With Good Friday fast approaching nearly every church will be having communion services as part of those events, or as part of Easter celebrations. For many churches communion is also a regularly scheduled event throughout the year. As a guy who is pretty much a professional church visitor (either because of singing or just because we can't find a church we really like), I have some advice for churches that plan to have communion in their services.
Explain how it will be done.
That sounds pretty simple, but most churches operate as though everyone in the room is familiar with that church's rituals and procedures. The fact is there are about as many ways to conduct the communion part of a service as there are denominations, and for someone visiting your church who is unfamiliar with how you do it the experience can be somewhat intimidating.
Such was the case last Sunday for my wife and I. We visited a local Lutheran church to check out their "Traditional" service and discovered that among the 200 or so in attendance we were the youngest people in the room... and not by a small margin. Toward the end of the service they planned to have their regular monthly communion. The pastor held up a large loaf of bread, broke it in half, and got ready to start serving communion. No explanation was given as to how this would work. All we knew was we were apparently going to have go down to the altar to do it.
Were we supposed to carve off a hunk of the bread ourselves? Would we be served by someone else? We were supposed to wait for a cue before we partook of the elements? It was all a mystery and as they prepared to start I decided the best course of action was a hasty retreat. We left. I'm sure the other people were thinking "sinners...heretics...etc." as we walked out, but we found the whole set-up rather uncomfortable.
I've been in services where the elements were distributed to everyone and then the pastor led the service and we all partook together. I've been in services were each person, when passed the tray with the bread and the juice (we never used real wine) served themselves as the tray came by without prompting from the pastor. They took the break, drank a cup, and passed the tray to the next guy. All rather clinical.
I've also been in a Christian church were communion was served every week and they had these fancy pre-packaged set-ups that had a sealed cup of grape juice on the bottom, and then separate sealed wafer on top of the cup. It was kind of like a Lunchables version of communion.
When my wife was growing up in the Methodist church communion was served at the altar and everyone was supposed to drink from the same cup. Her parents refused to partake because of the obvious health problems that could cause.
I really don't care how your church does communion. I don't think there's a right or wrong way to conduct the service. All I ask is that when you get ready to have a communion service do the visitors a favor and explain the procedure. Making people uncomfortable on their first visit to the church is a guaranteed way to ensure they won't be back.
Posts
2 comments:
Why not just observe for the first Sunday, and discuss it with the pastor after the service?
Roman Catholic churches will only give Communion to Roman Catholics; very formal and restrictive. The Anglican Catholic church I attend does Communion every Sunday. They accepted my Roman Catholic Baptism and Confirmation. I couldn't imagine the priest taking a break from the liturgy to give a Communion 101 lesson. That would be like going to a Shakespeare play, and halfway through the actors turning to the audience to take questions. Too disruptive.
If you at all liked the Lutheran church, call the pastor and meet with him. Lutherans are very cool.
And if you want to try something really different, come to High Mass at an Anglican Catholic church. The music will blow you away.
When I was church-hopping and looking for a church way back when, my solution was the same as Nightingale's: I made it a practice to only observe Communion if it was my first time at a church. As you say, there are sooo many different ways it's practiced! If someone said anything I just whispered "This is my first time here so I'd just like to watch."
My church (Episcopalian) gives Communion every Sunday. We actually have "directions" for Communion printed on the back of the bulletin specifying who may participate (i.e., any baptized Christian is welcome) and how to do it (i.e., you may have the wafer dipped in the chalice or drink directly from the chalice). Back-of-the-bulletin instructions seems like an easy solution because it's in a place where anyone will see it and hopefully feel welcome, yet it doesn't interrupt the liturgy.
Tying in with another post you did the other day: as Nightingale says, Anglican music is great! Very traditional and lots of male singers.
Best wishes,
Laura
Post a Comment