The reason you go to church to participate in the Lord's Supper.
You don't go to church to worship or to hear a sermon. You go to church to celebrate the Lord's Supper. You go to church to remember The Story. You go to church to ritually reenact the story, to step into it, participate in it, make it your own. This is your Passover meal. You go to church to remind each other, this is his body. This is his blood. Broken and poured out. For you.
In the Churches of Christ we take our cue from Acts 20.7:
On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight.The reason for the assembly on the first day of the week wasn't to hear Paul preach or to worship. The reason the early church gathered was "to break bread," the celebration of the Lord's Supper.
So, if you have to delete something from Sunday morning services you can safely delete the sermon. You can also safely delete the worship. But the one thing you can't remove is the Lord's Supper. Because the Lord's Supper is the reason you have gathered.
That's how we see it in the Churches of Christ. We are called to church to celebrate the Lord's Supper, to remind each other in ritual and word--"do this in memory of me"--of Jesus's life, death and resurrection. That is the central function of the Christian assembly.
In this the Churches of Christ are similar to Catholics. You go to Mass to celebrate the Eucharist. In the Catholic Mass the singing is minimal, the homily is short. The focus of the experience is on the Eucharist. That is why you have come. Which is very similar in theological impulse to the Churches of Christ.
To be sure, though, in the Churches of Christ our worship service and sermons can get out-sized. But the Lord's Supper is never skipped on Sunday. Any given Sunday, sermons will get shortened. Fewer songs will get sung. All done to accommodate the Lord's Supper. Any given Sunday you do what you have to do in worship planning to get the service down to the allotted time, but you cannot skip the Lord's Supper in the Churches of Christ.
Because the Lord's Supper is the reason we gather.
