Thoughts On The Mandate For Corporate Worship

Thoughts On The Mandate For Corporate Worship In The NT (or lack of it)
Unknown author

The dynamic of our relationship to God—that it is a corporate one, not just an individual one (1 Cor. 12)—necessitates a corporate expression and the corporate dialogue of revelation and response.

It’s inconceivable that believers would gather together, those whose only real unifying link is the One who redeemed them, and would then talk only to each other and not to Him.

Hebrews 2:12 (quoting Psalm 22:22):

I will proclaim Your name to my brethren
And in the midst of the congregation (ekklesia!) I will sing Your praise.

The use of “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16) implies a corporate gathering.

Perhaps the problem in our age is that the gathering has been institutionalized, whereas it seems to have been quite natural (even daily!) in Acts.

The testimony of 1 Corinthians 12 & 14 and Hebrews 10:19-25 speak pretty clearly of gatherings which at least included worship.

Romans 15:5-6: How else but gathered together could we “with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”?

Perhaps another reason for our difficulty is how so many Protestants (probably as an overreaction to Catholic abuses) have played down the importance of the Lord’s Supper (which for most of church history was celebrated in some fashion every Sunday, if not more often). The Lord’s Supper is by definition a communal act (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16-17; 11:17-18, 33-34; 14:23: “come together;” Wainwright says that this expression became a technical term for the corporate gathering). Could not our neglect of the Supper be one reason we have trouble justifying our “coming together”?