Worship
How Often Should Christians Take Communion?
How often should Christians take communion? Examine Acts 20:7, the first day of the week, 1 Corinthians 11, early Christian assembly, and the Lord's Supper.
No Single Frequency Command
The New Testament gives a pattern rather than a verse saying “every Sunday.”
A careful answer begins by admitting what the text does not say. There is no verse whose wording is simply, 'Christians must take the Lord's Supper every Sunday.'
The case for weekly communion is therefore based on the pattern of first-century assembly, especially Acts 20:7, rather than on a standalone frequency command.
That distinction matters because it keeps the argument tied to what Scripture actually records instead of overstating the evidence.
Acts 20:7
Luke identifies both a day and a purpose for the gathering.
Acts 20:7 says the disciples gathered on the first day of the week to break bread. Luke does not merely mention that communion happened to occur while Paul was present; breaking bread is given as a stated purpose of the gathering.
Because the first day recurs every week, many Christians have understood this as evidence of a weekly apostolic practice.
Who Changed the Church? treats the passage that way and shows the El Reno prisoners doing the same when they attempted to reconstruct Christian worship directly from the New Testament.
The disciples are described as coming together on the first day of the week to break bread.
Regular Assembly
Paul treats the Lord's Supper as part of the church's recurring gathering.
In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul repeatedly speaks about what happens when the congregation comes together. His correction of the Lord's Supper abuse assumes the meal belongs within that gathered setting.
Paul does not provide a calendar interval in the chapter, but he plainly treats the Supper as a repeated congregational practice.
Read together with Acts 20:7, the evidence creates a coherent picture: Christians assembled on the first day, and breaking bread belonged to that assembly.
Paul addresses problems that occur when the church comes together.
Paul specifically discusses the Lord's Supper inside that congregational gathering.
The First Day Pattern
Other first-day evidence strengthens the picture without proving more than it says.
First Corinthians 16 tells Christians to set aside resources on the first day of every week. The passage concerns a collection, not communion, so it should not be used as though it directly commands the Lord's Supper.
But it does show that the first day had an established place in the rhythm of Christian congregational life.
That evidence sits naturally beside Acts 20:7 and the resurrection accounts without requiring the claim that Sunday became a renamed Jewish Sabbath.
Paul gives first-day instructions concerning the collection for the saints.
Could Christians Take It More Often?
Weekly practice does not require claiming that any other observance is inherently impossible.
The evidence for first-day observance identifies a recurring apostolic pattern. It does not contain an explicit sentence forbidding Christians from remembering Christ at any other time.
The narrower question is what churches did when they assembled according to the pattern preserved in Acts.
That is why restoration-minded Christians often distinguish between what might be permissible privately and what the apostolic church is actually shown doing congregationally.
The El Reno Experiment
The prisoners read Acts 20:7 and independently adopted first-day communion.
The manuscript records the El Reno prisoners reading that disciples came together on the first day of the week to break bread.
They then made the Lord's table part of their Sunday worship, using bread and the fruit of the vine.
For Wood, that becomes part of a larger argument: when people remove inherited denominational assumptions and work directly from the same text, the same practices have a way of reappearing.
Why the Question Matters
Frequency becomes a test case for how Christians use apostolic examples.
Some commands in the New Testament are explicit. Other practices are learned from repeated apostolic examples and the structure of congregational life.
Communion frequency therefore raises a larger interpretive question: when Acts gives a day, an assembly, and a purpose, is that merely interesting history or evidence intended to shape later Christian practice?
Who Changed the Church? consistently answers by treating the apostolic pattern as the baseline against which later changes should be measured.
Why It Matters
The New Testament does not contain the exact sentence 'Take communion every Sunday,' but Acts 20:7 provides strong evidence that first-century disciples gathered on the first day of the week to break bread, while 1 Corinthians places the Lord's Supper inside the regular assembly of the church. Who Changed the Church? treats weekly first-day communion as part of the recoverable apostolic pattern—and the Blake Williams story supplies an unusual modern test of what happens when readers encounter that pattern without inheriting it from a denomination.