Holy Joys Podcast
A discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church. A ministry of holyjoys.org.
Holy Joys Podcast
"Virtual Communion" and "Virtual Church"
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In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss whether or not the church should offer virtual communion and how the rush to live-stream the Lord's Supper reflects a general over-spiritualization of the church.
So the sacraments are given for visualization. So the classic Protestant definition of the church, consensual definition, is the true church is the congregations where there's the pure preaching of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments.
SPEAKER_00Is the Eucharist and baptism so different that we would do one virtually and not the other?
SPEAKER_02You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, co-hosted by Jonathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry. Visit us at holyjoys.org and stay tuned for weekly discussions of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.
SPEAKER_00So you're on the road right now. Where are you at? I am traveling through central Kentucky somewhere on Interstate 65. And we just I just literally two miles ago went over the 3,000 mile mark for our trip.
SPEAKER_03So tell us, tell us about this trip.
SPEAKER_00Uh so dad and I uh took a road trip. Uh this would be day 11 actually, so we're arriving back home on day 11. And we went south, we visited some family on the way and uh went by Hope Sound for a day. Um spent some time in North Carolina, went to Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, St. Augustine, Florida. Yeah, just enjoyed some history and some sites and spent some time together. I've never done anything like this, but it's been great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it inspired me. Um a couple years ago, my dad and I hiked on the Appalachian Trail for a week together, and then we did that about two years in a row, and we keep talking about it, but we haven't done it for several years now. So uh it inspired me to call him up and say, we really need to get this down on the calendar or it will never happen again. So looking forward to that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it's it's been a neat experience.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I guess we're uh hopefully seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of this pandemic.
SPEAKER_00I hope so. I hope so. I was just having a conversation with a leader in my church, and we were trying to think ahead of how how will COVID continue to affect our services and that sort of thing, and some decisions that we need to make. And and you know, the positive thing is that I think I heard uh the states or federal government, I'm not sure who takes care of the ordering, but another hundred million doses of the vaccine. So uh certainly it's getting out there, a lot of people getting it, and I think it's a good time for us if we haven't already. Uh we need to be reflecting on uh this past year and what we've learned as a church and as pastors.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, our church is really looking forward to resuming communion. Um, you know, we did not not participate in the virtual communion, and so we haven't had it for now some time. Um it's been uh yeah, it's definitely been a difficult time and really excited about that uh coming up here another month or so.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we we we actually did um start our weekly communion again, uh, probably seven weeks ago, I think we started. And um it's gone very well. And I I think I can really say I understand uh those who I've heard say that they are hungry for the bread and thirsty for the wine. And I think I can say I now I understand what they mean after having gone so long. Um but yeah, there's certainly uh I we're gonna do some reflection on that in a moment. But uh let me ask you this as we start out. Um what are what's a takeaway for you, pastorally, from from the last year?
SPEAKER_03I think one of the things that I've been reflecting on more, and maybe maybe something that um is just solidified in my mind, is how important it is for our churches to provide something different than what people experience in the world. And I think so much of our churches are are driven, and we've we've fallen into this pit from time to time. We're so program driven, we're always trying to, you know, special events, something to draw people in, um, youth youth ministries that are driven by by entertainment, trying to pull people in. And it's almost like we can get in this competition with the world. But you know, the more I look at the trends in in media, Netflix, I mean, people are just saturated in entertainment. The world can offer you some something incredibly entertaining, something pleasurable. And we just can't, we can't compete with that. And I've realized that through this time, we have had people come back to the church that have been gone for a long time because they're hungry for something deeper. They're hungry for real fellowship with real physical people. They're they're sick of the quarantine thing, you know. And we have something that is just radically different to offer people, something real and transparent, you know, the authentic community. And so more and more I just want to get back to that, the beauty of the simplicity of that, you know, what I think Wesley, what did he call them? The uh primitive Christians, you know, uh words sacrament prayer and just just deep fellowship. And then the fourth thing he OS is sharing all things in common. You know, he draws that from Acts too. So I think that's just solidified more than ever in my mind.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think my big takeaway is that I learned about three months into quarantine the whole pandemic. I it took me, I'm a slow learner, so at least three months, to learn that I needed to radically focus on local, local relationships, be as um creatively present as I could possibly be as pastor, and create opportunities for others to be uh present. Because I remember, and you probably remember this too, there was a flood right of uh churches who were not online before, and then they all went online, and so social media, YouTube channels, all these things are being created, and it was like immediate uh like overload, and every pastor trying to uh you know broadcast their service for their people and uh trying to to grow suddenly in a different way, uh numerically, you know, your broadcast audience. And very quickly I realized like, wow, I mean, there's um it's it's almost like a major competition out there uh that has happened that happened about a year ago. And I realized you know what I need to do is not get sucked up into all of that and just focus on being the pastor for my congregation in ways that um are creative and personal and as much as I can face to face, you know, try to be creatively present. And uh and so I think we we learned uh learned you know how to do that at least some somewhat. I I went back to writing you know snail mail letters, you know, to to some people, and and you know, my wife and I delivered and and my associates delivered um uh Easter Easter baskets uh with you know some really meaningful uh items to every person, every home within you know, probably 25 miles of our church. Uh, you know, a hundred and some packages that we delivered. And it was just that was it was fun. You know, we would never have done that if we hadn't been compelled to think creatively, and and it was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, I think we have seen a lot of conversations about you know, the church will never be the same. We've learned a new way to reach a broader audience. And I've heard so many people make comments about how many people tuned into their live streams. It's like, you know, we only have 25 in our services, but we were able to reach you know 300 through our videos. And and I I'm thankful that, yeah, yes, the message comes out, right? I'm not not trying to say that it can't be meaningful, but I also worry that it would cause us to think uh too much of delocalizing. That's probably not the right word, but moving away from that really strong local emphasis. Whereas I just I think in this digital age, that's what people are really hungry for, and that's where real transformation happens.
