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Children and Communion

Children and Communion

Monday April 20 2020

Jackie Macadam looks at the experience of churches actively involving children in communion services.


A while back I went to Iona with a group of children for a Children’s Assembly. On our last day, we had Communion.

The children were allowed to take some of the baskets of bread and some of the baskets of grapes and take them round the hushed congregation.

They obediently stood at the end of the rows, passing the plates and moving on to the next row. None of them abused the privilege and all of them ate their piece of bread and their grape with a solemn attitude towards it. They all knew this was special and none of them was willing to put a foot out of place and treat it as any less than respectful.

For years there has been some resistance to having children actively participate in the communion of the church.

But some churches have felt that this is perhaps open to interpretation – and that children should be able to participate more fully in the life of their church. A new resource for congregations, Together At The Table, was produced recently by the Church of Scotland’s former Mission and Discipleship Council, now Faith Nurture, for congregations to address questions about this.

Isobel Booth-Clibborn, Children’s Development Worker with Faith Nurture explains: “The booklet has been developed as a resource to help congregations gain a deeper understanding of Holy Communion in the reformed tradition, to review and explore our practice in relation to communion, and suggest ways in which we might welcome and include children, young people and their families to this sacrament.”

Some churches though, have already included children in their Communion services and have been generally delighted with the results.


Aberdeen: St Columba’s Bridge of Don

The Rev Louis Kinsey, minister at Aberdeen: St Columba’s Bridge of Don said his church tackled this issue and asked some serious questions.

He explained: “We are blessed with an encouraging number of children in the congregation, and we’ve long recognised our responsibility to disciple the children God has given us. A key element of this is participation in the Lord’s Supper.

“For a long time we knew that we weren’t involving children at the Lord’s Table as we wanted. We were unsure about how to involve our children properly. The Church of Scotland opens the Lord’s Table to baptised people who love the Lord and who are able to respond in faith to the invitation to ‘take, eat.’ But that can sometimes be difficult to discern in the lives of children, and who should do the discerning?

“The minister? Should the elders police the Lord’s Table and to quiz children about the degree to which they are genuinely able to respond in faith?

“That led us to other questions of ‘eligibility’.

“What about the children of Baptist parents, who belong to the congregation but who remain committed to the practice of believer’s baptism? What about children who love Sunday School and who love the Lord Jesus, brought to the church by foster carers?

“Those were some of our theological and biblical concerns, and these are our children. We are surrounded by young children with a very obvious and age-appropriate love for the Lord Jesus, and not all of them are baptised.

“When this matter was raised at the General Assembly in 2018 the Theological Forum affirmed the normal order of things [but] persuaded the General Assembly that Kirk Sessions can be flexible if pastoral reasons necessitated.

“We decided to formalise our policy as a guide to help us and any others who wanted it.

“Our ‘Policy For The Inclusion Of Children At Communion’ is focussed around five specific points.

“We recognised that parents are the key disciplers of children, and are better able than elders to decide if their children love the Lord Jesus, age-appropriately. The Kirk Session delegated that responsibility to parents, trusting them with it.

“Whilst including unbaptised children at the Lord’s Table, we encourage parents to lead them towards baptism.

“Our children, baptised and unbaptised, are now present at every celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Liturgical language is made as accessible as possible.

“Children sit in family groups and learn how to share the Lord’s Supper through parental example.

“Children in the care of foster parents or guardians, who wish to share the Lord’s Supper, and who are able to demonstrate an age-appropriate love for the Lord Jesus, will be allowed to do so once the necessary permission has been sought from the parents or the social worker, through the foster parent.

“The first Sunday at which our new policy was implemented was very exciting, and it was delightful to see children literally sitting on the edge of their seats, eager to listen, understand and take part.

“There is now a sense that we are a complete church family at worship, as we share communion together. Our children do not feel excluded, and nor do they wonder what the mysterious table is all about. Our inter-generational links and relationships have been strengthened, and we have been reminded that Jesus welcomes us all, whatever our age, to love and come to him.”


