Church Services

“Bread”

165 Comments

We give a lot of attention to the “wine” being Welches grape juice but did you ever really stop and think about what is eaten as “bread” in the Lord’s supper? Even as unleavened bread goes, most of that stuff is pretty gross. And teeny.

165 thoughts on ““Bread””

    1. Go ahead. Say it…..Priority Posting!

      (We’ll see if this catches on 😆 )

      1. I tried to make a Priority Posting, but I made the mistake of sending it FedEx. It just now arrived.

    2. At the church I pastor, some of the ladies bake unleavened bread (like the Jewish passover loaf) and I break it into pieces (using latex gloves) before handing it to the participants. I’m going to try for bigger cups next time, though. And it doesn’t have to be Welch’s…Walmart brand is just fine!

  2. Mmmm. Just what I wanted when I’m starving in church waiting to go home. Does it come with a Welch’s grape juice chaser?

    1. Reminds me of that Lyle Lovett song…

      “To the Lord let praises be,
      It’s time for dinner now let’s go eat”

        1. Or for our Catholic brethren:

          Hail Mary, full of grace. Bless me now, as I stuff my face. Aaaahhh-mehn.

        3. Our old youth group (unofficial) mealtime grace was “Rub-a-dub-dub, Thanks for the grub, Let’s eat.”

        4. My brother (now a Methodist minister) was asked to say grace at the table. He bowed his head and mumbled A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P. His point was that people usually spout something by rote and don’t pay attention to what they are saying.

          Of course, his wife gave him an elbow to the ribs, which made him amend his blessing with the following:

          “Take these letters, let them be a canticle of praise to Thee.”

          We were laughing to hard to eat anything after that.

        6. My dad asked me to pray before breakfast one morning. I think I was about 6. I’m sure I was half asleep b/c I stood next to my chair, put my hand over my heart and started to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I finished, opened my eyes, and my dad was laughing so hard he was crying. 😆

    2. Why is everyone so certain that Jesus turned the water into Welch’s? Is there no room for a different interpretation on this? Why has no one considered that perhaps He turned it into a nice Ocean Spray cranberry juice, or maybe a lovely Mott’s apple cider? You people need to do some soul-searchin’ and get right with Gid. 🙂

      2. Will you realize that grape juice will ferment fairly rapidly naturaly without refregration or perservaties. And that 2000 years ago they had no refregration or perservaties. The grape harvest in Israel is in Aug-September and Passover is in April, you will come to the conlusion that there was no way that they were drinking grape juice at passover.

        1. While I am sure that all of the various juice references were for modern IFB (or most any evangelical) communion I must whole heartedly applaud you for recognising that it was, indeed, alcoholic wine that Jesus not only made but served at the last supper… which means that he probably drank it too.

    3. Certainly, you can’t be hungry after getting the family up and ready for that 9am Sunday school, and then sitting through that 2 hour service, including full-length sermon, 11 verse invitation, and extended communion (including the communion sermon). You don’t need to rely on food for nourishment. The joy of the Lord SHOULD be your strength.

  3. I remember my former Baptist pastor saying that he didn’t want the kids to drink the juice out of the leftover cups. Seems like the good pastor believes in a form of transubstantiation if there is something sacred about the “fruit of the vine”.

    1. LOL! I must have been 7 or 8 yrs old, but I can clearly remember getting my hide tanned by my old man (the pastor) when a buddy of mine and I went ran into the church kitchen after the service and started chugging all the left over Welch’s grape juice. One of the busybody “sisters” ratted us out. Of course the other kid got off scott-free, but being the pastor’s kid, an example had to be made of me…

      1. I made the mistake of asking permission first rather than begging forgiveness.

    2. I really think it’s crzy when they pour it back into the bottle, and serve it up again next month. Yep … welches grape juice that sat out for an hour or so, then was poured back into the bottle, and, finally, is a month or so old.

    2. By the way, the world’s smallest known fish (and smallest vertebrate) is Paedocypris progenetica, a carp family member which lives in acidic swamp waters in Sumatra. The biggest known adult was 7.9 mm (0.31 inches) long.