SPEAKER_00I I now I think you used the right word, delocalizing. Delocalizing our pastoral ministry uh or the ministry of the church. I that that's what is possible right now, right? It's possible to do that. And and and for those who have started online ministries during COVID, uh I would challenge them to think carefully through as they uh look forward to you know post-COVID days and their continued online ministry, you know, certainly keep that. I mean, I think it's a great thing, uh, but think about how does that fit into uh the to the local ministry. What's what's your who is your target? What's your goal through that ministry, and and really uh keep that locally focused?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, I think that's hey, that's a great segue to um what we really want to try to to talk about and and really is one of the primary concerns with with virtual communion. So maybe just start here. What was your gut reaction um when you heard about kind of the general move in the church towards towards virtual communion?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so my my first thought was I don't like it. I just like my gut reaction was I don't like it. And then I had to reason through, okay, why? Why do I feel just a natural aversion to that? And I guess the the question that came to mind is uh what would what would virtual baptism look like? You know, we wouldn't do virtual baptism, so um you know there's there's a truth in the sacraments that that works across the board. And yeah, are they is the Eucharist and baptism so different that uh we would do one virtually and not the other? Um I would argue no. So that was my first my first take on that. And and I have to say too that uh I I did a little bit of expiration back uh last March. And uh occasionally I will listen to the Center for Pastor Theologians uh podcast and read some of their articles that they uh release as well. And uh they had someone on there who who mentioned that their church was practicing a fast from the Eucharist. And at the time in our church, I was leading daily prayer on the 8th, so 8 a.m., 8 p.m. on live, Facebook Live, uh, just within our church group. And uh we were praying together and we were focused on lament. And so when I I heard this pastor say they're practicing a fast, and that this is what they felt like was an appropriate way uh to observe the time, um, I thought, you know what, that really fits with with where we are. And um, and I thought, yeah, and that's okay. It's okay to fast. And I I think that's most appropriate given my understanding of what the Eucharist is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03No, I've seen that idea of a sacramental fast. Andrew Thompson, I think, talked about that. Um, Scott Sween used that same kind of terminology because a fast is a time um in which we we ultimately break through to greater joy. Uh we mourn and humble ourselves and lament for the purpose of greater joy. There's an anticipate, there's an anticipation, it's not just a pause. It's it's a real deepening of our longing for what Wesley called, you know, our spiritual food. Um and you know, it's from 1 Corinthians 10, our spiritual bread and spiritual drink, you know, and and um yeah, so so maybe we should preface this too before we get too far down this this discussion, just by saying these are uh very unusual times. I mean, these are challenging times for pastors, new challenges in ministry. And so I might make some strong statements theologically. I don't want it to come across as though we are taking, you know, throwing stones at anyone. Um, my word, this is not um our purpose or desire. We we really want to help the church. And and although virtual communion is something that maybe a lot of churches have stopped practicing, or especially if they've resumed, you know, embodied gathering, um, it may seem like you know, this is this conversation isn't relevant. But what we really want to do is use this as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the sacraments themselves. And in doing that, the nature of the church. And also in our digital age, this probably isn't gonna go away. Uh, we see a move to virtual church, um, so-called uh, you know, air corner. Right. Um, and so I'm sure this is going to be something that that will be an issue again. So I think it's really important for us to really think this through.
SPEAKER_00It is. And it's okay to, especially in times like this past year, it's okay. We have to allow ourselves the the privilege of of learning and growing through experience, right? Um, I have learned many things. Uh probably most of my learning has come through failure. And including in the last year, there are you know, I could probably list a dozen uh lessons I have learned and say, okay, I I don't think I'm gonna do that again, or I'm not gonna do it that way again. But there because there is something about you know a crisis, when a crisis comes upon us, we uh as pastors, we want to we want to do something. Uh we don't want to just isolate ourselves and you know everyone's in quarantine, so we're just gonna not see anyone for a while. We feel that compulsion to do something. And so I want to say that I appreciate uh all of the effort that people put into uh doing something to try to keep people connected within their church. And that that in itself is important. Um but like me, many of us will do something and then we reflect on it theologically, theologically, and maybe come to a different conclusion and say, okay, well, now I can see where there's something better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and I want to say that uh, you know, whether it is anything virtual, especially, because that's what we're talking about today, uh, there are a lot of things with uh online ministry that uh can very quickly become substitutes for for lack of a better word, I'm just gonna say the real thing. And and including, as we all know, including real deep relationships. And so um again, let me make reference to what what I mentioned at the outset about learning to become localized. Um what online does is it tends to broaden us, but it makes us shallower.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and that's just a reality of that sort of relationship, the the kind of relationships that we have uh through social media or otherwise. So we have to keep that in mind when we apply that medium to uh something as sacred as the Eucharist. And I have not heard of virtual baptisms, but uh I there's people who've done it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it is a it is an issue. In fact, I saw um Bobby Jameson is uh guy connected to nine marks, and he wrote on it uh against virtual and virtual communion, um, which is interesting because Baptists usually have a pretty low view of the sacraments, and he he was fairly yeah, strong against both.
SPEAKER_00So, how does how does virtual baptism work?
