"The Lord's Supper is a Meal" by Jim Elliff. A Quick Review

 


(I sent this out to my congregation in my weekly letter today, 9 November 2023)

There are many practices that have intruded themselves into the life of local congregations in 2023. Some of those practices have, in some way, eclipsed part of the role of the sacraments. Coffee and doughnuts, for example, have become the place where fellowship and conversation happen more often than not. So, I was delighted to pick up and read a copy of “The Lord’s Supper is a Meal” by Jim Elliff, president and founder of Christian Communicators Worldwide. This teeny 95-page softback is straightforward, moves along easily, and gets to the point quickly.

 

Elliff and I would disagree on a few things, such as the Lord’s Supper really being a means of grace, the role of Gospel ministers being necessary for administering the sacrament, and such. But the author does such a masterful job in drawing out important details about the supper that I found the book rich and useful.

 

Most of Elliff’s time is spent in 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, where he explains what happened and what Paul was aiming to correct. Some of the basic highpoints from the book are: (1) The Lord’s Supper was meant to be received often, even weekly. (2) It is a meal that exhibits Gospel fellowship both vertical and horizontal. (3) And it should be a meal that shows division has been healed by Christ’s sacrificial gift to us, for “the Lord’s Supper must be a meal without division” (30).

 

One of my favorite statements is this short paragraph:

“It was particularly the failure in the horizontal fellowship that Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 11. When fellowship with others is fractured or forgotten or distorted by status rather than united around Christ, the Lord’s Supper becomes merely one’s own supper. Worse than that, it brings judgment. The meal associated with the sacrifice of Christ must be about our indivisible fellowship built upon the death of Christ” (26).

 

In the end, even with my disagreements about some underlying assumptions the author has, this is a book worth reading and thinking through. I highly recommend it.

 

You can download a free copy of the book here: The Lord’s Supper is a Meal


Pastor Mike

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“The Shift” - 2023 Movie. A Review

Image
  What do you get when you cross a dark dystopian storyline with sci-fi, alternative dimensions, theological and philosophical questions, and the biblical book of Job? You get The Shift , written and directed by Brock Heasley, produced by Ken Carpenter, and distributed by Angel Studios. This roughly one hour and 45 minute tale swirls around Kevin (Kristoffer Polaha) as he moves from one realm of life, with it’s happiness and heartbreak, to another dimension that is a dismal existence clearly governed by The Benefactor (masterfully played by Neal McDonough). A viewer will be asking questions all the way through, and picking up clues and answers that pull the story together bit-by-bit. The story bumps up against an infinite set of alternative possibilities, of time, space, and versions of one’s self that will likely stoke a viewer’s imagination. But the heart of the narrative - besides love, grief, loss, trust/distrust - is around the place of evil, specifically, personal or human evil.
Read more

Community?

Image
  (This is from my letter to my congregation I sent out today, 30 August 2023) As one of my elders was leading us through Carl Trueman’s Strange New World in our adult class , I appreciated Trueman’s emphasis on community. And our discussions, especially the last two Sundays, were very fruitful as we thought out loud together about this subject. Therefore, I thought I would share something from David Brooks, an Op-ed columnist that leans into this discussion.   Brooks published a book in 2019 titled, “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life”. In that work he was taking a gentle punch at destructive trends he has been seeing, and giving some helpful correctives. And so, he notes that “Individualism, taken too far, leads to tribalism” (34). He then shows how the loneliness and spiritual emptiness of individualism taken too far have become more prevalent in our time and the ways that they lead to very dark social consequences. These darker social consequences foster the need t
Read more

Union with Christ - An Application

Image
  (This was my weekly letter to my congregation on Wednesday, 21 February 2024) This morning in my devotional reading, I was working through 1 Corinthians 8. Though I’ve read these words a huge number of times over the years, today one verse caused me to stop and take stock.  Paul wrote, “ Thus, sinning against your brothers and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ ” (1 Corinthians 8:12). What struck me is a couple of things. First, in God’s saving work, we are – by grace alone – united (hitched, bonded, ingrafted) to Christ so much so, that what happens to us happens to him, and what is his becomes ours (think of Galatians 2:20, for example). As Sinclair Ferguson put it, “through union with Christ all that is his by incarnation becomes ours through faith” (“The Christian Life,” 110). Let that percolate in your heart for a while. Your fear, anxiety, tears, and so forth, he feels. And his “ Peace, be still ” is yours. Second, the way we treat one another, is
Read more