      I know that’s sort of tangential to the subject matter here, but how often do I have a chance to work this information into a conversation?

  6. Shouldn’t the title of this blog entry be “Oyster Crackers”?

    or

    “Preforming sacraments as little as possible.” Because we don’t believe in ‘ritual’, therefore ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’, should be done as little as possible?

    1. That’s actually one thing I like about the new (soon to be ex-Baptist) church that I just started going to about. We have communion every Sunday.

  7. After yesterday’s excitement, this is just lame. Darrell, I think you are slipping. Maybe you could post that exciting video of you driving your car again.

      1. But, according to the forum, Darrell banned him so I guess you can’t count on that anymore.

        1. If you check the time on Darrell’s post, he said that after this post. Whooptie-do, man.

        3. The management reserves the right to change its mind given the correct circumstances.

        5. No, I’m a benevolent dictator.

          The difference is that my rulings don’t pretend to affect your spiritual welfare. 🙂

        6. That’s what makes you benevolent. The dictators who claim or want control over your soul are not so benevolent.

        8. I’m guessing our boy has some serious anger issues towards your ability to embrace your blatant sinning! 🙂

      1. Read yesterday’s comments. It takes about 20-30 comments down before you get the feeling of just how wrong our “friends” were…

    3. Well, Jonathan, you can always come by my lesbian strip club if you need excitement. I have some men in the back if you swing that way. :mrgreen:

      1. in all fairness (and i’m not condoning, or in a position to condone, his previous comments), i think this is the same type of ad hominem attack jonathan used.

        but … eh, it’s the internet. i don’t really care that much. 🙄

  8. Can I Jesus Juke this post? Has anybody ever had communion with their immediate family in the privacy of their home? I’d like to start doing it in all honesty.

    nicodemusatnite.com

    1. Not quite in the home with immediate family, but I have had some non-traditional communion experiences that lead me to believe it would be fine – and should be encouraged.

      In one church, communion was held ever 6 weeks. But, they strongly encouraged everyone to join a small group, and those small groups were expected to also have communion together every 6 weeks. By offsetting the small group communion from the church one, everyone would get communion every 3 weeks.

      In that same church, a bunch of girls went camping – not a church event, we just all knew each other from church. We finished up the experience with communion – one of the most meaningful communions of my life.

      Finally, my close family and I shared communion in my dad’s hospital room with crackers and apple juice. It was mostly just expressing the fellowship we had as we dealt with an emergency together, and remembering the One who kept us together and gave us strength.

      To me, communion is about remembering that we’re on the same journey, we should walk it together in fellowship, by remembering why we’re on that road – Jesus’ sacrifice. Sorry, a bit off topic at the end…

      2. I have never, ever had communion except for the typical IFB way: deacons hand out the elements while the piano or organ quietly plays. Our church just within the last six months has has the juice and the bread up front with a church member at both tables helping handing out the bread and pouring the juice while a CCM song about communion plays over the sound system. It’s very different for me and I like how it makes me approach the table in a new way.

      3. I’m going to have to remember that one – Jesus Juked. Had it happen to me on Facebook just the other day.

        As for non-traditional communion, lots of Christian supply companies sell portable communion kits for use in hospitals, homes, etc…

        http://www.christianbook.com/remembranceware-legacy-portable-communion/pd/106317?kw=106317&en=froogle&p=1013824&cm_mmc=CBDfeeds-_-froogle-_-churchsupply-_-106317

        There are several ministers in my immediate family, and I know a couple of them have these.

    2. “Jesus Juke”? I have no idea what that means, but it sounds totally rad.

        1. That’s brilliant! Glad to finally have a name for that Facebook irritant.

      2. Ha I never heard that term…I like it and shall now use it. I’ve been Jesus juked hundreds of times. I’m just not spiritual enough for some I guess. Oh as a side note @Charlie Chang, My family and I shared easter with some close friends at their beach condo and we did not go to church (I know, according to some I will be condemned to hell) We had a great time in Gods Word and communed with ham lamb and tea

    3. @Charlie I have never had communion with my immediate family but I have had communion in my home with my small group. I live in a communal type housing situation and we sometimes take communion together. I always though taking communion more often would make me do it just to do it. If that makes sense… Honestly it really reminds me of my sin and reconciliation with God.

