Can you have ....

... communion without Jesus? For this is exactly what we had as I visited my friend's church this sunday morning. Here is how the first part of service went:

Worship with some songs, that nobody seemed massively into. A few folk raise hands, most gazed around wondering where the coffee was. Same song for 10 minutes. God really is FOREVER strong ... then we all were told to grab a piece of wool and make a web in our small groups, with a bigger thread linking us all together. Kinda cool - but took too long!

Anyway - then one of the pastors read out a 2 page collection of thoughts about community living which was a little odd. Imagine someone who had pasted 5 blog entries together.

Then , literally, these were the words . Now we're going to have communion. The bread and wine are at the sides. let's have a moment of quiet. Then people went up and took bread and wine. well, grape juice.

And that was it.

No mention of jesus. No mention of the cross. No mention of the core act of remembrance and coummunity expressed. . . if you were a visitor and didn't knwo anything about church, what would you have felt? this is just some poeploe eating bread and drinking grape juice in silnece when there's doughnuts over there. then we alll break for the doughnuts. maybe its something to remind us all about poverty.

What was especially strange was that the talk afterwards was a fantastically deep yet accesible discussion of what the cross means, especially in realtion to final victory over the powers and kingdoms.

After hearing all that, the first thing I wanted to do was take communion!

M