The January 2026 Website Update
January 2026 Website Update:
The subject for January is Communion and The Lord’s Prayer. And specifically, my question is, why don’t churches have Communion every Sunday, and also, why don’t churches have a Congregational recitation of The Lord’s Prayer every Sunday?
These questions arise for me because I see both Communion and The Lord’s Prayer as precious gifts that Jesus gave us in the New Testament. Of course, many Protestant churches do appropriately preach the Gospel of Jesus every Sunday, but why don’t they add these other two gifts that Jesus gave us? I am seeing a number of Protestant churches beginning to add Communion every Sunday but many others still limit Communion to once a month or less.
Communion according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26: For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Why wouldn’t we want to celebrate communion at least every Sunday?
The Lord’s Prayer: When Jesus was preaching the Sermon on the Mount he taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. A very key part of The Lord’s Prayer is Matthew 6:10: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This verse, in my opinion, has not been given appropriate attention in our churches today. In Bruner’s commentary on Matthew on page 300 of the first volume, he says: “Only two modern scientific interpreters of Matthew, to my knowledge, understand the coming of the kingdom in a less than end-time way…for either the gradual penetration on earth of that kingdom (Trilling, 134), or Gundry, 106…sees “a prayer that at the present time more people become children of God through taking on themselves the yoke of discipleship and so do the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven.” Bruner’s commentary was published in 2004 and in 2008 N. T. Wright published Surprised By Hope. And I include how Wright addressed this topic on pages 43 & 44 of my new book Bringing Heaven to Earth & The Intermediate Heaven: “When describing his book Wright says, “The book Surprised By Hope attempts to reflect the Lord’s Prayer itself when it says, “Thy kingdom come on earth as in heaven.” That remains one of the most powerful and revolutionary sentences we can ever say. As I see it, the prayer was powerfully answered at the first Easter and will finally be answered fully when heaven and earth are joined in the City of New Jerusalem.” He goes on to say, “Our task in the present…is to live as resurrection people in between the first Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.” My final comment on Matthew 6:10 is by Dr. Chauncey Crandall the author of Touching Heaven where Dr. Crandall gives many examples of how he has been helping bring heaven to earth. Here is his comment about Matthew 6:10: When Jesus prayed, “Father in heaven…Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” He wasn’t giving us a sweet sentiment with which to soothe ourselves; I believe it was a battle cry to all who would call him Lord and Savior. We are to go to war on this earth with this truth on our lips: we can have hope because heaven is.”
I pray that more churches decide to make Communion a key part of every Sunday service. And further I pray that more Protestant churches start including a Congregational recitation of The Lord’s Prayer in their Sunday services.