      1. According to 1 Corinthians 11:18 communion was a “Church” gathering experience, like the other ordinance it is a public thing done before a body of believers.

        JJ!

        1. Where two or three are gathered…we are the church. It isn’t something done only during Sunday Service.

        2. Where two or three are gathered is not referencing that “we are the church”

          It is talking abotu church discipline.

    4. @Charlie…we have taken communion in a home in a small group setting. It was a very special experience as that group of people were very important to us.

      Communion in general makes me twitchy still though. My mind never seems very centered on what is actually going on because I think I’ve been through the ritual about a gazillion times in my life.

    5. Yes. It’s what we did this year because Easter week was ridiculously busy. And I really dislike our Good Friday communion service, so we had a family communion service on Thursday.

    6. I know I’m becoming the queen of post-years-after-everyone-else-has-moved-on, but… 😉

      My husband and I do take communion at home sometimes. We do it all the time when we have other believers over. It’s not always a serious evening sort of thing. Sometimes we just feel the Spirit prompting us, and we do, with saltines and wine, usually. In those times, it becomes very easy for people to be real with each other, and if all we do is play board games for the rest of the night, we feel more in harmony and fellowship with each other and with God.
      My two coppers. 🙂

  10. I prefer that little teeny tiny wafer to what we’ve been served at our last two churches.

    Church 1 – A deacon thought it would be funny to put MARSHMALLOWS in the communion trays instead of the communion bread. We had boys from a nearby detention center visiting that day. The pastor never flinched and SERVED THEM. That deacon got reprimanded, and he and his wife were indignant. (It was a SBC. The pastor is a wimp, but this was baaaddd.) Someone behind me said, “What do we get for “juice” – Pepsi?” I almost laughed outloud b/c I was thinking the same thing.

    Church 2 – Our former pastor served Pepperidge Farm GOLDFISH. On purpose! One of the first things we did after he left was give the goldies to the nursery and buy communion bread.

    Needless to say, I often miss going to a larger church that isn’t in the mountains. @@

    1. I had a lot of trouble not laughing at my home church’s communion services when we decided to switch from bread cubes to unleavened bread. We bought Jewish kosher matzos bread from the grocery store. This particular stuff is not only unleavened, but cooked until crisp like crackers. I had a hard time keeping the giggles down.

      “This is His body, which was broken for us. Eat ye of it.”

      “Crunch, crunch, crunch…”

      :mrgreen:

      1. Matzos are pretty standard fare in Anglican churches around here. There’s rice crackers too, for ppl with wheat/gluten allergies.

      2. I remember when our church switched to the Jewish kosher matza stuff. A BIG deal was made of the fact that these tasty 😈 little treats were Jewish. Which means they are baked by Jewish people. Jewish people are from isreal. And anything out of Isreal is good. Amen?

        1. I ate some naan the other day. Does that make me a Hindu?
          No, wait, the people who cooked it are Sikhs. So I guess I’m a Sikh.

          (I know they’re Sikhs because I know the people who run the restaurant.)

      3. At the last IFB church I attended they had these little round wafers that stuck to whatever unfortunate surface of your mouth they happened to touch, so after communion everyone looked like dogs trying to get peanut butter out of their mouths.

    2. I’ve used french fries and diet Coke as the elements in communion. Goldfish crackers & fruit punch, marshmallows & Pepsi, or official communion wafers & sacramental wine are all fine by me. It’s not the actual elements that are important, it is the act of remembering.

      I’m not comfortable with denying communion to anyone who wants to receive.

  11. Hey at least most of you got “professionally made” wafers. When I was growing up, my old man was very adamant about the whole “unleavened” bread thing, but he refused to use wafers that were sold at the Christian bookstore because he wanted to “avoid the appearance” of anything Catholic. His solution…I’ll make my own (keep in mind, he barely knew how to boil water). So he came up with his own recipe, which was basically flour and water….needless to say it was the grossest thing I’d ever tasted.

