Having been raised and still sorta Catholic, I’ve always assumed churches celebrated the Eucharist every week. So I was surprised to find out recently that very few Protestant churches do this. What Protestant churches do celebrate the Eucharist weekly? How does the frequency differ among denominations? And are Eucharistal services much longer than regular services?
Catholic churches will frequently celebrate the Eucharist every day, if there are sufficient clergy to do this.
The practice varies widely among (and even within) different Protestant traditions. High Anglicans will celebrate weekly (or more often), but other Anglican parishes might celebrate a Eucharist on alternate Sundays, or once a month. A Presbyterian church local to me celebrates the Eucharist six times a year - once in each quarter, once in the period coming up to Christmas, and once in the period coming up to Easter. A nearby Methodist church celebrates the Eucharist once every six weeks or so.
Lots of RCA - reformed church of america, and crc - christian reformed churches will do eucharist every month or so, or at an evening service. Being raised catholic, there is a big difference between how the eucharist is viewed. Mostly, its not the ‘real’ blood and body of Christ.
In my experience, the service isnt considerably longer, if at all. I think they try to shorten everything else up. 1 less song, shorter scripture, etc
Several times a day, for churches in communities with sufficient numbers of Catholics. Our parish church when I was an altar boy (back in the 70s and 80s) had two daily Masses every weekday morning, a Saturday evening Mass, and four Masses on Sunday. This in a city with at least 15 Catholic parishes. Every regular liturgy, as well as wedding, funeral and special Masses, has the Transubstantiation and Eucharist.
Just about all the Episcopal churches I’ve visited in the last ten-fifteen years or so (which is actually a pretty fair number) do weekly Eucharists.
I believe there has been a general trend in this direction, and that if you go back forty years or so there were lots of Episcopal churches that did it once a month if that.
Today, my sense is that most churches do Eucharist in all Sunday services and often in midweek services too NO MATTER WHAT. (I find it a little odd to have Eucharist and then do a potluck or something, given that eating together represents a true communal meal, but it’s one of the things about my denomination that I’ll probably never completely understand…)
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) offers communion in every service.
My mom started going to United Methodist services when I was young. I don’t know it was typical but it was mind blowing how different it was than Catholic. Infrequent enough that it wasn’t easy to predict but only high holidays? Grape juice and very leavened bread.
I have been both Episcopalian and Methodist. As noted, my experience is that Episcopal churches do communion once a week on Sundays but I am sure it may vary a lot by congregation. Methodists typically have communion once a month on every 4th Sunday.
‘Protestant churches’ is a misnomer because it includes countless denominations many of which aren’t truly descended from the Protestant Reformation. You can find examples of almost anything among them. Weekly or more frequent communion is not common in Protestant churches in my experience but I am sure that some do it somewhere just like some talk in tongues and handle venomous snakes.
You have to understand that the Catholic church is the outlier at least in the U.S. compared to most Protestant churches. The Catholic church is much more procedural than the vast majority of Protestant churches. Most Protestant type churches are fairly free to set their own rules (within limits) without the authority of an independent city-state giving its blessing.
That also leads to conflicts as well. In most small towns in the South, you will see a smaller Baptist Church almost right next to a bigger one. That means that some people didn’t like the way things were being done so they started their own church.
"The Romans have been separate from us since the Schism of Lourdes in 1573.
And that was about our holy right to come to church with wet hair…
Which we’ve since abolished."
-The Simpsons
Anglicanism and Lutheranism are pretty Episcopal, but the “lower” the church gets the more likely they are to be independent. Methodists have a little more leeway, but not as much as congregationalism, I guess that’s called connexionalism.
I joined a United Methodist church a couple of years ago; our church has communion once a month.
I had formerly been a member of several different ELCA Lutheran churches; all of them had communion at about that same sort of frequency.
(I grew up Catholic, and so, the idea that you could have a mass / service without communion was a little odd to me at first.)
The Baptist church I grew up with had communion once a month. This is typical (but of course not universal) for non-liturgical traditions.
Just about every Episcopal (Anglican) church I’ve ever been two celebrates the Eucharist at least weekly, if not several times a week. The only exceptions have been tiny, remote churches that do not regularly have a priest available. In those cases they do the Eucharist whenever the priest or bishop is there.
ECLA Lutheran here, and we do the Eucharist every week. Growing up we only had it once a month or on holidays, but that changed in the 70s.
Regards,
Shodan
So you never attended services on Holy Friday or Saturday? Note that those are very specifically not called masses.
Good Friday service is the only day of the year in which mass is not celebrated in the Roman Catholic rite, however there is still an extensive service (one of the longest of the year) in which people are able to venerate the cross, and the entire Passion of Christ is read by multiple readers. The Eucharist (consecrated the night before at Holy Thursday mass) is still dispensed to the congregation.
Holy Saturday mass has the Easter Vigil, the highest mass of the year.
Services held on Saturday morning or afternoon will have communion dispensed from what was consecrated on Thursday, like Friday services.
My experience with Lutherans (both Missouri Synod and ELCA) us that they celebrate the Eucharist every week. When I was a member of the UCC (formerly Congregational) they had communion (note different terminology) once a month, and took the summer off.
Oh, I undoubtedly did (as I went to Catholic grade school and high school), but as noted, those services are a very specific exception to the rule.
Assemblies of God do it monthly and special occasions, too. It would be in the middle of worship (singing) and the songs afterwards would usually be blood related.
Oh, and there was a call to prayer beforehand to confess your sins to God lest you partake unworthily.
It was also the most traditionally liturgical thing we did, with specific verses being read.
When I was growing up we went to a Schwenkfelder church every Sunday.
There are very few congregations, I think 5 or 6, and they’re all in southeastern PA. These days (and back when I went) they’re basically just mainstream protestant churches with one or two quirks. For example, you’re not baptized until you’re older (I think the age was 13 or 14).
As I recall, we did the white bread and grape juice thing once or twice a year. I think once was sometime around Easter, and there may have been one or two other times. It always struck me as being symbolic cannibalism, but that’s just me.
The church I belong to is a member of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, and we have Communion about once a month. It’s supposed to be the first Sunday of the month, but there’s a lot of flexibility in that. We also have Communion during our evening service on Good Friday. We view Communion as symbolic, i.e., God’s grace through Christ is symbolized by the act of taking Communion, but not directly imparted through Communion. It’s referred to as an “ordinance” rather than a “sacrament” for that reason.