Union in Communion: The Lord's Supper and the Fact of the Church

Written by Pastor Ryan Rindels

Christians often comment that a church is not a social club. But the very fact that we make this qualification belies the similarities. As a congregation, the church is made up of people. It is social. Like any society—a club included—individuals are united around a particular set of values.

At its most basic level, the church is composed of persons who are united by their worship of the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The New Testament speaks of the church as “the people of God” (1 Peter 2:9). This classification raises several questions about the shape and boundaries of a church. Taken alone, the people-of-God metaphor would suggest that the church is indistinguishable from our personal identities. We are God’s children wherever we are and whatever we are doing. The logic of this reasoning could lead me to believe that spending time with my family on Sunday morning is no different than singing and hearing a sermon.

Additionally, is not true that all of life is worship? “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” says the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:31. Worship is the adoration and glorification of God. Our bodies are “living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1), “temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). With these texts in mind, some Christians have concluded that the institutional elements of the church—a building ministries, ordained leaders—are not what Jesus meant by a church. A former pastor at Bell Road Baptist, Jonathan Campbell, who wrote The Way of Jesus: A Journey of Freedom for Pilgrims and Wanderers, made the following prediction in 2005: “The emerging spirituality is not so much what we do or even what we believe, but rather a spiritual journey in relationship—who we are, who we believe, who we walk with, and who we are becoming (33).”

Just shy of twenty years, the statement has not aged well. Many in the so-called “Emergent church” movement have either embraced progressive Christianity, left the faith altogether, or left sympathizers who’ve understood that “emerging spirituality” is uniquely vulnerable to contemporary religious and ideological fads.

It is true that the church is simple in its constitutive elements, but the church does have indisputable characteristics that are not “emerging.” That so many Protestant Christians have failed to uphold the church’s two principal “marks” is astounding. These are:

1. the preaching of God’s word

2. the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Wherever these are present—and rightly administered—a church exists.

The Lord’s Supper is sometimes called communion, a word which comes from the Greek word koinonia. In antiquity, the term was used in some instances to describe marriage. Our Bibles often render koinonia as “fellowship,” a word whose English meaning typically lacks the depth of the Greek original, which carries the sense of intimate relationship. The word can be rendered as “generosity, fellow-feeling, altruism, as well as participation or sharing. 1 Understanding the Lord’s Supper as koinonia alerts us to the unifying element of the ordinance. Paul used a word that connoted the deepest relational intimacy men and women can experience.

A church is not distinct from a social club simply because believers take holy communion but because the spiritual union that this meal represents surpasses what is possible in any secular community.

These things being so, we should take seriously God’s call to be at peace. Eating with others is nearly impossible in any context where anger and hatred are present. The Corinthian Christians were warned against division in connection with the Supper. When the Apostle Paul says that each believer should “examine” themselves before consuming the bread and wine (1 Corinthians 11:28), he is aiming at unity and peace in the church. As Christ’s body on earth, let us also seek to be one in the “unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:3).

Participation in the body and blood of Jesus provides an occasion to strengthen (or mend) our strained relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ. But the Supper is more than an occasion that prompts action. God does something to our hearts. He meets us uniquely in this place and produces in us what could never come from our own resources.

1 A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 438–439.