Communion as Culture Making at Calvary Memorial Church

Dear Leaders at Calvary Memorial Church, After a year and a half of faithful church attendance, my wife and I are just now starting to feel a part of the community. Why has it taken us so long to feel connected and united to the church body? Before we started volunteering as teachers in the 1st Grade class, neither Kate nor I were involved in Calvary outside of showing up for the church service on Sunday morning. And, the thirty seconds of meet and greet time wasn’t enough time to build a strong connection with the other congregants sitting around us. That said, we didn’t meet many people during the service and we didn’t hang out long enough after the service to meet people either.Being new to a church family can be intimidating; especially in a church the size of Calvary. With multiple services, Kate and I found ourselves going to the early service on some weeks and the late service on others. We sat in similar pews each week, but never really got to know the people around us. This left us feeling disconnected from our church family for about a year. My fear is that many people experience Calvary like Kate and I did in those early days. Just two months ago, this fear was confirmed when I attended an important mid-week service. It was the launching of our church’s Antioch Process; a year set aside for our church to pray for discernment about what the future holds and what ministries Calvary should be devoted to. The night of the launch which had been advertised for weeks in advance had a surprisingly low turnout. In a church of about 1,000 attendees, maybe 200 people attended the important launch. After reflecting on the night, I was once again reminded that many people at Calvary were in the same place that Kate and I were in just one year prior. They, like us, show up for Sunday service one minute before it starts then leave the minute after it ends. Even though Calvary has plenty of classes and opportunities to volunteer that would help newcomers feel more connected to the church, the reality is as a newcomer it’s not always desirable to get involved right away. The truth is Calvary cannot control if people decide to get more involved at church or not, but what they can control is what happens during the hour and a half of church where everyone is involved. Rather than focusing our attention on “2nd Sunday Lunch” or “Connection Classes”, changing what happens within a Calvary Memorial Church service is the only way to reach all of those who attend. One way Calvary can create a culture of connectedness and unity within their church service is through weekly participation in The Lord’s Supper. My hope is that one day, by creating a culture of connectedness and unity, Calvary could be a place where newcomers feel they are apart of the church even if they are not involved in any extracurricular activities outside of the Sunday worship service.To begin let us explore what it means to create a culture of connectedness and unity. Every church has a mission to create a certain culture within their four walls that accurately represents what they believe. Calvary’s mission, for example, is achieved through the five values that make up their DNA: Gospel-Rooted, God-Centered, Discipleship-Focused, Community-Engaged, and Mission-Minded. These five values are the backbone of our church so much so that “everything we do, everything we say should flow out of our DNA”. Yet, as we all know, creating a culture does not simply mean creating a statement of values. The making of culture is much more participatory than that. So, what is culture and how it is created? According to Robert S. Fortner, author of Communication, Media, and Identity: A Christian Theory of Communication,

“Culture can be understood as the order of life in which human beings construct meaning through practices of symbolic representation…” (Fortner 14).