SPEAKER_03Like how they do that. I don't know if they're over the live stream and the person sprinkles themselves. I mean, I don't know. That's I don't know what that's only thing I can imagine, but yeah, uh interesting. So so let me ask you this. Um so I've heard, I have heard some of the people who have practiced virtual communion, you know, have said something like, These are unusual times, and you know, when when this pandemic is over, we would never do this. And my thought, you know, this is not the norm. This is just because just for and my response has been I think that indicates something deep down within us that knows there's something about the nature of the sacraments that virtual participation really falls short of. So let me read read you something and um and and get your opinion. I I feel like this is really for me, it's a yes or no. It's either yes, virtual communion is something that is legitimate or it's no, it's it's not. So this is Kevin Watson. He's a Methodist historian, writes for Seabed. He says this um online communion is either really communion or it isn't. The COVID-19 crisis has no actual bearing on whether communion can be celebrated virtually by people who are not able to be together. If online communion isn't really communion, and that is why the permission is only given for this season, we should not call it communion, and we should look for other ways to engage the hunger that people are experiencing for God's presence. And uh Kevin Watson, you know, he concludes that put as simply as I can, the move to permitting online communion is a dramatic departure from the teachings of Methodism.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So I've not actually heard anyone say that they would never do this outside of this time. That's interesting because I think you made the point. Okay, so why why why would we do it now then if it's something that we would never do? What's the uh I mean it almost seems like a moral dilemma here, right? Um but no, I think he's right that uh I don't think people I I think to give this as an example for the most part, I I don't want to make too blanket of a statement, but um as a pastor, and I'm sure you felt this as well as a pastor, uh there was suddenly upon us this dawning of the reality that this might go on for a while, and how can we keep people connected? I got an idea, let's do communion. Yeah, so um I I certainly understand, and and I would be you know misleading if I didn't say that that thought crossed my mind as well. But again, my uh my gut was no no, there's something just not right about that. Let me think it through and see if I can articulate why.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I had I had that reaction too. Mine was was very strong and visceral, and I The only thing I said publicly was a short thread on Twitter where I shared some links. And really what I said was, I just think we need to slow down. My my worry was that there was this rush, this feeling that you describe. And so we're jumping, we're jumping into this without reflecting theologically. And the I think the reason why this, I felt this so strongly is, you know, my first article for Holy Joys was The Lord's Table Has Been Moved, a call to recenter the supper. I feel like this, you know, sacramental retrieval has been right at the center of everything I've been doing. My thinking about the church and discipleship is sacramental. It's it's and so I feel I feel like we have a huge vacuum of sacramental theology. You know, the great Methodist William Burt Pope says um, you know, there's a there's a lack of teaching on it. He says it's right in his systematic theology. Like pastors need to teach on the sacraments in their churches. He was facing it back then. And he says an overreaction to Roman Catholicism has swung us way the other direction. We become fearful that these will be, you know, treated superstitionly superstitiously. There's been this vacuum. And so I felt like um that that perhaps at least the rush. Now I'm not saying, I don't want to say anyone who practiced virtual communion has a poor anemic sacramental theology. I do want to say that the general quickness that I saw and and the number of retractions. There was like a United Methodist bishop, okay, and he quickly, you know, he approved this for his district or whatever, and then he later retracted, issued a statement of public repentance and said, Look, I've talked to people since. They've made me aware of some things, and I realized, wow, I rushed into this and it reflected a lack of theological understanding. So I would agree with with Kevin Watson that reading Richard Watson, reading William Pope, um, Burt Pope, you know, that it is definitely a dramatic departure, in my view, from the teachings of Methodism, because we have to start with our theology and then say, okay, in light of what the sacrament is, and in light of what the sacrament is for, its God-given purpose, is this practice now acceptable in light of our theology? Or are we prepared to redefine 2,000 years of received sacramental theology to accommodate this practice because that is what it requires?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so you touch on something that I think is really crucial for pastors to understand here, and that is that we live in a pastoral environment, and I don't know how it is in other places of the world, but it is here, a pastoral environment where we tend to allow circumstances to dictate our actions rather than our theology. And so we become reactive to either what works or what we think will work. And rather than say, okay, what does my how does my theology inform the circumstance and then proceeding from that? Right. But I want to ask you a question before we move on too quickly. Uh, what kind of response did you get uh when you when you said something on on Twitter? And I don't know what month that was or when that was through the pandemic, but uh any kickback or any response?
SPEAKER_03Uh yeah, it was you know it was overwhelmingly positive, but it was almost all from United Methodists. I had several, so actually Kevin Watson responded, Andrew Thompson, Carolyn Moore, um, several United Methodist guys. I I I think I almost think maybe even Timothy Tennant. I can't remember who else, somebody else engaged there. No, I don't think it was him. Anyway, so they were all very supportive, but they were already saying these things, or at least, yeah, but there was one comment like, I appreciate your tone. And so I don't know if they agreed or not. I tried to be charitable. It was really not, I wasn't coming out, you know, strongly against it as much as I was saying, you know, I can't do this. I feel strongly a gut reaction about this. I think we need to slow down. So that was really all I said. Since then, I've written I've written like five articles on it and trashed them all because I I don't want to be that guy, you know, like that's not and and I also felt like I needed more time for reflection. Um and I but I do feel like now I've I've begun to articulate my thoughts, my concerns. Um, so yeah, there was a good there was a good response.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, good, good. So so let's get down to the nitty-gritty. So why what's the problem with virtual communion?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, so I really want to start with this this point about what are the sacraments for? What do they do? Um and I think if you are a Baptist or a Zwingli, you know, if you're in the Zwinglian line and it's merely a symbol or a sign, then yeah, I mean, if you're in private and you've got the you know, your little bread and your little juice there, and all it is is supposed to make you think about Jesus, then what's the big deal? And that's what a lot of people think, um, that it's merely a sign or a symbol. And at that point, I feel like more Lutheran when he more more like Luther when he was with Zwingli at Marburg Castle and he says, you know, scrawls on the wall of the castle with a stone, this is my body, you know. We've never believed that as Wesleyan. So if that's I think so that's one issue where we just think it's merely it's a symbol, it's a reminder. So if that's what you think, yeah, virtual communion is no big deal. Secondly, if you only think that communion, that participating in communion is a means of grace for you to personally grow, which I think that's another common view among Methodists that are a little more theologically informed. Like this, you know, if I take this in faith, I get grace. So all that matters if I'm here privately and I'm receiving it, you know, in faith, I get I get grace. I also think virtual communion, no big deal. But I want to say that that that second point, while it's important as a means of grace, it that that is secondary and subordinate to the the particular, the primary purpose for which it was given, which establishes a God-ordained context for the grace to flow. And that is for the members of the body hands, feet, eyes, and ears, who are spiritually connected to Christ, to come together in a visible body, one body, uh which enacts a visible unity around one bread. So uh the sacraments are given for visualization. So the classic Protestant definition of the church, consensual definition, is the the true church is the congregations where there's the pure preaching of the gospel, the pure administration of the sacraments. Not the church is this vision, this spiritual thing, this vague spiritual reality. No, it is the unity of those visible congregations. Well, if if salvation in the church was only a spiritual reality and we could leave it there and somehow abstract that or separate that from its visible enactment, then you wouldn't even need the sacraments if your salvation is strictly spiritual. But it's not. It's it's we are come together in embodied communion as new creation people. And so it's not enough to just have the pure preaching of the word because that's an invisible thing that creates the people as God's word created all things at the beginning, but you've got to have that visualization. The church has to be made visible through the sacraments as new creation people that take the elements into their body as one body and you know, united around one bread, anticipating the resurrection of their bodies and claim that sacred space, you know, that new creation space, anticipating the redemption of creation. So there's a visualization here that the sacraments accomplish.
