The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ

Denomination·Founded 1927 CE·No membership roll exists and none can, since there is no body to keep one. The Christian Standard directory listed about 5,200 congregations at its last compilation, down from nearly 6,800 six years earlier, and a new count was under way as of late 2024. Estimates of adherents commonly run above a million and are not from an audited source.

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Christian StandardArchiveDisciples of Christ Historical Society

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Rite of The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ

Weekly communion, and the invitation left to you.

The elements are passed every Sunday and the invitation is characteristically neither fenced nor formally open: the person at the pew decides. It is a small thing that carries the whole ethos — the congregation will not adjudicate your standing.

⏱ Weekly — communion at every Sunday service◌ The congregation, with the invitation left to conscience
Add to My Beliefs →
What happensElders pray over the loaf and cup and the trays are passed; the invitation is usually that this is between the person and God rather than a fenced or an explicitly open table
What it needsElders, bread, cup, and the first day of the week
What it aims atThat the practice be kept weekly without being administered by clergy
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this rite is held

The communion practice sits deliberately between the Churches of Christ, where the table is understood as belonging to the immersed, and the Disciples, where it is announced as open to all without qualification. In most independent Christian Churches the presiding elder says something to the effect that this is a matter between you and God and invites those who are in Christ to partake, leaving the boundary uninspected. Elders preside — lay men in the great majority of congregations — and the minister may have no part in it. Baptisms often happen in the same service, in a baptistry set behind the platform where the congregation can see, and the immersion of a convert is treated as the emotional centre of the movement's worship.

The same ground, other faiths

rites that share this one's ideas
The Eucharist. Christianity Go deeper →
The Mass. Catholicism Go deeper →
The liturgy is heaven on earth. Eastern Orthodoxy · core tenet Go deeper →
Word and sacrament. Lutheranism Go deeper →
The sacrament meeting. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Go deeper →
The Holy Qurbana. The Church of the East Go deeper →

The conversation

argument stays attached to the rite it is about All discussion →

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Where next

The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ's Practice roomback up one layer Propose a change to this riteone button — it routes to the review pool

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

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