Saturday, December 17, 2005

Wanted: Home-Group for Developing Emergentesque "Communion" Liturgies

Building on a previous post Communion: A New Perspective (nothing to do with Sanders, Dunn or Wright) I’m looking at trying to formulate a new way of doing communion particularly for those of an evangelical/emergent flavour. Let’s get away from the tid bits of bread and grape juice and break bread together in the name of the Lord Jesus the way that they did in the first century. Is there any folk out there in Scotland (or perhaps elsewhere if we can work it) who are willing to let a young NT scholar loose on their home-group and introduce strange biblical ideas about communion, the Lord's Supper and worship into their home-group meetings? This will hopefully lay the bedrock for a future study of communion in the early church and how to apply it to the postmodern church.

1 comment:

Dave Lynch said...

Mike, feel free to come and experiment with us at Tapestry, the exact logistics can be arranged easy enough but we currently celebrate around one loaf and one cup, not the wafer crumb and thimble of grape juice. We do miss out so much by substituting these two specifics. The tiny wafer and small personal cup reinforce our western view of personal individual faith; it damages community and does nothing to encourage reconciliation. I firmly believe that the Lord’s Supper should be a regular part of the life of the fellowship, as often as we meet if possible and preferably around and part of a shared meal. The way we have it in many evangelical protestant churches appears more like a ritualistic duty, and resembles more the Roman Catholic Mass than the agape feast. We should talk some more I think, I am back in Dingwall 28th Dec, so if interested we can meet up.

Dave