More on the Supper

The Assembling of the Church: What makes a meal the Lord's Supper?

Alan Knox took my previous post and launched an excellent discussion. There is a particularly interesting exchange between Alan and a guy named Todd about the nature, authority, parameters of the local church where we see the impact of traditional church definitions coloring the understanding of not just who the church is but who and what can participate in the Lord's Supper. The idea is that if an unbeliever takes the cracker and juice in a local church body, that doesn't mean he is observing the Lord's Supper because he is not one of Christ's sheep. Likewise believers in a home who are gathered in fellowship together are observing the Supper even though they are not in a church building. I particularly liked this comment from Alan:

To be completely honest, I am not interested at all in how unrengerate people approach the Lord's Supper, because they cannot partake of the Lord's Supper, even if they eat and drink. Instead, I am concerned with the church. I am not concerned with a particular church organization - with membership decided by some group or bylaws or whatever. I'm talking about God's children - the regenerate, the saved, believers, whatever you want to call them. As far as I can, in Scripture, the only requirement for being part of the church is being a child a God - being regenerate.

Check it out, this is good stuff!