Why this won’t work
It’s pretty clear from the outset that the Do This project – bringing the Uniting Church to a weekly Sunday Eucharist — won’t work.
For one, the services will be too long.
For another, we’ll need to find more people to fill the preparation roster.
And it was bad enough moving from quarterly celebrations to monthly; a week Communion will do away with the “special” feel.
And there are not enough authorised celebrants for those days when the minister is not present
And it’s very Catholic, or Anglican (or Lutheran, Baptist, Churches of Christ, Orthodox).
And do we really want to be confronted with talk of eating flesh and drinking blood every week?
It’s also pretty clear that there is a lot to be gained from a weekly Eucharist. And that the gains would make the obstacles worth tackling.
The service doesn’t have to be more than an hour; four hymns (or whatever), a children’s address, several readings, a sermon and Holy Communion are quite achievable within an hour if that is what the community wants and the worship leaders are willing to work towards it.
Filling the preparation roster can be the work of families, or of the minister if she’s keen enough not to let the issue be a deal-breaker.
Celebrant supply is an issue. If Do This gains momentum it will require of UCA Presbyteries and the Assembly that the question of lay-celebration be considered further; perhaps the practice of monthly celebrations has been a convenience for supply ministry which we must now let go.
The fact that a monthly celebration of the Eucharist is a very UCA thing ought to give us pause: what does most of the rest of the church know (and demonstrate in its weekly celebrations) that we don’t?
And, then, the body and the blood. This is the heart of the matter: what has Jesus and his death on the cross – the breaking of his body and the spilling of his blood – do to with us? The tangibility and concreteness – the grittiness of the body and the blood – get to the heart of Christian confession: the incarnation (“became flesh”). The stuff of us — what we are made of and what we do and need – is the stuff of God.
There’s nothing here which need get in the way of moving to a weekly Eucharist if we’re convinced that it would be worth the effort. And it would be!