Edinburgh: Portobello and Joppa

“At Portobello and Joppa Parish Church, welcoming children into communion is beginning to feel like ‘something we’ve always done,’ however, it didn’t start out that way,” says family worker Michelle Brown.

“I came into post nearly ten years ago. A couple of years later, as I shared the ‘Good Shepherd and World Communion’ story, I asked the children if they had ever been close to the table of the Good Shepherd or heard the very words of the Good Shepherd. These wonderings were met with confused, blank stares.

“Each week, the children sat in front of the communion table during the talking together time with the minister, but they had no idea what the table was for, other than for the minister to sit behind during worship. Why would they know the words Jesus said? Why would they know the meaning of this sacrament and that table? They weren’t included.

“Soon after, the Kirk Session decided that the children in primary school would be welcomed back into worship for the April Communion service. This was our pattern for children in communion until January 2018 when we launched The Year of Young People.

“That January, I spoke in church about how important the questions and ideas of our young people are to this congregation. We value them and want to know what changes in the church they want. One seven-year-old took me quite seriously as it happened to be the January Communion Sunday when I spoke. As we went to the halls, Adele said: ‘Why can’t I stay in for communion? I took it at my last church, why am I not welcome here?’

“I told Adele that she would be welcomed in April, along with the other primary school children, but this explanation felt hollow – Why can’t the children be there EVERY time?

“In May, when we asked all the children at the Have Your Say activity what they wanted for the church, a couple more asked to be welcomed into communion. Our minister, Stewart Weaver, and I then began chatting with elders and the conveners about this. At an autumn session meeting, a vote was passed without hesitation to start by welcoming in children in P3-P7 for every communion service.

“We are a year in now. What has been most interesting about the process is that communion has changed at PJPC as a result. The children have shown a refreshing awe and wonder for the sacrament that too many of us adults had forgotten.

“In the halls, we talk about using all our senses in communion. Listening to the words of the Good Shepherd that would be shared by the minister. Watching as the words of the communion hymn unfold around them. To feel the fresh bread in your hands and smell it. Tasting the bread and the grape juice and remembering the sacrifice of Jesus as we taste and see that the Lord is Good! If you watch the children at every communion, they are doing all of this – taking the experience in – learning and understanding by inclusion. Their reverence for the sacrament has refreshed the experience and taught the adults around them.”


Bearsden: New Kilpatrick

The Rev Roddy Hamilton, minister at New Kilpatrick Church, Bearsden, is also an advocate of the inclusion of children.

“While the church suggests that children who wish to take communion ought to have a conversation with the minister and parents about what is involved and some of the theology behind the sacrament, is it possible to see that the experience of sharing communion is perhaps the greater insight into what communion can be and how we understand what happens?” he asks.

“Grace is not something you can explain or even understand.

“This is our premise where all our communion services are open to all ages, but two each year are specifically designed to be more creative and visual so that ‘what communion is about’ is experienced.

“We create a new liturgy each time, thoroughly basing it on the traditions we have become so familiar with.

“Often we begin with a ritual of setting the table where we bring the elements from around the church to the table to share. Before we do that, however, we recognise that the communion table is a place where all Jesus’ stories lead. We have taken cloths that normally cover the pews and used them to create a patchwork cloth where each piece laid on the table as a brief version of a story of Jesus is told.

“In another service we invited everyone to write their names on cards the weeks before and attached them together so that the table cloth, the surface on which the bread was broken, was all our names.

“We’ve baked stories into bread: we had five loaves we had baked ourselves and within each we had baked a slip of paper with the title of a story about sharing from the bible. Children stood with me and each broke a loaf in turn, finding the story, telling it and finally myself finishing with the story of the Last Supper, again baked into a loaf.

“For us, the really important thing is make people feel welcome, that communion is a place to belong before you believe and that in engaging with the experience it feeds our faith at a deeper level.

“Do more people come? Sometimes. But what always happens is that far, far more people tell you how much they have enjoyed, engaged with or felt part of something than at any other communion service.”