SPEAKER_00So you said a lot there. So let's unpack a few of the key concepts. And one of the one of the associations I think you made that I think we need to go back to here is the idea of virtual and spiritual. So I I shared your intuition on the quick movement to virtual church and virtual communion in particular, being uh indicative of a an over-spiritualization of the church, a disembodiment I guess we really could say a sort of dismemberment almost of the body. Um and and so let's yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. What do you how do you understand that association of virtual and spiritual?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I mean, when I read, so I mentioned some of the Methodist guys. Um, so Richard Watson is like really strong on this. Like when he defines the church, he's like, the church is a visible society bound to certain rights, a visible society that makes a visible profession of faith uh and continues in visible fellowship through the Lord's Supper. Um, and the profession of faith, a visible profession of faith, he's talking about through baptism, right? So I think we miss that that the church is a visible covenant community, just like Israel was a physical, visible community with signs and seals, circumcision and the Passover. We are a visible community with our visible seals of baptism in the Lord's Supper. But we live in this church age where everything is over-spiritualized. We we emphasize the salvation of never dying souls to the neglect of the creedal focus on the resurrection of the body. You know, we have people say this silent sinner's prayer, you know, to the neglect of being saved by baptism as a visible appeal to God for a good conscience. And by the way, I'm quoting 1 Peter 3.21, baptism now saves you as a appeal to God for a good conscience. Uh, we emphasize going to heaven, going up there to the, you know, kind of we had a whole podcast on that, to this disembodied heaven where we're going to kind of get our wings and float around in the clouds, to the neglect of the biblical focus on a renewed earth. So when it comes to salvation in the church, it's no surprise that we emphasize membership in Christ's mystical body. Well, I don't need to become a church member because I'm I'm part of the real church, the visit, you know, the invisible church, the spiritual church, um, to the neglect of membership in a congregation that regularly embodies through communion. So Acts says they came together for the breaking of bread. Like that's that's part of what it means to gather. You know, the the the longest chapter on communion in the Bible is First Corinthians 11, this longest section. And Paul says five times, when you come together as a body for communion, because that's what communion is, that's what it's for. It's for all these different members to embody in the body. So physical body and coming together as a body in embodied communion are inseparable.
SPEAKER_00So the so visualization, a absolutely crucial aspect of visualization is embodiment. Wait, let's say that's the first principle, right? Yeah of visualization is embodiment. Right. And when that's the first thing that's removed, right, then it then it really shifts the rest of it to something else. Um it takes a core out.
SPEAKER_03Right, right, because it's no longer a means of grace, because the means of grace is uh is in that embodied context. There's a divinely ordained context, the covenant assembly, when you come together. And when you come together as one body around one bread, in that context, it's a means of grace. But that's not first and foremost. You have to have the context first. You can't separate that means of grace from its God-given context.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so that makes sense of why you earlier said if you take the view that the sacraments are merely symbols, right? Because a symbol is a can it's not uh well in this case, it can be disembodied. Uh, and you can still have a semblance of something, you know, and the the action or the acting out of something, but the meaning of the Eucharist, the grace of Eucharist is not just in the display, it's in the presence.