In other words, culture is not what we craft it to be through a statement of values, but rather culture is what we do. Put simply, culture is created through our “practices of symbolic representation”. For more on what culture is read Culture Making by Andy Crouch.What does this have to do with the church? One of the main “practices of symbolic representation” in the church is the Lord’s Supper.The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament of the church. It is not the only sacrament, however, along with the Lord’s Supper, baptism, the preached Word, and marriage are also sacraments of the church. Although baptism and marriage are indeed important for the life of the church, in this paper I will focus only on the Lord’s Supper and the preached Word. Augustine, our church father once said, “A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible reality”. That said, the church partakes in the Lord’s Supper to remind themselves of, and to participate in, an invisible reality. What is the invisible reality that we are reminded of and participate in? Paul asks a similar question in 1 Cor. 10:16 indicating that when the church participates in the Lord’s Supper they are participating in the body and blood of Christ. Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary, calls the Lord’s Supper the “meal of God’s people… intended to point to and make manifest the presence of Christ…” (Warren 64). Dr. Marcus Johnson, professor of Theology at Moody Bible Institute says, “The Lord’s Supper is the sacrament in which Christ gives Himself to us for our continual nourishment and salvation…” (Johnson). By partaking in the Lord’s Supper we are affirming the invisible reality that Jesus is our nourishment; His body and His blood nourish us not only as individuals but more importantly together as the body of Christ.At Calvary, it seems we believe in the sacrament of the preached Word and its power to bring us into the presence of Christ, but hold the power of the Lord’s Supper on a much lower pedestal. Like Paul, we believe the sermon is able to nourish us and mature us in Christ, therefore, we have placed it within our weekly worship service (1 Cor. 3:2). Yet, nowhere in scripture does God place the sacrament of the preached Word above the Lord’s Supper. How odd is it then we practice the sacrament of the preached Word weekly, yet only practice the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper monthly? For many of us, it is hard to imagine a church service without the nourishment of a sermon, yet we forsake the nourishment of the Lord’s Supper for weeks on end. Have we considered the consequences? By observing the time we allot to a sermon on Sunday morning we communicate, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that it can nourish and mature us more than the Lord’s Supper can. If we are going to continue to allot 35 to 45 minutes of our Sunday worship service to the sacrament of the preached Word then we should not be surprised when congregants feel disconnected from the church. It is vital to understand that a sermon does not and cannot create a culture of connectedness and unity within our church.A sermon is transmissional by nature of the way it is communicated. The preacher crafts a message, encodes it with illustrations and analogies, and delivers it on a Sunday morning before the congregation. The congregation then has to decode the message, including the illustrations and analogies, and receive it as information they hopefully understand. Here, it is important to note that the pastor himself is not able to communicate meaning through his message, because, as any communication theorist knows, the transmissional model of communication cannot transfer meaning nor was it intended to. In fact, Claude Shannon, the creator of the transmissional model of communication, wrote in her article entitled A Mathematical Theory of Communication that meaning is irrelevant to the problem she was trying to solve. Her concern was engineering, not the transfer of meaning. Therefore, at the end of the day what the congregation is receiving is information that the pastor hopes the congregation can attribute meaning to. Since the creation of the transmissional model of communication, preachers have taken what was originally an engineering solution and have made it the chosen method by which they communicate to their congregants every Sunday. As Fortner says, “The result has been a preoccupation with the content of the messages—an intense concern for what we communicate and insufficient attention to how and with whom we communicate” (Fortner 66). Might I add the disclaimer that I am not in any way against the sacrament of the preached Word, but I am certain that a 35 to 45-minute sermon each week will not create the kind of unity and connectedness that Calvary needs.What can create a culture of unity and connectedness within our church? Simply put, it is the participatory act of consuming the Lord’s Supper each week that has the power to bring unity and connectedness to the body of Christ. However, before proposing what this could look like, it would be good to observe what the Lord’s Supper currently looks like at Calvary. For context, the Lord’s Supper is consumed the first Sunday of each month. Usually, it goes something like this; the pastor who is standing at the front of the sanctuary invites the ushers to the table and gives them the bread and wine, the ushers who are standing then take the bread and wine and distribute it to us, the congregation, who are sitting. We, the sitting congregation, then silently pass the bread and wine to one another down the aisle and back to the usher who is standing at the end of the row. Once all of the elements have been distributed, the ushers then take their seats and the pastor who is still standing begins to recite 1 Cor. 11:23-25. To which the congregation follows the lead of the pastor and partakes in the Lord’s Supper.Theologically, there is nothing wrong with the way Calvary partakes in the Lord’s Supper. However, in the age of individualism, I fear that an unspoken message is being communicated. When the elements are being distributed the majority of the congregation turns to silent prayer. Thus, taking