    1. Growing up, our pastor’s wife made some pie-crust type bread that was actually kinda yummy. Sorry you had to eat baked paper-mache. 😆

      1. My grandmother made the communion bread at their old American Baptist church years ago. She passed the recipe on to my mom who made it for nearly 30 years in the GARBC church we landed in after escaping IFB. Mom passed that along to someone else in the church when she and Dad went to a different church. They are still using it. It’s a very buttery pie crust-like concoction and is quite tasty. My niece liked to take the bits along the edge that got too brown and weren’t square and put them on ice cream if she was at the house when Mom made the stuff. Is that sacrilegious? You know, I think my grandmother would have thought so.

        We use those yucky wafers that taste like styrofoam at our base chapel. However, I do like it when the chaplain, in his excellent comments, says Jesus’ body was broken for us and everyone snaps the little disks in two. You can hear it across the auditorium. It is very meaningful. I have never seen that done in a fundy church. But then, they’d probably never use those wafers because Catholics use them, after all.

      2. Jesus was full of sweetness, no problem with a touch of sugar in that bread. 😛

    2. add a little olive oil to your mix, then as soon as it comes out of the overn lather it with butter and it is very tasty.

  12. I think communion has gotten a bit anemic. We eat and drink the same thing, pastor says the same thing every first of the month, six weeks, quarter, whatever your time table is. My memorable communion experience was in Ireland as a teen. We each tore off a chunk from an actual loaf of bread, and drank wine. Not a lot, of course. I also attended a Passover meal at my Jewish friend’s house. I think seder suppers are very good history lessons.

  13. HaHa! Little tiny cracker pellet = “bread of life”

    All my life, I’ve been in churches that had communion once a month. Usually we used larger crackers that we broke into pieces. Sometimes a deacon would buy the precut types as seen above. It always reminded me of taking medicine instead of sharing a meal.

    Recently we’ve used homemade fresh-baked bread. We’re balancing which symbolism to show: the unleavened bread which is more accurate but is rather bland or regular bread which is easier to eat and reminds us of the joyful wedding feast to come.

    1. As a teen, our church also used crackers that were broken into pieces (I seriously hope that whoever broke them had washed their hands first). My sister and I made it a habit to see who could manage to nab the larger cracker piece.

      1. The church I grew up in also used broken up crackers. All of them were pre-broken except for one, which the pastor would break right after he read the Scripture passage. I too always tried to get the biggest one until Dad gave me stern looks and told me it was not appropriate communion behavior. After that pastor left, the church switched to the dinner mint size crackers.

  14. Thankfully English nonconformists just get their bread from the local shops. The grape juice too… sadly. I prefer real wine! Ordinary bread is so much nicer than the ricepaper circles we had when I was C of E. Those things were so dry they stuck to your tongue and you needed the wine (which tasted like incense) to dissolve it off!

    1. Our C of E Church does use bread from the local shops, but we do have real wine as well.

      1. I work in a C of E church. We go for bread roll and Fairtrade Communion wine. It’s almost port-like, and is amazing. Seriously, I could just drink the stuff with a meal, no problem.

  15. Some church friends refer to Communion “bread” like the piece in the picture as “fish food.”
    However, as a fishkeeper, I would never feed my fish something with so little nutritive value.

  16. There was NEVER enough grape juice in those little cups to help wash down these gross, chewy crackers.

  17. I kinda do have a problem with the bread that is used in most baptist churches. Christ took the bread and broke it. It didn’t come pre-broke. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9JUqS4Q2A0 Anyhow. I guess I feel that if you’re doing it in remembrance of Him, and He took the bread, and broke it, as His body would be broken, it seems to me that we should do the same.

    1. You have to know it’s a time thing. Jesus broke the bread for 13 people. The pastor would be up there fumbling around forEVER breaking up the bread for even a small congregation.

      I would like to hear/study some ideas for making it more personal and relevant.

