I agree that I would prefer a simple rule if any, and leaving it up to the individual and / or their parents to decide when that rule is met.

The question is interesting, as to whether the difference between the sacraments merits one being offered to all and the other offered to those who profess faith.

This whole business of trying to figure out what to do (and when and how) with this little one is interesting, too.

We had a little discussion about this on my blog a while back. It started specifically with talking about Communion issues with parents of a special needs child. I was reading a book at the time called “Expressing Faith in Jesus: Church Membership for People With Cognitive Impairments.” There was a story in that book that shook me to the core:

“Thirty-year-old Paul has Down Syndrome. When Paul decided that he wanted to profess his faith in Christ, his parents met with one of the leaders of the faith community to ask that Paul be permitted to make profession of faith and to participate in the Lord’s Supper. The elder told them that their son did not know enough to do either.”

So I kind of went off on that. You can read the whole post here:

http://www.knowtea.com/?p=255

I got off on a tangent and forgot to make a main point. I know that’s shocking. Me? On a tangent??

Here’s the thing–both baptism and communion are sacraments reserved for the visible church. They don’t confer salvation, because ultimately we don’t know WHO is part of the invisible church, so we will never truly know whose name is written on the book of life, know what I mean? So we, in a sense, make a presumption about our covenant children when we baptize them. I mean, YES I believe they are part of the covenant family, and there are blessings and there is grace as a result. They are growing up hearing the word and being shepherded, and I also believe there is a special grace we don’t fully understand that is, in general, extended to children of believers.

So if we offer one sacrament to those who have not yet professed faith, why do we not offer the other? In my mind, that would be more consistent. It’s not something I’m necessarily sure I would DO, given the opportunity. But I might. I’ve never been presented with that option, so it hasn’t been a true issue for me.

We were reformed baptists, even in a PCA church, until my oldest was three and my second was 18 months. At the point that we were convinced of paedobaptism, we had them both baptised, and the rest of ours have been baptised as infants.

Primarily our theology changed to covenant theology. Add to that the fact that we have a son with special needs, and it made us wonder exactly what to do with communion. What if our son never did understand what it was? What if he never could articulate his faith? He actually can do both, but we have friends who have a son who has CP. He will never walk and never talk. He sits in a wheelchair and grins–that’s literally about it. Do they deny him communion because he can’t go before elders and profess his faith? How do they determine at what age he can understand?

Even in the PCA, we were at a church where the elders gave us a wink and a nod and said, “Oh, some VERY young children have come before our session.” We knew of a two-year-old who was taking communion. And then our church encourages it in middle school, which is ironically similar to the communicants class I went through in my PCUSA church.

I honestly don’t know what is the “right” way to handle communion. But I guess the thing I would be the most comfortable with is if you have parents coming forward saying, “My child has faith–it may be a very childlike faith, but I believe it is genuine,” then you allow that child to take communion. And I am more comfortable with less rules. Because if your rule is that they have to share a testimony in front of the whole church (one church I was in did this), or that they have to go before the entire session or whatever, you might frighten someone who is timid or rule out a person who cannot speak, and then you have to figure out how to make exceptions to the rules, and it all gets complicated.

And I guess this all gets back to my fencing the table question. Whose job is it to determine whether someone is worthy of communion? Is it each individual’s job (some with the help of their parents)? Or is it the job of a group of elders?

Ohhh, and here’s an interesting question. What does a session do with a child who from infancy has been allowed to take communion, but then they move to a church who prefers that children be teenagers before they participate?

Anyway Marcy, that’s a long way of saying I’m just not sure! We have gone along with what our own church prefers, and two of ours take communion. One is going through the materials our church believes they should be lead through (a kind of workbook) and will hopefully finish that soon. The other two don’t take it. Which greatly offended Sally the first time she sat through the whole service and saw us drinking child-size juice and tiny crackers. She said, not too quietly, “HEY! WHY DO Y’ALL GET LITTLE SNACKS BUT THE KIDS DON’T?????”

My little girl is only 16 months old. She can say “amen” at the end of a prayer (or at the beginning, at dinnertime when she’s hungry, lol), but that’s the extent of her theology. That’s all I meant by “just juice and crackers” — until she understands that communion is more than an ordinary snack, and until she has expressed faith, she will not partake.

I would still like to hear from Chewymom (to whom I addressed my comment) about how she approaches or has approached or would approach the issue of Communion and children.

I’m not even sure what you mean by “the other church” in your comment. I had no particular church in mind. It just seems to me that the effort to uphold church discipline in our day and age falls short because a person under discipline can just leave and find a more accepting church. And that makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be more effective to walk alongside someone (who is not in BLATANT SIN and completely unrepentant), let them examine their own heart, and just weep with them when they weep and walk with them through the trenches!

I think you have taken a lot of what I have said very personally. Remember this is an anonymous blog, and it has never been my intention to malign someone personally, which is why I don’t name where I live, and I only recently started using my childrens’ first names. As I thought was clear in my post, this is not about our particular church–I am questioning our denomination and others who practice like we do. I am trying to get to the heart of understanding fencing the table and why some do it and some don’t. I was hoping to draw comments from a variety of backgrounds, and it looks like I have a few who come from other denominations who have weighed in. I am trying to get to the heart of what is really biblical in our practices and what is merely tradition.

My words remain the same, however. If we worried less about who gets to do what in what capacity and to what extent in the ‘institutional’ church, we could focus on love and relationships a whole lot more. Don’t you think?