SPEAKER_03Although I would want to go further and say, you know, we do believe they're symbols, of course, but they're symbols to which God has attached a particular blessing. So I think Scott Swain is really helpful here. He says this a sacrament at its most basic level is a symbolic action ordained by Jesus Christ. Now, here's the key that makes it sacramental, to which he has attached the promise of his presence and blessing. Now, this next next sentence, I think, is the key. The sign, because we say they are signs and seals of the covenant, the sign on this understanding is not simply the elements of water, bread, and wine. The sign is the entirety of the symbolic action, which in the case of the Lord's Supper is a shared meal. So when we say that the Lord's Supper is a symbol, we don't just mean the bread represents the physical body of Jesus that was broken. The wine represents his blood. We mean the the this is a meal that we eat together, one bread we share of together. That's why some traditions still break the one loaf right in the in the presence of the community or pass around one cup, which right now definitely not gonna work with this crazy virus. Sure. But because that's part of the sign that was given was the shared meal. So even the symbolism is lost.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right. Yeah, and and I for me, my whole reaction after reflecting theologically really came down to embodied presence. Uh to embodied presence being uh the heart of what Christ instituted in the Eucharist. And um and the way we uh observe a Eucharist, I think I've mentioned this in the previous podcast before, or at least in previous uh conversations. Uh I I love for the congregation, if it's not too large, to be facing one another. So we'll be in a large circle if we can. And uh we partake at the same time, we distribute the elements. And and by the way, on that point, uh it's this is I believe important. It's important to me. I think it's critical to the drama that unfolds in the Eucharist. Uh I never serve myself. So as a pastor, I'm serving, I don't just return the elements to the communion table and then pick them up myself and we're ready to go. I someone else serves me and I serve the other pastors because that's part of that's part of the the uh the drama, the symbol of of what we're acting out. And I love when we're in a circle, we're we're looking at each other. We are uh and there's something symbolic even about uh the idea table is that you are sharing your face-to-face, or present, looking at each other, not looking away. Um so I know many people will practice where uh they'll come to the altar, they'll kneel. I understand that's fine. Um, but uh we've kind of put in some altar theology into our our practice of the Eucharist as well, that may be worthy of discussion. But the idea of the Lord's table is that this is a shared meal.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think I would want to so Romans uh Romans 12, um, present your body's living sacrifice, was associated with um the Lord's table by the early Christians. So Michael Spigel says, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right, but he says something like there was an there was an altar call every week in the early church, a table call. So I I I think I'm not uh and I know you aren't either, like there is an individual aspect, like you are to uh we are to examine ourselves. The problem is, is not only do we come and kneel around the altar, we often close our eyes and keep our eyes closed for the entire meal. Because even though this is a visible re-preaching of the gospel, we close our eyes because we we have a salvation that in our minds is purely spiritual. We have this escapist thing. We want to get out of the body, these old bodies, and we want to get out of this world, this old world. And so when we're at the Lord's table to remember Jesus, we close our eyes the whole time. But the whole purpose of the meal is to visualize the gospel and to visualize the church.
SPEAKER_00Okay, that's yeah, interesting. I've never thought of that. I I've never thought of that before. So very interesting. I'm glad I'm on this podcast. Um I think I think that's a good point. Excellent point. Okay, so let's unpack some more of what you what you have shared. Um let's go back to virtual for a moment. And there are I know there will be pastors who are listening to this, and and uh we welcome questions and the interactions as this podcast is shared. Absolutely. We want feedback and we want to hear uh you know pushback or questions or clarifications, all of that. We welcome that. Uh, what do you anticipate would be a reaction at this point?
SPEAKER_03Um, you know, it's interesting. I hope pastors would hear our hearts here. I am zealous for the Lord's table. I do think that I was so I read a book recently where a historian says, you know, this much is a fact. There's no doubt that the Lord's Supper has been the central act of Christian worship throughout the centuries. Not a, not one of many things we do, the central act. Wesley said, before the love of many grew cold, they took it four times a week, you know, or every day. And he draws that from Acts. He said, you know, when we pray, give us this day our daily bread in the Lord's Prayer. Wesley says we ought to think of the sacramental bread also, which was taken every day. That, you know, early summaries, that, you know, the decay, Hippolytus and the apostolic tradition. I mean, we see this, Justin Martyr, the Eucharist was right at the center of the church. The Eucharist Christians have died over it, not just unfortunately. Now, this part of it is tragic, but but often actually killing one another over wrong views of the sacrament. This not only divided the Protestants from the Catholics, we know about that, transubstantiation, but it also divided the Reformation because this isn't one of many things we do. We've got to stop thinking about it like that. This is the place at which everything we believe about Christ, his incarnation, God and his holiness, creation and new creation, heaven and earth converge at one place. This is at the center of faith. So I do. I'm not I'm not upset at people, but I am zealous in defense of it. I feel like Calvin, who, you know, one time he saw somebody approaching the table that that he knew was an unholy person, and he flung himself over the table and he said, These hands you may cut off, these arms you may lob off, my life you may take, but you will never force me to give holy things of the unholy and profane the table of my God. Um, you know, I think of Hippolytus says, everybody ought to be concerned that the unfaithful do not partake. There was an incredibleness here. And so I do feel like we have, we've lost something of the sacredness. And I think that that virtual communion has further trivialized it. I'll just give a practical example. So I we have a neighbor, my parents have a neighbor who, you know, not real theologically informed, ordinary Christian. Her church did the virtual communion thing, and she came home, pulled into her driveway. My mom was outside and she yelled across and she was kind of chuckling, and she said, I just went to Wise and got my little juice and my little bread. She she just thought It was weird. She thought it was funny. You know, she's gonna go in here and sit in her pajama bottoms in front of Zoom with her little Y sandwich bread and her cup of Juicy Juice grape juice and administer communion to herself by herself. And sometimes there's not even anyone live on the other end. Some churches have even recorded this for later viewing. And I have to say, oh, come on, I think we're missing it here. We're really, really missing it. So I'm not trying to be too hard, but I have to admit, this has been a great, a great challenge for me. Am I being too dramatic?