      2. Hey at my church we just split the thing in half, and pass it down the two aisles….. Works for us.. Everyone just takes a piece off of it…

        1. How exactly does that work? I’m such a germaphobe – is it passed on a plate or something? How you can tear off a piece w/o handling the loaf? (I am asking seriously here.)

          And I’m not just a germaphobe for the sake of being picky – I have a son w/a chronic illness that I try to protect as much as I can. 😕

        2. Here. I’ll give you a rundown.
          I go to what’s known as a Plymouth Brethren church. Check it out on Wikipedia if you want. We have the Lord’s Supper, or communion, whatever you wanna call it, every Sunday. There’s no one who “runs” the service, you just come in and sit down… Around 9(when the meeting starts) one of the men will call out a hymn, or read a few verses and share focusing on the Lord and His work for us. And it goes on like that for about an hour. Then someone will go up and break the bread in half, and put it on two plates. The plates get passed around, and you just rip a piece of bread out of the half loaf…. Then they pass the cup…. Then it’s over……

        3. Yeah, you just rip a piece out…. When you think about it, you’re the only one touching it…. once you take it out, it’s…. well, gone…… 🙂

        4. Tammy, I think I’ve seen this before – it’s like you’ve got a thick crusted loaf and people are passing that around and pinching a piece out of the soft inside, so you’re not actually eating the part people touched, unless you want to. Not terribly germy, but I’d still try to be the first person to handle it (or use hand sanitizer afterward) given what I know about hand germs. 😉

        5. Yup. You’ve got it. Besides, it tastes awesome! It’s homemade bread!

        7. You’re from the Plymouth Brethren? That’s awesome! I go to the Gospel Halls, so pretty much the same traditions (and similar origins–I’m not too up on my history, but I think both movements started around the same time in the UK, just the “Gospel Hall” stuff started in Scotland instead of Plymouth). That sounds exactly like how we hold our Sunday morning meeting.

        9. Does your Brethren church have “Love Feasts”? My adopted family is Brethren, and they used to observe them once a year. I’m not sure if they still do.

          I don’t know if I could do the foot-washing part. I don’t even let my husband touch my feet. 😕

        10. Well, there’s different groups called “Brethren”. You may be thinking of something else. We don’t do love feasts or feet washing……..

    2. Here’s a possible solution: start your own church. Then you can do communion in whatever fashion you like.

        1. My suggestion was meant for Bob, not you. However, church planting is always a good idea.

        2. Cause there aren’t enough churches around, and establishing & maintaining separation is job 1?

        3. @RobM, what are you talking about? You have a problem with church planting? Not sure what your beef is with me, but it’s not cool. You came at me on the forum and now you are coming at me over here. Did I do something to you?

        4. Unless you’re in Greenville, SC. Then the pastor must come to the glory garden and prostrate himself, rise and cross yourself saying Father, Son, and Holy Third. Also thou must send all thy munchkins in the flock to the glorious academy, where they will then continue on to the University. Where they will be universally hated for their great amount of freedom, being as they live off campus. Otherwise, yes. By all means separate. 😆

        5. I don’t have a church plant problem. I suspect you might if you assume the answer is to plant a new church.

          I’d be willing to bet the majority of communities have a ratio closer to 5:1 than 1:1 of churches to combination of starbucks & subways serving them.

        6. Actually, I don’t think planting churches is always a good thing. There are areas that already have a Gospel witness, and when a new church starts, they often start by stealing sheep from an already established church. Often the quickest way for such churches to grow is to claim that other churches are wrong in how they handle music or communion or evangelism or whatever.

          I think it’s often better instead of planting another church to join some churches. We have LOTS of tiny congregations keeping up their buildings with the tithes of 15 or 20 elderly saints. If they would be willing to join with another church, their tithes could go toward spreading the Gospel not paying taxes and upkeep on a building.

          I am in favor of church planting, but not always in every case. Also I’ve met a lot of IFB church planters who say “there isn’t a Bible-preaching church in this whole area” which is often false, but they discount the Bible-preaching churches because they aren’t KJVO or use CCM.

        7. Thanks, PW! I’m sure there are situations even in the states that a church plant makes sense. It would take some convincing to bring me on board in most situations. I just thought it was a bit overboard for a church plant to be option #1.

