Neal Presa, moderator of the 2012 General Assembly, has convened a Colloquium on Ecclesiology this week at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary – the first of three such gatherings he intends to organize to discuss the purpose of the church.
The discussions, from April 23-25, center around seven papers that were written in advance and posted online. The format for the discussions is this: For each paper, the author presents a 20-minute summary; comments are then offered by members of the Austin seminary community and the event planning team; then in a question-and-answer session from those attending in Austin and submitted online by people watching the live-stream
For each session, the Outlook will provide a snapshot of the paper and a few memorable points of the discussion.
Session 2: Getting out of the Past Tense at the Lord’s Table: Missional Implications of the Lord’s Supper
Written and presented by: Marney A. Wasserman, pastor, Trinity Presbyterian Church, Tucson, Ariz.
The Lord’s Supper contains both a gift, and a call to discipleship and to be missional, writes Wasserman, pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Tucson. The Lord’s Supper involves both remembering Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, and a present-tense meal, a joyful supper with the people of God and the risen Lord. It’s also a foretaste of the messianic banquet at the end of time, when all tears will be wiped away and all people fed. The Lord’s Supper pushes us into a hungry world to live our discipleship. Should Presbyterians see that as a reason for weekly communion?
Ideas from responses:
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Welcoming. Kim Rogers, a senior student at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, agreed with Wasserman that when people leave the Eucharistic table, “we are just as likely to miss the hungry world outside the church doors.” Rogers contended that the church should also “invite the world in to the table.” After graduation, she will begin serving as an associate pastor at a church in downtown Austin where the homeless often gather, where “the hungry and the overburdened are right outside our church doors,” often huddled against those doors when the nights are cold. “What if they were invited in,” made welcome, seen as beloved children of God in all congregations, she asked. What role could they play in the church’s transformation – in helping form the body of Christ?
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Baptism. Should churches only serve Eucharist to those who have been baptized? That’s a huge conversation in the church, Wasserman said. “We need to keep baptism and Eucharist connected to each other” – to talk about the relationship between them, she said. To talk about baptism “as an impediment to the table damages the church.” When people respond to the invitation to meet Christ at the Eucharistic table, “we feed them, but we don’t stop there. There is an invitation to something deeper than just a meal on Sunday morning . . . People need to be invited to the whole thing.”
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Consistency. Tom Trinidad, vice-moderator of the 2012 General Assembly and a pastor in Colorado, said his congregation began offering weekly communion about four years ago. One man who came forward week after week finally approached him and said he’d never been baptized, then asked for the sacrament. “It was the regular, routine invitations” that led him to do that, Trinidad said. “We recognize that God’s spirit is always at work . . . The consistency is what matters. People will always hear the invitation.”
