The Florida Annual Conference

The Eucharist, usually called the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion in our tradition, is the center of Christian worship of God. Indeed, it is what makes the worship of the universal church distinctively Christian. Its origin comes directly and personally from Jesus Christ. Because of its significance, the way we celebrate it deserves the most careful attention.

I want to focus on only one basic point, and that is the necessity of using the prayer of the Church in offering thanks before participating in the holy meal. The prayer of the Church is the Great Thanksgiving in the Service of Word and Table. In The United Methodist Hymnal, there are 4 versions of this prayer. The most basic one is the one in A Service of Word and Table II.

In some congregations, it has become the custom of the pastor to offer his or her own prayer as a substitute for the Church's prayer. Sometimes the pastor includes the words of institution, and sometimes the pastor does not include these words. While it is essential to include the words of our Lord which were spoken at the Last Supper when he instituted the Lord's Supper, even this is not adequate.

The prayer of the Church should be used when celebrating the Eucharist because it is the prayer of the whole Church and not that of just the congregation or the pastor. It contains the whole drama of God's salvation from creation to the new creation. It is ordered around the Rule of Faith, namely the worship of one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Great Thanksgiving in the rite of The United Methodist Church was approved for use by the Church after the most careful deliberation and years of experimentation, taking into account the practices of the early church, ecumenical consultation, and awareness of the theological debates about the meaning of the Eucharist over the centuries. To fail to use the Church's prayer is a most serious error because it results in setting aside what the Church has learned in developing this rite for the heart of Christian worship.

When we fail to use the prayer of the Church we distort the Gospel and fail to shape people for discipleship according to the fullness of the Gospel. As I said, this prayer follows the Rule of Faith. When it is not used then the people are not shaped according to Trinitarian worship of God. If the pastor omits the first part of the prayer praising the Father as the source of creation, or the second part remembering the voluntary offering of Jesus Christ for our redemption, or the third part calling on the power of the Holy Spirit for our sanctification, then there is a distortion of the whole economy of divine salvation accomplished by the Triune God. In effect, if we reduce the prayer to just one part of it, or epitomize one part of it in extemporaneous praying, we practice a form of Unitarianism, whether it is Unitarianism of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit. For example, a prayer which evokes only the words of institution implies a Unitarianism of the Son, omitting the work of the loving Triune God in creating the world out of nothing and bringing it to consummation by the transfiguring power of the Spirit.

Our theological assumptions have direct consequences for discipleship. For instance, the first part of the prayer is strongly cosmic in its content ("heaven and earth are full of your glory"). How can we take seriously our stewardship of the earth when we do not allow this prayer of the Church to permeate our consciousness? The second part remembers, in the sense of having re-presented to us now, Jesus Christ and what God has accomplished through him for our sakes. How can we be shaped to trust and follow Jesus Christ if we omit this second part of the Great Thanksgiving? The third part calls upon the Holy Spirit. How can we learn to live and grow in holiness without the dynamic energy of the Holy Spirit?

The wisdom of our Church is that it recognizes the value of adding to the prayer of the Church prayers which fit a congregation's needs or a pastor's emphasis on any given Sunday. In fact, when it is done right, this kind of extemporizing is encouraged. If a congregation is beginning a new ministry to the homeless, some words about this could be added to the third part calling on the Holy Spirit to make us "be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood" -- "Let us be Christ's hands and feet as we begin to provide hospitality to our sisters and brothers who have no homes of their own and no shelter for their families."

It is difficult to understand why some pastors, despite being trained otherwise, persist in the practice of not praying the Church's prayer in the Eucharist. A concern for brevity cannot be the reason since it takes only a few minutes to offer the Church's prayer. Being concerned about brevity here is not valid given what is at stake. Perhaps some just believe that expressing their own personal sincerity is more authentic, but this prayer is not supposed to be their prayer, but the prayer of the the whole Church. At any rate, if any think their prayer is better than the Church's, it isn't. Their prayer never encompasses the scope of the Church's sound faith or attends to the nuances of theological accents wrought by the whole Church.

Thank you for this reflection. It stirs my own thinking about what Wesley termed "The Duty of Constant Communion". In most Florida United Methodist Churches, Holy Communion is served routinely only on the first Sunday of the month; and church attendance often declines on that Sunday. I'm sure there are many reasons people choose to stay home on those Sundays, however it signifies a lack of appreciation for the Holy power of this means of grace. Perhaps this is also a logical consequence of the way some pastors present the sacrament as "fast food" by NOT praying the entire Eucharistic prayer. The church I attend as a retired pastor is thriving. So much so, in fact that we are planning to add a new Sunday morning worship service in September. Since our current contemporary service is thriving, the new service will also be contemporary. I view the new service as a wonderful opportunity to make the Eucharist available to folks on a weekly basis. However, some of the church leadership believe that offering Holy Communion weekly would keep folks away from the new service. (This is based on their experience in other services.) I do not have a crystal ball, and I do not know how attendance would be effected by such a change, but I think it is the church's duty to offer Holy Communion at least once a week. A new worship service is the ideal place to initiate this ancient tradition and correct a long-standing (dare I say it) heresy in our church. Failing to present the entire Eucharistic prayer is a "serious error" on the part of some pastors. But so is the custom of offering Holy Communion infrequently. I would appreciate your theological reflections on the "Duty of Constant Communion" in today's United Methodist Church.

My thanks to Bro. Wilcox for his humble and sincere confession. I never fully understood the Liturgy becausue it was always the same from one communion service to the next and it became rote until I had a truly divine revelation of the meaning of the Blood and the Body. Now it matters not whether I am led by "proper prayer" or the confessing prayer of the pastor given through the power of the Holy Spirit because, as I receive the Sacrement, I see Jesus on the Cross. His stripes are the source of my healing and His broken body is the power for it!