      2. My church does it exactly how I like. Looks like I don’t need to! :mrgreen:

    2. It makes me wonder what the “love feasts” of the early church were like. I used to have the impression that communion was part of a larger feast that they shared together.

      1. Reading “Going to Church in the First Century” by Robert Banks helped shed some light on that for me, PW. It’s a short, fictionalized account of how the house church gatherings of the first century believers centered on partaking of the Lord’s Supper as part of a shared meal. If you’ve never read it, I suggest you give it a quick read. 🙂

    2. That sounds perfect! I’m having a great time imagining a Fundy reaction to that suggestion. Not enough oxygen in the room for the gasp that would follow… Sound of hundreds spinning in their graves… A roar of outrage heard in space (yes, even through the vacuum)…

      Thanks for a great idea and the amusing mental pictures! :mrgreen:

  20. I was never really concerned about the broken saltine and grape juice, I was to worried that if I failed to confess every single sin I committed during the month that God would strike me dead on the spot. Communion made me sweat…you know I will be damned if I took it unworthily.

    1. That’s just the thing, Wheels, pointing to the Pelagianism inherent in IFB’ism. How on earth can anyome ever be worthy? Our unworthiness is the whole point of it all, isn’t it? If we could be worthy, there would have not been an Incarnation, Death and Resurrection, meaning there would be no Baptism or Holy Communion.

  21. We Lutherans take Holy Communion very seriously. Because we take it “For the forgivness of your sins, and the strenghtening of Your faith”.

    Our congregation is a bit more traditional too, in that we have HC every Sunday (only time we don’t have it is when or Pastor is away and their is no ordained minster in his place). We use those ‘Catholic’ wafers, and wine – actually port. And we have both thimbles, as well as the Common Cup (made out of silver – this is more hygenic).
    And we go up to receive it, kneeling at the altar railing.

    When we occassionaly do not have it, because of Pastoral absence, I feel cheated somehow…

    1. Oh yes, and all Confirmed members partake – my son will DV be confirmed the first Sunday of June, and after that he will partake. No grape juice either.

  22. Forgive me, but as a young lad in Hyles’ church, though the bread was teeny it really hit the spot and held me over until 1 o’clock or whenever it was that we actually had lunch.

    1. Josh, the Sunday Sack lunches had shake and bake fried chicken in them. MMMmmmMMMMm GOOD!

    2. HahaJosh! My boys favorite time was Lords supper…they thought the same thing.
      As did I!
      By the time we got home on Sunday morning and ate it was well past 2 and somehow that little bitty wafer sustained me.
      Miraculous! :mrgreen:

      1. You are absolutely right, well past 2 is much more accurate for most there since most live at least 30 minutes from the “local” church. :mrgreen:

  23. I always feel kind of like bringing a little packet of butter along on Sunday mornings, as we use actual bread–my grandmother bakes it, actually, and my grandparents take the leftovers home to feed it to the birds! Real wine, too, although it is nasty stuff… this is what comes of buying the cheap stuff! Two years in fellowship and I still have trouble not making a face when I take my sip.

  24. My Mom and Dad started to attend several years ago at my old fundy church, I left a couple of years ago, now they haven’t been to church for several weeks because the pastor won’t allow non-church members to partake of communion, they have attended the church for about 8 years but haven’t officially “joined”, therefore they are barred from receiving communion. Btw, the pastor “hides” the communion by having it only on Sunday nights, when the “real” faithful come out.

  25. My church did it only once a year. But our church was big, so it took a long time. However, I still wish we could do it more often.

  26. At the church I used to attend our pastor 😉 believed that when we took communion it was akin to…well…ahem.. 😳 physical intimacy.
    Thats my claim to fame. :mrgreen:

    2. I attended a wedding a couple weeks ago where the bride and groom took communion while everyone else watched.

      2. Mark…. I did mention Jack Schaap right before that….. How could you not see that coming?!

        1. Sarry, mang, I’ve been knocked out with a cold for the last day. So I’m not responsible for any awkwardness I might have created by … unintentional placement. 😯

          I just saw “communion,” then “wedding,” and though, “I’ve seen that.” Fail.

