Faith Works 10-3-2025
Jeff Gill
Communion is a meal which feeds the hungry
___
On the first Sunday of October, many Christian churches of a wide range of traditions will mark World Communion Sunday.
In the United States, World Communion Sunday marks 85 years going back to Oct. 6, 1940. The observance has Presbyterian roots, in a "Worldwide Communion Sunday" celebration within their fellowship going back to 1936. Presbyterian congregations may celebrate communion twice a year, quarterly, or in a few cases monthly; the goal was to have a certain day on which all Presbyterians across the United States knew fellow believers were also having communion.
Jesse Bader is a remarkable figure in American religious history who deserves to be better known than he is; a minister of my own religious tradition, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which has communion in every weekly worship service, he was in 1939 working to promote evangelism through the Federal Council of Churches, a forerunner body of the National Council of Churches. Bader believed that evangelism and ecumenism were not in conflict, but could be complementary.
Bader recommended the Federal and also the World Council of Churches encourage the observance of a World Communion Sunday on the first Sunday of October, not to try and get churches to hold joint services, but simply to be mindful of how Christians were marking what Jesus said and did at the Last Supper down the street, around the corner, and around the world. While the World Council of Churches did not officially endorse the plan, the celebration of World Communion Sunday quickly spread well beyond the United States.
To the end of his life, when Bader died at 77 in 1963, he continued to promote the simple act of churches making sure to hold communion in their worship service on October's first Sunday, and to be aware that so many others were doing the same. Celebrating communion together is still a challenge for many Christian bodies, given internal rules around who can preside, and who can receive, but there is still a unity in the common practice which is essential, and that Bader believed supported evangelism in the widest possible sense.
Today it can be a date on the church calendar which is simply "how we've always done it," but the roots of the practice I believe are inspiring, and worth our extra attention and awareness. Traditions like my own Disciples of Christ, or in Methodism generally, believe communion is a "converting ordinance" and rightly open to all; other more liturgical traditions hold to a more closed table, restricting the reception of communion to members, while usually noting that they pray for the unity of all believers in God's good time.
So there are still quite a few churches where I can't walk right in and take communion on the first day I visit, but I respect their discipline and rigor within their own contexts. I think these differences make World Communion Sunday all the more meaningful, as each of our worship gatherings can imagine and hope for a wider unity, even as we hold to our own traditions within our four walls. That wider unity knows no walls, and points beyond our time to what is yet to come.
This, we do in remembrance of the one who calls us to break bread together, to pour out the cup, and in these simple, everyday acts of eating and drinking, to be in communion with each other, with Jesus, with God whose invitation is to all of us, to the table of fellowship, and of peace.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to communion on Sunday. Tell him how you commune with God at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Jeff Gill
Communion is a meal which feeds the hungry
___
On the first Sunday of October, many Christian churches of a wide range of traditions will mark World Communion Sunday.
In the United States, World Communion Sunday marks 85 years going back to Oct. 6, 1940. The observance has Presbyterian roots, in a "Worldwide Communion Sunday" celebration within their fellowship going back to 1936. Presbyterian congregations may celebrate communion twice a year, quarterly, or in a few cases monthly; the goal was to have a certain day on which all Presbyterians across the United States knew fellow believers were also having communion.
Jesse Bader is a remarkable figure in American religious history who deserves to be better known than he is; a minister of my own religious tradition, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which has communion in every weekly worship service, he was in 1939 working to promote evangelism through the Federal Council of Churches, a forerunner body of the National Council of Churches. Bader believed that evangelism and ecumenism were not in conflict, but could be complementary.
Bader recommended the Federal and also the World Council of Churches encourage the observance of a World Communion Sunday on the first Sunday of October, not to try and get churches to hold joint services, but simply to be mindful of how Christians were marking what Jesus said and did at the Last Supper down the street, around the corner, and around the world. While the World Council of Churches did not officially endorse the plan, the celebration of World Communion Sunday quickly spread well beyond the United States.
To the end of his life, when Bader died at 77 in 1963, he continued to promote the simple act of churches making sure to hold communion in their worship service on October's first Sunday, and to be aware that so many others were doing the same. Celebrating communion together is still a challenge for many Christian bodies, given internal rules around who can preside, and who can receive, but there is still a unity in the common practice which is essential, and that Bader believed supported evangelism in the widest possible sense.
Today it can be a date on the church calendar which is simply "how we've always done it," but the roots of the practice I believe are inspiring, and worth our extra attention and awareness. Traditions like my own Disciples of Christ, or in Methodism generally, believe communion is a "converting ordinance" and rightly open to all; other more liturgical traditions hold to a more closed table, restricting the reception of communion to members, while usually noting that they pray for the unity of all believers in God's good time.
So there are still quite a few churches where I can't walk right in and take communion on the first day I visit, but I respect their discipline and rigor within their own contexts. I think these differences make World Communion Sunday all the more meaningful, as each of our worship gatherings can imagine and hope for a wider unity, even as we hold to our own traditions within our four walls. That wider unity knows no walls, and points beyond our time to what is yet to come.
This, we do in remembrance of the one who calls us to break bread together, to pour out the cup, and in these simple, everyday acts of eating and drinking, to be in communion with each other, with Jesus, with God whose invitation is to all of us, to the table of fellowship, and of peace.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to communion on Sunday. Tell him how you commune with God at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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