Communion

I had a thought when I read the section on Communion.  It wasn’t something that Ashton (with Davis) directly said but it had to do with it.  I caught myself thinking back to four different churches (three of which were different denominations) that I have attended that have done communion in four different ways.

 In my first non-denominational church they had communion in the back of the building where if you wanted to participate in it you could go and take communion at the end or even during the service in the hallway or even take the to-go communion cup and bread home with you (I know someone is going to make fun of the ‘to-go communion cup’, but actually I liked it.  Not so that I could take it home but because our family was able to send it to my grandma who watches church on TV because she doesn’t like to drive to go to church.  She was able to partake in communion at home with the church on TV).  

The next church was also a non-denominational church.  We took communion every week.  However, the way they did it was by passing a plate around the congregation.  Everyone take juice and bread from the plate and sat in silence with God on their own.

The third church was a pentecostalish/baptistish something!  There we just didn’t take communion every Sunday.  I don’t know if they did it at some point throughout the year but I know that within the time span of a couple months they didn’t take communion.

Finally, there’s the anglican church that I’m at now.  Every Sunday we take communion.  Everyone individually gets up and walks to the front of the church to receive bread and wine.  And then continues back to there original seats.  

Ashton mentions that Cranmer did it at a table setting where it was exemplified as being part of a meal. (p. 102)  Also, Ashton refers to a comment by David Peterson: ‘The Lord’s Supper, which has so often throughout church history been understood as a means of deepening the personal communion of believers with their means of deepening the personal communion of believers with their Lord, is clearly meant to focus the eyes of the participants on one another as well as on God,” Ashton goes on to explain that when we take communion we see that it is more than us who Christ died for. (p.105) I think that this is a good point.  However, I don’t think I’m allotted enough time in the communion part of the service to be able to think about everyone who is receiving communion as well as having some personal time with God.

 Do I need to start taking communion on my own so that I can have that personal time with God in remembering what He’s done for me as an individual?  Also, me bringing up the different ways of how communion was presented to a body of believers made me think about whether we should change up how we do communion on Sundays?  Or maybe even if some Sunday’s we shouldn’t do communion as a body?  So is there a certain way we are suppose to partake in communion because of a certain reason?

 Whether we should do communion every Sunday or not is a completely different topic so i didn’t want to get into that.  So DON’T ANSWER THAT QUESTION! Thanks