I recently saw yet another article doing the rounds concerning the importance of meeting twice on a Sunday. Sometimes this is couched in terms of absolute necessity and mandate, other times more an important thing that we should all aspire to. I have written about this issue before and thought I would repost two pieces addressing some specific arguments to this effect.
Before you get to them, I may as well highlight the essential points that roll around again and again that are never properly addressed:
- There is no biblical prescription for two services on a Sunday
- Most arguments mandating two services on Sundays prove too much
- The patterns in scripture and church history don’t support a two-service mandate
- If you want to have two services on a Sunday, this is perfectly legitimate but a matter of freedom
The key points are the first and last. In the fact of no biblical mandate, the number of times we meet on a Sunday is a matter of freedom. What we do is largely going to be driven by context and circumstances, knowing what best serves our people.
For more fulsome comments, interacting with some specific posts made by two-service-model advocates, you can read the following two posts. It is worth reading them both because the original posts they respond to don’t advance identical arguments: