will my children do? They will get bored.
Teach them what the Supper means, invite them to partake as baptized covenant members, and disciple them to believe in Christ and live as his followers should. If they still get bored, consider that the worship of God, and the communion of the body of Christ with its head, does not exist for your child’s entertainment and amusement.
[1] Please note: I am not advocating “virtual church” or personal study as a replacement for actual church and actual elders; that is not my point.