SPEAKER_00No, I don't think that you are uh being over dramatic because you're because you're working within a framework in which that ought to be the response, and there are others who aren't working within that same framework. Um and I think what that means is that many pastors today work out of a motive and a framework that says, okay, there's this problem, how can we how can we address this problem? And what you're doing is you're coming from a theological perspective that says, okay, we need to reflect upon our circumstances, this crisis of being separated by quarantine, and we need to reflect on that theologically, and that leads you to say, okay, that's this is a time of fast, whereas others are working to address a crisis without theological reflection, without an understanding of how the church is practiced and observed and understood the sacraments. Um and so it's easy to just throw this at it. Let's just let's just do it this way. It's it's a convenience that um really does make a deep, it takes a deep theological uh moment in the church's life and and makes it something quite shallow, which actually reminds me of something that I think I read in the last few weeks. It said something like uh the church begins at the table. Uh communion is what gives uh formation to the being of the church. Um of course we have baptism. That's the uh as you have written in your article, uh, that is our initiation as disciples uh you know into the fellowship of the church, but it's the living out of the communion that is uh that is gives form to the church, and that form is it's visible, as you said. It is it is embody presence, and when you remove that, it's like removing the heart and soul out of something, and it becomes uh nothing more than just uh a mannequin of sorts, uh has a form but doesn't have a life, and and I think it's moving in that direction. Um, so let me give this anecdote that I think beautifully illustrates a framework in which the Eucharist is uh really just the heartbeat and formation of the church. So we uh years ago started practicing uh the Eucharist weekly, and then uh obviously took time off from that, and now we're back to it again. But a few years ago I had a new convert who actually called me up and said, Man, I'm I'm just so hungry for the Lord's Supper. Uh can we can we have communion? And I was like, Yeah, let's let's do it. And I think I was with somebody else, another new convert probably. And within just a few minutes, we made some contacts, about six of us got together. We actually went to a park that has a cross. So we're out in public. I brought some of the elements along with me, and uh and I served a communion right there in a public park, and we had a beautiful time together. About six of us came together, probably over the new hour, and celebrated the Eucharist. And it was so beautiful because uh they were they expressed a hunger, a desire, like I need, I need to be with with in this case my brothers, and I need to uh partake of this, uh, these elements that come from Christ. And you know, I when was the last time that a pastor had someone come to them and say, Man, I'm just hungry. Like, man, I can't wait until next time uh I get to come to uh the Lord's table. Um probably doesn't happen too often. Yeah, I I think it's because um maybe we we have not pastors have have are uncertain of how to uh communicate that deep meaning of it, which is connected to the over-spiritualization of what it means to be the church.
SPEAKER_03So as John Armstrong writes this from my earliest remembrance as I was growing up in an evangelical Christian church, I thought about the Lord's Supper often. In front of me every week, in a plain and mostly unadorned sanctuary, where the words do this in remembrance of me. This meal was not celebrated very often, but when it was included, it had a strong attraction for me. I remember asking my parents, when can I take it? What does this mean? Why do we do this? I even recall asking, why do we do this so infrequently? The answers I got were not entirely satisfactory, but the attraction I felt to this celebration grew even stronger over time. To many of my friends, it seemed somber. To me, it was thrilling, a time filled with hope and joy. I understood it was vitally important for my life as a Christian, but I had no idea why. So John Wesley, and I'd encourage every Wesley and just to stop the podcast, go read The Duty of Constant Communion by John Wesley, a really forceful sermon where he basically says if you don't long, if you don't long for the Lord's Supper, you have no piety at all. Now, that you know, Wesley, it could be a bit overstated, but uh Methodist piety, if I could just get this one point across, Methodist piety was sacramental piety. Methodist piety was sacramental piety. And I think we have completely lost that because of the over-spiritualization of the church. We say, you know, if we take communion every week, which is, by the way, the apostolic, historical, Wesleyan classic Christian practice, but also the biblical practice. And I just published an article on this, it's a myth that the Bible says nothing about the frequency. But if we take it too often, it'll grow cold, it'll grow unimportant, it'll lose its meaning. It's the total opposite, right? If you, if you cut out congregational singing for one week, there'd be an uproar. If you skipped your annual communion service, probably nobody would notice. The churches that that value it and love it take it constantly. John Wesley said that that's just a dumb, basically that's a dumb argument because he said the only kind of person for whom that would be true was some kind of child who the only reason they like the table, the Lord's Supper, is because there's something new about it. A real Christian would only grow in their reverence and longing for it, right? So we, yeah, we've just gotten so far. This is this is huge. And I'll say this final point. Uh, we think again, I we we have to get this through our heads somehow. This is not one isolated issue. It's where all of our theology can converges. And I think one of the keys to answering the discipleship crisis we're facing is to retrieve the sacraments because you have all these little pieces, church membership, you know, baptism, we are really ought to do that more because Jesus said so, or maybe the Lord's Supper, or maybe church discipline, or maybe restoration from sin, or well, all of these things hang together around the sacraments. So, so many of the issues we're facing, I think we need to refocus on the question, what is the church? If we're ever going to answer the question, how do we make better disciples? And the church is the place where the word is preached and it's visualized through the pure administration of the sacraments.
SPEAKER_00Right. And that very definition ought to turn our mind away from this nebulous idea of the church as being a disembodied, merely spiritual presence that exists uh in some intangible way between between Christians. Um I mean Christ instituted the sacraments in order to keep us from falling into that sort of mentality. And and yet that is, I would endeavor to say, at least in my experience, uh, most people's primary understanding of the church that it the church is a merely spiritual reality. You know, I am, you know, I I think you mentioned this already, but people say repeatedly, uh, you know, I don't need to be a member of the church because you know I'm already a member of the true church. Uh as if there can be such a bifurcation from one's covenant made with uh Christ and their local congregation uh who represents the church of Christ. And and it that's a separation of head and body. It's like saying I can be connected to the head, Christ, without being connected to the body. That's what we mean by over-scriptionalization, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's central. And um, we think of our membership primarily as something that's spiritual. I'm a spiritual member, but even in 1 Corinthians 12, which along with Romans 12 and Ephesians 3 to 5, main areas where we we get the even the idea of member, it's describing your spiritual membership being enacted visibly in a body where you use your gifts and you rub shoulders and you interact with one another. And I think that brings us back to this idea of embodied fellowship. You know, I I try to explain this to my wife. You know, that it's it's great. My wife gets to hear all of my reflections, and and it it if I can't articulate it to her, I probably can't articulate it, you know, to somebody else because she's very she's very intelligent. And um so anyway, I I tried talking through some of these arguments, and one of the things that I think really resonated with her is I said, you know, as I've tried to raise some questions with some pastors, now many have been respectful of my concerns, but I did have at least two people who their response was almost ex almost said it, like, what's the big deal? Like, you know, come on, what's the big deal? You're just overreacting. And so I said to my wife, you know, I said, I feel like virtual communion is like getting married over Zoom. And that resonated with her because the Lord's Supper is not just the body assembling with its head, Christ, it's the it's the body assembling to become the bride, which meets Christ at the altar, to receive his kiss on our lips in the bread and wine, to spiritually, but in an embodied way, lean upon his breast like John in this intimate context where we can greet one another with a holy kiss, and and there's this physical intimacy.
