Communion
I asked this question on twitter tonight but I’m posting it here as well because I’m really interested in some good response on this one.
Those if you who celebrate communion together regularly at church, is it done with juice? wine? both?
What’s your style?
We use juice. Wine would not be accepted by the majority.
We use juice. Using wine would really anger some people.
Juice. I think the theory is “if it will cause any to stumble, then we won’t use wine”
Hey Chris – long time, no talk!
We use juice, if only because, as corny as it may seem, we use the prepackaged juice/wafer combo kit.
I don’t think we’d have much resistance to wine, and we’re an SBC church in the deep south.
we use juice in our church but i’ve been to a church where they use wine. i can’t remember the exact name/place but it could be somewhere in the the Niagara escarpment :)
Juice. Too many current and recovering alcoholics in our church. Wine would be dangerous for them.
We use both. We also celebrate communion every Sunday morning.
We use juice. For the record, every church I’ve ever been a member of used juice (all “independent” and Southern Baptist).
FWIW, there’s a church not too far from us that offers wine, juice and water for their congregants, so they can choose what they’re comfortable with.
Both…
We take communion every week in corporate worship. In that environment, we have always used juice.
Every Sunday AM, between services, my music team and I meet together for prayer, discussion and communion as well. In that environment, we have wine. There is a mutual agreement in that group, that we would use wine.
I personally think wine might be more appropriate, but I’ve always gone to “juice-only” churches. My pastor would prefer wine if everyone in the congragation was in agreement, but they’re not. So juice is a more unifying choice, and still perfectly acceptable, IMO.
Both churches I frequent use juice. My personal preference is wine. At a conference of former Jehovah’s Witnesses that I go to every year they offer both.
Every church I’ve been to uses juice, except for the catholic services I’ve been to, which I wasn’t able to partake of. I think I might prefer wine. I also think that communion is supposed to be more than a monthly thing, I think Jesus intended it to be something we remember every time we eat. Not that it’s bad to have it during a service though!
At the Meeting House we use juice in our large group setting. However, we encourage our Home Church network to experience communion regularly in that setting. And in that case, I believe we leave it up to each Home Church to decide.
Personally, I prefer wine. But at the end of the day, it’s a moot issue, right? I mean, juice and wine are simply symbols; elements that draw us into a deeper expression. Heck, you could use water and it wouldn’t (shouldn’t) matter.
I’ve never been to a local church that uses wine. Juice all around for me.
we use juice with the centre section wine
We use wine every sunday AM
Get this: NON-alcoholic Wine!
How about that! Our pastor made a move for us to get as close to the original elements as we could (pita bread for unleavened bread and wine for..well, wine.) But for reasons mentioned above we didn’t go for alcoholic wine. I believe it does matter and am glad we do it, but in fact, I’d just as well use real wine :)
I have some great suggestions as well! HA.
This is a great read, thank you for sharing. Alcohol addiction is not an issue that is going away at any time soon.