Every church I went to when I was growing up and during my college years had an invitation at the end of pretty much every worship service. The invitation is a time where people are invited to the front of the church to respond to the preaching. Unbelievers are encouraged to come forward and accept Christ (or talk to somebody about the possibility), and believers are encouraged to confess their sins and "get right with God."
There are problems with this method. People often feel that if they don't go forward every Sunday that there is something wrong with them. Often the same people go forward, not because they are meeting with God necessarily, but because they don't want to be seen as someone who never goes forward. Some people never go forward because they are concerned that people will think they are bad people.
This throws a shadow over the intended purpose of the invitation, which was to prompt the hearer to commune with God regarding what they heard.
Personally, I'm not vehemently opposed to "invitations." Some people are. But over the years it has seemed to me that they weren't very effective for their intended purpose. If there's a better way to encourage the congregation to commune with God, confess their sins, and seek his guidance and strength for the week ahead, we should try it out.
The reason I started thinking about this was that our church (which doesn't do invitations, and never has as far as I know) recently started celebrating the Lord's Supper on a weekly basis. Up until that time, we had been doing this monthly like every other church I've been in.
So I started thinking about what happens when we take communion.
We meditate on the work of Christ on the cross. We contemplate what we have just heard preached, and how we fail to live up to God's high standards. We grieve over our sins, but we rejoice that Christ's blood is sufficient to cover our sins, past and future.
Beyond this, we commune with God. The Lord's Supper is one of only two sacraments given to us by Christ. Grace is transmitted to us in this special time of communion with God in a way that does not happen at any other time.
So the short of it is, communion accomplishes everything an invitation hopes to accomplish, and so much more. It was also instituted by Christ, unlike the invitation. Wouldn't it be a much better idea to partake of the Lord's Supper more frequently than to use the invitation? I'm not saying every church should necessarily have weekly communion, but it's a much better approach than the invitation.
P.S. I accidentally posted this with comments turned off. That has been corrected. Comment away.
Hmm...communion every week. Sounds intriguing.
I think that much is made of the “as often as you partake” wording to make a biblical time frame subjective, but the New Testament churches seemed to partake more than once a week. I think I like the idea of every week, given that Communion is such an important part of worship and (even w/o considering invitations) is one of the few commanded acts of worship.
What I mean to say is that we put many good things together every week to make a worship service - prayer, chant, song, meditation - but we leave out a commanded one 3 out of 4 times.
Amen! I’ve been trying to get people to agree to celebrate communion every week for quite some time now, but no one else seems very enthusiastic about the idea. Can I move to AZ and start coming to your church?
Sure, no problem. Our music might not quite be as raucous as you like, though. 
Alright, but I’ll sing my hymns with a drumbeat in my head 
.
Actually, some of my favorite songs are still hymns, believe it or not.
I never thought of the comparison before. Great idea! Especially if you have it after the sermon, although at our church, we have it monthly and do it before the sermon as part of our corporate worship time.
For the first part in a great series exploring why communion should be weekly, see this post by my friend Gage Browning.
Also, have any of you guys thought about having Communion as more of a meal. I think Biblically we should ditch the thimble-sized cup.
Ah and then there’s the wine question....
Regardless, I appreciate your post here.
Blessings from the Cross,
Bob Hayton
We started having a potluck on the first sunday of every month back when we had monthly communion. It wasn’t really communion as a meal, but it added in some of the fellowship with other believers. We still do this on the first Sunday of every month, so it’s obviously not as closely linked to communion now.
But I think the Biblical example is of a meal, and would like to see that happen. I’m not sure how I see that playing out, though.