SPEAKER_00So some some pastors will struggle because they their experience has been probably probably in their upbringing, if they grew up in a church who uh you know did not practice the sacraments very often, that the Eucharist is something that is for special occasions like say Christmas or uh Resurrection Sunday or some other occasion. And and it's a big deal, like everything is is you know leads up in the service to that moment, which is great, uh, it does, but have had a hard time uh imagining how to work a or put together plan a service where the Eucharist is an element of the worship that's taking place corporately. And and I think I think it's that's so crucial to let pastors know that uh it can be incorporated, it's incorporated every week by many traditions, uh, very simply, uh fairly quickly, and yet very meaningfully. And as you said, you know, you certainly people would miss the time of hymn singing or a time of congregational prayer or any of those other elements. Um and somehow people view uh the Eucharist as something different. Yeah, um, no, it it ought to be part of the corporate gathering, as you mentioned uh earlier, 1 Corinthians 14, at least three or four times. Uh, and going back uh even in previous chapters, Paul says, you know, when you gather together, uh and part of those passages in chapter 11 is is the Eucharist. Yeah, so it can be incorporated very simply and meaningfully, and uh that whole argument I had someone recently when we were continuing uh communion again weekly, um say a woman when she heard about it, uh said, Well, you know, I don't want it to get too ritualistic. And I I'm not even sure if I responded at that moment, but um yeah, I I I did respond in some way. And I said, Well, I you know, this it's it's part of our the way we worship, and it is crucial to uh how Christ taught us to observe both his lordship and our covenant with one another, and so it's a vital part to uh to communion.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, absolutely. I'm I'm really glad you brought that up because I I just had a conversation recently uh about the frequency of communion, and that was one of the responses. Well, no, every time we've ever had communion, I preached a whole sermon on communion because I don't want it to get to be the kind of thing where we just do it and we don't know why and it's not important. And I'm thinking, wow, I just really think that's a that's a mistaken impulse, and we'll we'll never it'll never be uh become central as long as that we feel like that has to be you know the whole service. So yeah, I don't think I don't think we're gonna diminish it. Again, I don't think experience uh even supports that. Let me get your take on something here. So uh one of the things I one of I've read quite a few articles, things people have put out. One of the things that struck me of everything I've read was Scott Swain, should we live stream the supper? He cites Song of Solomon. And uh I love this. So I mentioned about the the supper being a marriage supper. It it anticipates the marriage supper of the lamb. And again, this goes back to where Jesus says, I won't eat that, I won't drink this wine with you until I drink it new in my father's kingdom. It's an it's there's this the solemn remembrance of his death united with this joyful anticipation of the marriage supper. And this is what um this is what Scott Swain says the sign of the Lord's Supper is a shared meal, partaken in the covenant assembly of God's people, the gathered church. To this symbolic action, Christ has attached the promise of his presence and blessing. And then he quotes, There I will give you my love, Psalm 7, 12. So this is the whole in context. Psalm 7, 11 to 12. Come, my beloved, let us go out into the fields and lodge in the villages. Let us go out early to the vineyards and see whether the vines have budded, whether the great blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love. Now, we don't have time to get into the whole allegorical interpretation of Song of Solomon. We can just, I think, leave it with saying, the church has always interpreted that allegorically. Not, it's not only allegorical. Sure. Certain the whole scripture is Christ-centered, right? So it's a very modern impulse to de-allegorize that. Um, but I think what a beautiful picture of how we go to the place where we meet Christ at the table, and there we receive his love as the bride assembled to meet the bridegroom at the altar. And virtual communion um really uh really loses that because it's disembodied, it's the disembodied virtual connection in the internet sense of disassembled Christian eating private meals. It doesn't enact the church's visible unity, um, it doesn't clearly set them apart from unbelievers. I think that's something we need to talk about, uh, authorization and the need to guard the table. Um, but but we really lose this emplaced nature of the sacrament.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so pastors are suddenly becoming aware now that we have had virtual church, um, quote church, uh virtual services um, and people have you know participated in that. Um, and as far as I can tell, churches have pretty good numbers of people watching online, and again, I think that's really beneficial in many, many ways. But now, as pastors, we're faced with uh this task, challenge of getting people back together, right? Into physical presence. And so I want to say to pastors that that same impulse that moves you to say, hey, we need to get people back into the sanctuary together, is not dissimilar to the impulse that ought to drive us to sharing in Holy Eucharist together. I it's it's really very, very similar. It's that's really what we're talking about here. And um and so as we work hard, and this year is it's gonna be hard work to get people uh back together uh because they have experienced the convenience, and if we sanction that, we have to be very careful of what we sanction because people will take that and they will say, Well, if it was okay during COVID, then it will be okay when I'm too tired to get out of bed and go to church. Uh, if it's okay to participate or to go through a sacred ceremony in this way, and I I imagine there are people who have gotten married by Zoom. I can imagine that that's happened. My wife, I don't even know if that's legal, so maybe it is. Well, when I thought, you know, initially, when I thought, okay, how what's this look like for baptism? Would we be, you know, would someone be baptized virtually? Uh, my second thought was, uh, well, there are people who probably have been married uh virtually. And uh yeah, I mean, there's yeah, we could talk about that too. Um, but you understand my point. There's this this we feel this pastors, I think, will will know exactly what I mean right now. Uh, you know, I think at our church, we're still at maybe 60% of people present, and it's a challenge. It's gonna be it, it's gonna continue to be a challenge because I repeatedly hear uh people or see uh on social media people say, I think I'm going to uh I think I'm gonna watch from home today for whatever reason. Uh they're tired or they had to work late on Saturday or uh for some other you know convenient reason. And as a pastor, I think, oh no, I've failed, I failed to convey the importance of why we come together and why that's so absolutely uh formative uh for us spiritually and uh is deeply rooted theologically in the Eucharist. And and it starts there. I mean, it's that is the Eucharist gives us a physical theology.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Theology, yeah, of course it's spiritual in the most obvious sense. Uh it's an exercise in spirituality, but Christian theology is about embodiment, it's about the body of Christ that was that was uh given in death, buried, and resurrected, and will come again. I mean, it's very physical, and our physical theology begins with those elements that Christ. Offered to us. Right. And that we participate.