    3. Super creepy! I can never look at that sad little wafer the same way again! 😯

  27. As a Catholic, reading these posts, the way that some churches and some people describe communion seems sacriligous to me. We take Communion very seriously, as we remember Jesus said “Take eat, this is my Body. Take and drink, this is my Blood”. After the consecration by the priest, it IS the Body and Blood of Our Lord. We are warned that if we don’t take it seriously or mock it, we are bringing destruction upon ourselves (1 Cor. 11:27).

    The Apostles and Jesus taught us how to partake of the Lord’s Supper and it has been celebrated in this manner for the past 2000 years.

    Little crackers, Gold Fish, leavened bread, Welch’s – this is not the Lord’s Supper. You can call it what you want, but that’s not what it is.

    Come on down to your local Catholic or Orthodox church if you want to know how to celebrate the Eucharist.

    1. Lisa, I truly appreciate how my Catholic friends celebrate Communion/Lord’s Supper, and you’re right, we don’t always take this as seriously as Catholics do. I take the spiritual part of communion very seriously, but the elemements being tasteless wafer bread and super sweet grape juice representing something so important are comical to me. Baptists, especially Independant Fundamental Baptists (IBF) don’t believe in the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation, in which the elements are made Jesus’ body and blood. That will open its own can of worms.

    2. It might sound sacriligious to you, but nearly all of those people are quite serious about remembering the Lord’s death til He come with the cup (usually the unfermented fruit of the vine) and the unleavened bread. (I’ll give you that some of them do go too far – Gold Fish, marshmallows, pizza? – but I think those are aberrations.)

      On the other hand, I was at a Catholic church when the priest held up the wafer and said, “This is your God!” As a Baptist, that seems idolotrous to me.

    3. Lisa, add Lutheran, and (High Church) Anglican to your list. See my posts above.

    4. A hearty AMEN! to that Lisa. You just said everything that I have been thinking as I read the comments. Since becoming catholic 5 years ago communion has become so real to me. It also restores my soul. Brings grace to me also.

    5. If other elements are substituted as a joke, then that makes a mockery of the observance and I would have a problem with that. The times I’ve celebrated communion with alternative elements have been occasions of solemnity, beauty, and discovery.

      1. The man that substituted the marshmallows for the bread thought he was funny, and the fact that he couldn’t comprehend the seriousness of the mockery concerned the pastor (and my husband and I). He was not allowed to prepare

        I do see communion as a serious thing – an intimate time between me and my Savior.

    6. Having found less-than-traditional observances to sometimes be the most meaningful, I would venture to suggest that while there may be ideal elements for communion, any elements should be useable. My thinking is along the lines that a God who changes water into wine and wine into His blood really isn’t limited by the physical in accepting our worship and remembrance.

      However, *we* are another story when it comes to limitations 🙂

  28. We celebrate the Eucharist every Sunday, and everyone present who is baptized and in good standing in their church, old enough to eat the bread and drink the wine, does. My short experience in a fundamentalist association removed me from the Table for the entire year we were there; we were a church plant, so we weren’t members of the local body but of the sponsoring body. And since the sponsoring body was not there with us, we couldn’t take communion apart from them since the pastor couldn’t be there to see into our hearts and decide if we were worthy or not.

    “Unleavened” does not mean “no yeast”; I am amazed at how frequently this term is misunderstood. Unleavened means bread that has not been risen with a starter. (So yes, all that Amish Friendship bread we love to hate is leavened. Alas, not appropriate for communion.)

    If new yeast has been used, it is unleavened bread. White bread from the supermarket is unleavened. Sourdough, however, is leavened.

    1. Hunh? Every definition of “unleavened” I’ve ever seen says “flatbread” or”no yeast or other rising agent.” I’ve never found a recipe for communion bread that included any form of yeast-like anything. Where are you getting your info?

  29. My dad (IFB preacher) used to have fits when anyone served communion outside of the local church. As they did at the Bible college I attended, and other not-a-local-church places.