what was intended to be a communal act and making it individual. Furthermore, when our pastor stands in front of the congregation and invites us to eat the bread and drink the wine, we are all doing so individually. Not a word is spoken throughout the entire ceremony. This form of the Lord’s Supper is doing the exact opposite of building community; it is building and practicing individuality. Through the Lord’s Supper are we trying to communicate the individuality of Christ’s saving work or the collective identity we all share as those who are saved? To be clear, the latter over the former creates a unity and connectedness among the body of Christ. My experience at Church of the Servant, a Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, MI best exemplifies the participatory and communal act of the Lord’s Supper that I believe can create greater unity and connectedness at Calvary. During the Lord’s Supper Rev. Len Vander Zee, interim pastor and theologian, invites about fifty people to stand and form a circle around the Lord’s Table in the front of the sanctuary. At that time, he takes the bread and wine and hands it to two congregants standing next to each other in the circle. Both congregants turn to the side and begin sending the bread and wine around the circle in opposite directions. As the bread is passed, a congregant takes a piece and gives it to the person standing next to them saying, “This is Christ’s body broken for you, take and eat”. Simultaneously the wine is being passed around the circle with each congregant saying to one another, “This is Christ’s blood shed for you, take and drink”. After each congregant in the circle partakes in both the bread and wine, the elements are handed back to the pastor. This process is then repeated for another group of congregants until each professing Christian has partaken in the Lord’s Supper. All in all the process takes about 20 minutes to complete and is, therefore, a significant portion of the worship service. What is the result of a church that participates weekly in the Lord’s Supper like this? There are two things to note about the way Church of the Servant participates in the Lord’s Supper: (1) the congregants are standing when they receive and give the elements to one another, and (2) the congregants are the ones reminding each other of their salvation. It is important to note that the congregants are standing during the Lord’s Supper because that is a sign of their participation. There obvious exceptions to this rule; for example, those who are handicapped and cannot walk or stand are still able to participate in the Lord’s Supper while seated.  However, generally speaking, sitting is most commonly associated with resting, watching, or listening, not participating. For example, an athlete who is seated on the sidelines is not participating in the game. Likewise, a congregation that is seating in the pews are not actively participating in the Lord’s Supper. Standing during the Lord’s Supper is important because it aids in the process of reorienting us as people who are "individualistic consumers" into those who are collective participants in the body of Christ (Warren 71). Second, there is an undeniable interpersonal relationship that is built around the shared “practice of symbolic representation” when one congregant says to another “this is Christ’s body broken for you” and “this is Christ’s blood shed for you”. Coming out of this experience one feels like they have both received from and contributed to nourishing the body of Christ. Imagine the meaning that is created when a father says to his daughter or a mother says to her son or a church veteran says to a new believer, “This is Christ’s body broken for you” and “this is Christ’s blood shed for you”. The meaning created within a moment like this is hard to quantify, but all of those who participate come away being reminded of their salvation and tangibly knowing the important role they play in the body of Christ. A church that participates weekly in the Lord’s Supper in a manner in which the congregants are actively involved offers the opportunity for meaning to be created through this practice of symbolic representation. Although at Calvary it might be difficult to gather everyone in the front of the church to participate in the Lord’s Supper, it is possible to pass the bread and wine separately down the aisle, while the congregants are standing, allowing the body of Christ to proclaim and remind one another what Christ has done for them.To conclude, the preached Word and the Lord’s Supper achieve different purposes within a worship service. The preached Word nourishes and matures the body in their knowledge and understanding of Christ, while the Lord’s Supper nourishes and reminds the body of the saving work of Christ. Both sacraments play an important role in nourishing the body of Christ, and therefore I argue that both should be present weekly during a Sunday morning worship service. Calvary Memorial Church is a wonderful church body to be a part of, and by participating in the Lord’s Supper on a weekly basis, I believe they can create a culture that produces greater unity and connectedness among the congregation.Creative ElementThe creative element for this project was a mock communion service held in class on April 29th, 2018. During the mock communion service, my classmates experienced the transmissional form of communion that Calvary Memorial Church currently does once a month (as described above). Then, they experienced communion a second time in a more participatory way modeled after the communion at Church of the Servant (as described above).Works CitedCrouch, Andy. Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. InterVarsity Press, 2013.Fortner, Robert S. Communication, Media, and Identity: a Christian Theory of Communication.Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007.Johnson, Marcus. “Systematic Theology II - Dr. Marcus Johnson.” Systematic Theology II,Moody Bible Institute. Course Notes.Shannon, Claude E., and Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication.University of Illinois Press, 1998.Warren, Tish Harrison. Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life. InterVarsityPress, 2016.