Monday, March 30, 2015

The Voice of One Crying Out in a Closed Communion

Should communion (i.e. Lord's Supper) be an open or a closed thing? Arthur Sido at The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia does some reasoning with the bible in mind in his post, The Communion Default. I agree that it should be open to all Christians because it is, after all, the Lord's table, and not ours. And as one who has been humiliated by closed communions, I have experienced the damage that a closed communion can cause. Give it a read.
Posted by Steve Scott at 3:01 PM
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous4/3/15, 4:17 PM

    Steve, I'm for open communion too, but I'll raise you one: I think it should be open to all, not merely to all Christians. Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me..."

    Lately our pastor has started saying this before serving---that the table is offered to "all baptized believers." He never said that when my kids were little, 15 years ago, preferring then to let parents decide whether (unbaptized) children should receive it. My wife and I always let our kids be included.




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    1. Steve Scott4/4/15, 2:39 PM

      Ted, thank you for your comment. My wife and I do the same thing. Our children are "allowed" to partake by us at any church. You could say that we're "paedo-communionists."

      What makes somebody a Christian? And how does that apply to children who live in Christian families? I think we should err on the side of Jesus' words that you quoted.

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  2. steve8/6/15, 3:14 PM

    I have a different view on this. Being Christian and catholic. When you partake of communion with your church or even if you are visiting a church you are saying - I agree with what you are teaching - I agree with this community. It is not just you and the Lord - it is also the community that you are with. So if you are a church hopper then I would suggest make sure of that church's teachings first. One of the beauties of the universal church (catholic) is that we know from place to place that we are in union with each other.

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    1. Steve Scott8/16/15, 10:12 PM

      Steve, welcome and thanks for the comment. I think agreement with a particular community should not be tossed out. However, I'm talking mostly about communion within a community I happen to agree with to a large degree. One example would be MY OWN CHURCH. I have attended several churches for a decent amount of time (and considered them my home church) where I wasn't allowed to partake. This is just plain wrong.

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