Mr. Weakley said it well:"we do not want to become like the traditional Roman Catholic Church ...in that we offer only recitations of words which lose their meaning, fail to convict and humble and fill the spirit...." Our pastor's monotone dashing through the prescribed service leaves me uninterested in attending on "Communion Sunday." It approaches sacrilege. We respond to an intelligent, thoughtful delivery of the scriptures and their interpretation, followed by thoughtful prayer. This from an octogenarian who has worshiped in several traditions.

Thank you, Bishop Whitaker, for your sensible and honest assessment of the state of worship within our denomination. The liturgical theologian Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory once wrote: “Liturgy is the most perfect act of worshipping God.” As such, all liturgy should be necessarily Trinitarian in praising the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our official statements on the sacraments (By Water and the Spirit and This Holy Mystery) affirm that the liturgy is a necessary element of a living faith in the Holy Trinity. If we believe that there is a relationship between doctrine and doxology (Lex orandi, lex credendi), then there is no excuse for the type of Eucharistic Unitarianism of which you write.

Regarding Mr. Weakley’s comments: I would invite all who respond to our esteemed bishop’s blog to enter the discussion with a spirit of Christian grace and charity. To brusquely assert that Bishop Whitaker’s theological reasoning is “lacking something” is impudent. It is also disrespectful of the episcopal office and the pastoral oversight exercised by Bishop Whitaker and all our bishops. Moreover, to reduce the complex theological and political subtleties of the Reformation controversy to Luther’s dissent against the “recitations of words which [lost] their meaning” is factually inaccurate. It is also ecumenically uncharitable, given the forty-plus years of fruitful dialogue between United Methodist and Roman Catholic theologians. In the context of a discussion about Eucharistic practice, I would invite Mr. Weakley to read the 1981 joint United Methodist-Roman Catholic document “Eucharistic Celebration: Converging Theology - Divergent Practice.” That being said, I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Weakley on the importance of liturgical education within the local church. Many within our denomination object that written prayers are counter to our theological heritage, and the repetition of any prayer that is not extemporaneous is insincere, mechanical and rote. Our United Methodist sisters and brothers may not be aware that the Early Church utilized written Eucharistic prayers (as found in the Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions). Also, John Wesley always celebrated the Eucharistic liturgy according to the form of The Book of Common Prayer (1662) and intended for Methodists in America to pray according to a common form (The Sunday Services of the Methodists in North America). Our United Methodist Hymnal and Book of Worship contain nearly twenty forms of the Great Thanksgiving, enough for ample liturgical variety within the local church. Moreover, Abingdon and other United Methodist related publishers have made available liturgical materials that conform to the rubrics and spirit of our hymnal and worship book. The GBOD-affiliated Order of Saint Luke, of which I am a member, even publishes the three-volume “Lift Up Your Hearts” which contains Eucharistic prayers based on the Revised Common Lectionary. As for educational materials about the centrality of the Eucharist in the Wesleyan and United Methodist tradition: there are multiple age-appropriate studies on “This Holy Mystery” as well as Steve Harper’s classic “Devotional Life in the Wesleyan Tradition,” which was also published some years back in workbook form for use in parish educational settings. To sum up, there is no excuse for crisis in our shared sacramental life of which Bishop Whitaker writes so passionately.

I do understand these concepts on a personally deep level, and I do believe in and worship the Triune God, as you call him. I simply call him God, and by more personal names also. I also appreciate the emphasis on praying the prayer in all churches. A valid and important point is being made, which is one reason why I like The United Methodist Church - it is generally uniform from one congregation to the next when compared to other congregationalist denominations. However, I believe your argument is lacking something. Whatever the motives of pastors to exclude the agreed upon prayer, worshipers in general, and new Christians in particular have no understanding of the deep theological and historical waters in which this debate swims. Would it not be best to recommend that a small group study, and sermon series be held to educate people, and provide a forum for discussion and most importantly the questions people have as they mature in their faith. My concern is that we do not want to become like the Roman Catholic Church with Martin Luther protested in that we offer only recitations of words which lose their meaning, fail to convict and humble and fill the spirit, thus giving people an excuse to reject faith in God and the church. For a 26-year-old I appreciate much more tradition than I think many of my generation do - maybe I am wrong. But, I see many of my friends turned off to church, simply because reading a prayer out of a book doesn't seem genuine, only because they don't understand its importance. And its impossible to convey that to them in one hour, or the first 5 minutes they walk in the door. Some grace on the subject is appropriate in order to allow churches to reach many types of people at all points along the path of faith and non-faith so that when we do have open communion at an open alter the same notes may be hit without necessarily using the exact words.

The absence of any historical connection in many worship services is a tragic loss. The eucharisic prayer not only connects us to Jesus Christ, it also connects us with our brothers and sisters across denominational lines and across time. Too many of our pastors feel equipped to create liturgy "on the go" and in so doing disconnect their people from the wholeness and the richness of Christ's body, the universal church.

We have Eucharist every Sunday; the first Sunday we follow fully one of the Great Thanksgivings, and at times variations provided in the Book of Worship. The other three Sundays, my words are brief and, generally, tie in with the sermon being linked with the spiritual meaning of our gathering at the Table of Christ. Having come from a congregational denomination, it took me many years to grow into a consciousness of praying within and as the universal Body of Christ. This discovery has greatly enriched my own public and private prayer, and I sense it has enlightened and enriched the faith of persons I serve - many of whom, also, were not shaped to a sense of praying as the one voice of the mystical Body of Christ, transcending ages and linking us all in a union of Love.

Thank you, Bishop, for this article, I needed the reminder. In seminary I had to memorize the Great Thanksgiving. Our professor thought it would help one be less formal while holding to the tradition of our church.

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