'...the weekly gatherings of the local church to hear the preached word should be understood as the primary dynamic and driving force of church life, alongside the gatherings for corporate prayer. All the other contexts in which Bibles are opened, read or discussed, have supportive rather than a normative role in church life. Or, to put it bluntly, a church will be a church as long as it gathers to hear the word, even if non of its members meets in small groups or even reads the Bible on their own! And conversely, if they willfully neglect the gathering of the church under the preached word they are not properly a church, even if they do all these other things. The writer to the Hebrws does not tell them, "Don't neglect your Quiet Time"; he says, "Let us not give up meeting together" (Heb.10:25), because that's where they sit together under the preached word of God.'
Christopher Ash, The Priority of Preaching, p.99.
