My fourth suggestion: take a long, hard look at how we distribute the Lord’s Supper. As I said before, everything is set up around efficiency. It almost seems to say “How quickly can we be done with this obligatory rite?” I especially get frustrated with the pressure I feel to quickly down my sip of Welch’s to keep the flow. For a while I was keeping the plastic cup and throwing it away later, just so that I wouldn’t have to speed sip it.

[In Cuba, the church in Matanzas has started 14 congregations in the last two years. Their lead evangelist was asking what to do about the problem of trying to get enough communion trays. Since communion trays are neither in the Bible nor available in Cuba, I told him that I thought they should find another solution. A Cuban solution. I later thought about it and thought that I would encourage each person in these house churches to bring their own cup; I’ll be interested to see what their solution is.]

Personally, I’d like to see tables set up around the auditorium where people would go and get the bread and wine. Older members who could not easily get up and get their own would be served by others; that would bring a new meaning to “serving communion.”

Even if we stick to the trays, let’s consider encouraging people to take their time in eating the bread. And let’s pass the trays for the cups twice, once for people to take a cup, another to put back. Or go back to the old system of people leaving their cups in the backs of the pews.

Whatever we do, let’s keep the Lord’s Supper from resembling a competitive eating event. Slow it down!