SPEAKER_03The incarnate Christ is about to give his body before ascending in the body. So he leaves the body, the church, and they become the physical body by eating his body, but not, you know, in the same way as the Roman Catholics and Lutherans believe, but in some mysterious sense, you know, at least spiritually, mystically, in the physical bread. This is my body. So we become the body when we eat the body in the bread as one body embodied in communion. It's a physical salvation, it's a physical church, it's a physical redemption, it's it's physical all the way around.
SPEAKER_00It is. It is formative for being the church.
SPEAKER_03And then it moves to the eschatological perspective because those inner, you know, those chapters are on what this embodied fellowship looks like as we use our spiritual gifts as the members, but then we move towards the resurrection and how there's this bodily resurrection coming. So even the eschatological Corinthians, we move that direction. Yeah. Let me read this. This is Thomas Odin, the great Methodist, um, you know, master of retrieval theology. This is what he says. There can be no church without a fitting sacramental life. From the outset, those who have confessed Jesus as the Christ and who accepted his message were baptized and immediately were found devoting themselves to the breaking of bread. He quotes Cyprian, where no one is baptized, there is no church. Where the farewell meal is uncelebrated, one has no right to expect the true church.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Yeah, we're not used to that strong a language, are we? Um good Methodist, though. And that's why Watson says it is a dramatic departure. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. And and I think we need to understand as Methodists that um you know this is long tradition here. I mean, this is this is what I call big T tradition. And that means this is how the church understood Christ's command and has practiced, uh has practiced it. And uh we really are uh starving ourselves spiritually uh if we uh don't regain an appreciation for what has been handed to us. Uh we we need to do some recovery here, right?
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes, may the Lord help us all. Any final comments or thoughts?
SPEAKER_00I I just want to encourage pastors to seriously consider uh implementing a frequent offering of uh the Eucharist to your congregation and stick to it. You know, don't give in to the you know common response of well this is going to become ritualistic or or those sorts of responses, but stick to it. Um keep it simple and straightforward and use it as a time to teach your congregants what it means to be the church and why um why this practice of partaking of the Lord's Supper together is uh so um enriching to our experience as Christians and as the church together.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and as holy joys, we're trying to produce resources that help pastors with this. So I recently published, you know, shameless plug here, but I recently published an article on how often should we receive the Lord's Supper, you know, making that that argument. And I end it with a section with practical advice for pastors on how to make this transition. And um, and I probably need to include there, you know, about not feeling as though it has to be the entire service. Um, you know, your preaching has to center around it. But but I talk about scaling it up and you know, a lot of importance of teaching. And we have other articles on holy joys that you could almost take them and turn them into um, you know, turn them into a message, or you need help with it. And there's there's gonna we're gonna point you to the Methodist resources. And and I shared Sunday night um in anticipation of our coming uh communion service, um, maybe one of the strongest messages I've ever shared on along these lines. And I was very encouraged by the response. In fact, someone that I was nervous, you know, how would they respond? said, that made a lot of sense. And if that's the case, I understand why it's been so central. And so I know sometimes these transitions can seem just so scary, like, oh, I don't know that we could ever do that at our our church. And I just want to say, I think if we're strong leaders and we really believe this, uh, we can make it happen by the grace of God. And it can, it can be a wonderful means of grace for our life together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's incumbent upon us as pastors to understand the theological foundation here and to have that as part of our implementation of the Eucharist. And so for that reason, again, I want to encourage, especially pastors, church leaders, to respond to this podcast with questions and uh and perhaps some of those questions will uh cause us to come back to this and to try to answer some of those questions. I'm sure there are many. And I mean I know there are many because we haven't even answered uh all the questions that we have talked about uh in the past about this issue. So uh I would encourage pastors to do that, and maybe that will uh help them to know how to approach this within their own local church.
SPEAKER_03Yes. So if we have questions, if we receive questions, we will we'll just record an entire episode where we work through those and uh and try to do our best to provide a helpful answer.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for listening to the Holy Joys Podcast. Email your questions to podcast at holyjoys.org, and they may be featured on a future episode. Our labors for a holy happy church are supported by generous listeners like you. Please pray about partnering with us at holyjoys.org forward slash donate.
