Why Weekly Sunday Communion Is Not for Every Church

By Robin G. Jordan

I experienced mixed feelings about posting Greg Goebel’s article, “Why Every Church Should Have Weekly Sunday Communion Like the Anglicans Do,” for several reasons. While frequent communion may be desirable, it may not be practicable. A growing number of Continuing Anglican and Episcopal churches do not have a priest of their own and must share a priest with one or more other churches with which they may be yoked. Goebel is promoting a standard that these churches cannot meet as long as bishops are unwilling to license deacons and lay eucharistic ministers to administer Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament, to expedite the ordination of local priests, or take other steps to enable these churches to have weekly Sunday communion. This standard has also created a number of other problems for these churches.

In North America Associated Parishes and the Liturgical Movement, not the Parish Communion movement, popularized the practice of weekly Sunday communion in the Episcopal Church. The Parish Communion movement was responsible for the popularity of weekly Sunday communion in the Church of England. While the proponents of the nineteenth century Catholic Revival would restore the Holy Eucharist as the central act of worship on Sunday morning in a number of parishes, the more extreme proponents of that revival would also promote the restoration of the non-communicating Medieval Mass. It was not until the late twentieth century that weekly Sunday communion became widespread in the Episcopal Church with the adoption of the 1979 Prayer Book. While some Anglo-Catholic parishes may have had weekly Sunday communion before that time, many Episcopal parishes like my own celebrated Holy Communion only twice a month. On the remaining Sundays of the month we had choral Morning Prayer with a sermon. The adoption of the 1979 Prayer Book would relegate Morning Prayer to a secondary role in the worship life of the parish.

As congregations became accustomed to receiving Holy Communion every Sunday, there was a corresponding relaxation of eucharistic discipline. Infants and small children were admitted to the Table on the grounds that since they had received the sacrament of Baptism, they should be able to receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The longstanding Anglican insistence upon worthy reception which included the presence of a vital faith in the communicant fell by the wayside. The belief that everyone who received the sacrament received a blessing made inroads not only in the Episcopal Church but also in the Continuing Anglican churches that had broken with the Episcopal Church over Prayer Book revision and women’s ordination.

The weekly Sunday reception of Holy Communion has become a dominant element in the spirituality of a growing number of Continuing Anglicans and Episcopalians. The reception of the consecrated elements has become a substitute for a life of discipleship. Congregations have become so focused on what the Lord might be doing for them in the sacrament that they neglect what they should be doing for the Lord for what he had done for them on the cross.

Congregations that need strong preaching and teaching and strong missional leadership are trading away their futures for weekly Sunday communion. They are entering into contracts with clergy who, while they are ordained, are weak at preaching and teaching and incapable of leading a church on mission. The only thing that they are able to do is to administer the sacraments. Lacking strong preaching and teaching and strong missional leadership, these congregations face stagnation and decline.

With the practice of weekly Sunday communion a pernicious theology has often ridden piggyback into such congregations. It emphasizes the ministry of the priest over the ministry of the people. Congregations are at high risk of becoming consumers of a commodity dispensed by a priest, instead of servants of Christ who live their lives in accordance with his teaching and example, reach out to the unchurched and the unsaved, and minister in and to the community.

The self-esteem of congregations which are unable to have weekly Sunday communion suffer. Because they are not able to meet this standard, they begin to think of themselves as not fully a church. They begin to compare themselves negatively with congregations that do meet this standard, further eroding their self-esteem. Congregations that do not have a high opinion of themselves and who are not excited about their church services do not tell people about their church or invite them to church services and other functions. They are less likely to take steps to make their presence known in the community.

While recognizing frequent communion as desirable where it may be had, the Anglican Church does not view weekly Sunday communion as one of the marks of the visible church—only the due administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper “according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.” The rubrics of the classical Anglican Prayer Book of 1662 require that “every parishioner shall communicate at least three times in the year, of which Easter shall be one.” Small churches that cannot meet the unrealistic standard of weekly Sunday communion are no less the visible church than large parishes that celebrates the Holy Communion on weekdays as well as Sundays.

Rather than making Faustian bargains with clergy who have very little to offer beside administering the sacraments and sacrificing their own ministry, the ministry of the whole Body of Christ, for the ministry of its eye or his hand, congregations need to take a more balanced view of the sacraments. The role of a church’s pastor is to equip its people for the work of ministry and the role of the sacraments is to invigorate and strengthen the faith of the people as they go about the work of ministry. If a pastor cannot fulfill his role, he should not be a pastor. He has chosen the wrong vocation. Equipping the saints is his primary task. The administration of the sacraments is ancillary to that task.