Disciples DNA: People of the Chalice

(Through October, as we observe Heritage Month, I'm placing an insert in the bulletin each week describing some aspect of our church's history and identity. This is the first one, for October 1.)

From the very beginning of our church, Disciples have celebrated the Lord’s Supper together each Sunday. And from the very beginning the table has been open to all, no matter what church they belong to. “It is the Lord’s Table and, therefore, not the congregation’s prerogative to allow or disallow participation,” says Guin Stemmler in Disciples Mini-History. All are welcome at Christ’s Table.

But there’s more. In some churches, only ordained clergy are allowed to preside and pray at the Table; in others, no one but ordained clergy may even handle the elements. That’s not the case in the Christian Church. We believe this is a family table, and any member of the family—men, women, and youth—may preside, may serve, may pray at our Table. While there are good theological reasons for this, there are also practical benefits: in the early days of our church, out on the frontier where professional ministers were scarce, the fact that any Christian may preside at the Table meant that we didn’t have to wait for one of the few professionals to appear before we could share the Lord’s Supper together.

Rational people though Disciples are, our founder Alexander Campbell could still wax poetic about the Table. In 1852 he wrote:

Each disciple, in handing the symbols to his fellow-disciple, says, in effect, “You, my brother, once an alien, are now a citizen of heaven; once a stranger, are now brought home to the family of God. You have owned my Lord as your Lord, my people as your people. Under Jesus the Messiah we are one. Mutually embraced in the Everlasting arms, I embrace you in mine: thy sorrows shall be my sorrows, and thy joys my joys. Joint debtors to the favor of God and the love of Jesus, we shall jointly suffer with him, that we may jointly reign with him. Let us, then, renew our strength, remember our King, and hold fast to our boasted hope unshaken to the end.”

Over a century later Disciples pastor and musician David Edwards set those words to music in the beautiful communion hymn “When You Do This, Remember Me.”

Although there is nothing in the New Testament that specifically says Christians are to observe the Lord’s Supper each week, it does appear, according to Colbert Cartwright in People of the Chalice, that the observance was central in early Christian worship. Therefore Disciples, who had as one of their earliest goals the restoration of the New Testament church, place Communion as central in our own worship. Although Alexander Campbell refused to suggest any specific order for Christian worship—in keeping with an early Disciples motto, “Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent”—he did insist on the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, and that observance shapes and colors the entire worship service.

From the beginning, Disciples have also been committed to Christian unity. In his Declaration and Address, written in 1809 to explain the purpose of the new group he had started, Thomas Campbell said, “The church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.” Another founder, Barton Stone, expressed similar sentiments in the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. We understand that we are not the only Christians; and so it is with joy that we Disciples observe World Communion Sunday on the first Sunday in October each year, remembering that we join together with all Christians around the world when we gather at the Lord’s Table.