Ship of Fools: West Valley International, Glendale, Arizona, USA
The Mystery Worshipper
Shipmate
Ship of Fools: West Valley International, Glendale, Arizona, USA
Happy clappy Christian rock, and a haphazard sermon, but heavenly communion
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Presumably, the sealed containers are bought from some sort of Ecclesiastical Emporium, so there must be a demand...
@Baptist Trainfan, I first encountered the individually-packaged elements at the SBC’s Baptist Bookstore, maybe 30 years ago. To be honest, I think some churches use them due to ease of preparation and clean-up, as well as hygiene considerations.
A search for West Valley International on the Southern Baptist Convention website does produce one result, which points to this church.
Likewise, the website of the Arizona Mission Network of Southern Baptists identifies them as a member church.
I wonder if Jesus considered ease of preparation and clean-up at the Last Supper.
When the packages had all been handed out the leader said we should open them at the same time and have communion.
There was no other explanation but I am assuming that most people understood what was happening.
Of course, that may have produced a “just like a man” response from the women who had to do the cleaning up.
It is clear in my mind that communion should be from a loaf of bread that is broken and distributed. It is less clear in my mind that the disciples all put the cup to their lips. What would have prevented them from pouring a bit of the wine into the individual goblets that were surely a part of their place settings at the table?
Although I found the pep talk before communion at West Valley International Church to be inspiring, especially the part about receiving worthily, I was put off by the distribution itself. A tiny piece of cracker in a sealed container is not, in my opinion, what Jesus intended. Nor is a bit of grape juice in a sealed container.
In my mind, the communion service I find most inspiring is one in which a loaf of bread is broken and distributed, and in which a chalice is passed either for intinction or for sipping. I can understand the use of hosts, which probably have been cut from a larger sheet before baking, and wee cuppies that have been filled afresh just before the service, but the pre-packaged and pre-sealed things simply aren't the same thing to me.
Outside something like a pandemic, I see no reason to use the pre-prepared packages, and plenty of reasons not to. Along with what you said, they seem excessively individualistic. But an individualistic approach isn’t necessarily inconsistent with what I’ve encountered among Southern Baptists.
It just comes across as the fast food version of Communion.
That's one thing that puts me off about Baptists in general. It seems to me that their emphasis is on a personal relationship, as opposed to a communal relationship, with Jesus. I see myself more as part of a worshipping community than as a worshipping individual.
I've heard Baptist ministers joke that the 'church meeting' is the closest thing to a Baptist sacrament ...
They go in for collective decision-making. That's pretty communal.
As the words of institution are spoken, I visibly break a larger slice of bread for all to see, and raise a chalice from which I later drink. Before the elements are passed around, I ask people to eat the bread as they receive it, as a token of their own faith; however we wait until everyone has received their cuppie and drink that together as a sign of communion between ourselves and the wider Church.
In one church I saw everyone retain the elements until the officiant said the words of institution followed by "And so we eat", followed by "And so we drink." I thought this especially heavenly.
The least heavenly, indeed hellish, experience I saw was when both elements were set out on a side table, and the congregation instructed to help themselves at any time during the service as they wished. "Buffet style," I guess you could call it.
In the church I have been worshipping in more or less regularly of late, everyone consumes the elements as they are received, but then they wait at the rail until they are dismissed, at which point the men bow and the women curtsey.
Have seen this done in some Asian RC congregations, and just by the by at the gulag in the 60s we little convent girls were expected to curtsy to Reverend Mother when we received our weekly note ( potted summary of week’s behaviour during Sunday morning assembly). It was a French religious order🙄
More seriously, it’s the drums, not the band as a whole, that are normally behind a plexiglass/acrylic screen. (And indeed, the MW report says it was the drums behind the “obligatory plexiglass.”)
It’s called a drum screen or a drum shield, and it’s there for acoustic reasons, to enable the sound people to keep the drums and cymbals balanced with instruments and voices.
Among Copts. certainly. And I went to Mass in Tanzania where the singing from a massive congregation was accompanied by a single large drum played with the hands. The effect was tremendous and spine-tingling.
Oops, forgot about the Brethren.
There are drums and there are drums. A good organ together with tympani can make a remarkably pleasant sound in the right hands. This is not at all like the teenage drummer who gets annoyed when the minister keeps interrupting his performance with prayers and preaching and stuff of that kind. Sorry - a bit of a hobby horse, this.