    I love our Anglican communion. We use the same wafers that the RCC church uses.

  30. Thanks for the post, Darrell! This has actually been something that I have begun to question in my own life. The church I currently go to serves the type of “cracker” in your picture along with something pretending to be grape juice.

    The thing that I have a problem with is this: Are the elements being presented the best the church can provide? Christ came as a perfect sacrifice to be the propitiation of our sins (I still like that word despite having it pounded into me at Fundy U). Nearly all denominations will agree that communion is meant to represent Christ’s sacrifice for our sins – it is representing our salvation. Since Christ was a perfect sacrifice, should not the communion elements be the best that can be provided? Would Christ be satisfied with “just enough”? Are we not told that He desires our best? Yet, the IFB will give out crackers and juice that people starving in third-world countries would refuse, and say that they are being “holy” because it isn’t like the [insert denomination] down the street. It seems to me that since communion is a representation of Christ’s perfect sacrifice, the elements should be the best that can be provided.

    1. What would you consider to be the best example of the elements? I ask out of curiousity; our church used to serve the Welch’s 100% juice (we are Baptist after all), but then switched to the wal-mart house brand. That really made me sad.

      1. I was not promoting a particular set of elements, but rather pointing out that whatever elements are provided should be of the best quality.

  31. Since I saw this post earlier today, the very slowly played song of “Break Thou the Bread of Life” has been playing, and very unwelcome mind you, through my head. In desperation to free my mind from the haunting memories of the organ playing this song every communion in my former fundy church, I broke out in an operatic soprano voice and belted out the song. My 3 year old looks at me and says, “Don’t sing that song! I don’t like it.” Oh, wise beyond his years, my dear son.

    No fundies in this house!

  32. As an ex-Catholic I would like to say that the RCC has the Eucharist “right” in terms of the seriousness and reverence in which the sacrament is regarded – and in its choice of Hosts-altar breads.

    First, the bread, like the Passover-type that Jesus plausibly used – has no leavening agent. Second, it is baked from a batter and baked on a waffle-iron kind of heater at a very high temperature. The result is a perfectly formed Host, imprinted with a Cross and/or other sacred words and symbols, that comes in whole wheat or white format, and is easily chewed and/or allowed to melt in the mouth. Granted, the Host is a very thin disk and not very suggestive of normal bread, but many parishes do serve larger hosts that do resemble bread. For speedy Mass/mass dissemination, the Catholic host can’t be beat. Also the Host does not crumble and therefore no parts of the sacrament are wasted or defiled.

    Second, and not desirous of starting any arguments, I would like to address what one poster here said about a priest who held up a Host and said, “This is your God”, which the poster thought was idolatrous.

    First, the priest should not have said that to begin with, because it is not part of the liturgy. The closest the liturgy comes is when the priest says of the Host: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”.

    Moreover, when the priest elevates the Host, he is not talking about the bread – he is talking about the change in the bread’s essence (its “substance”) that happens in Transubstantiation.

    If you don’t believe in Transubstantiation, then of course you are entitled to view it as “idolatrous” – from the logic of your own point of view.

    But within the Catholic understanding of Transubstantiation, the consecrated Host is bread only in appearance, and the worship is directed not to the physical bread (the “accidents”), but rather to what the bread has become, namely, Jesus’ flesh and blood.

    And, as with most Protestants, Catholics view Jesus as the second Trinitarian Person, and therefore God. Hence, when a Catholic sees God in the Eucharist, the Catholic is not being idolatrous. Far from it: the Catholic is doing the only appropriate act in the circumstances, namely, acknoweldging, praising, and praying to the Son as He suffuses the transformed Host.

    Again, I’m no longer Catholic, but a thorough understanding of what the RCC actually claims about the Eucharist and Transubstantition is indispensable for sorting out what is “right” and what is “wrong” in Catholicism 🙂

    1. Thanks for the explanation steveb1. I do not believe in Transubstantiaion but not that you have explained the concept it the litergy makes more sense.

  34. Main reason why, after Communion Sunday especially, I make sure to grab something to snack on when I grab the local newspaper.

Comments are closed.