Communion Class Cememony

Sunday, June 9, 2013 10:00 am

Christ and The Epiphany Church
39 Park Place
East Haven, CT 06512
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For those of you who are visiting… in the Episcopal church we do not have the formal First Communion as our Roman Catholic friends have. In the Episcopal Church a person can receive communion once they are baptized. Each family that has come through this church has made the decision of when their children receive communion on their own.

Many years ago we realized that even though many of our children were receiving communion, most didn’t really know what it was all about. Our Sunday school curriculum mostly focused on the liturgy, so we created a Communion Class. We have spent our classes talking about a variety of things.

We started with how to behave in church. It is one place that has not evolved to “kid friendly” so we talked about respect – for the history and ceremony of the service, for the people around us and the people leading us. We learned to read the bulletin and follow the service. We have gone through a typical Sunday Service talking about each prayer and response and what it means – the emphasis being on learning what we are saying not so much on memorizing words. We made a model church complete with pews, an organ, an altar, chalice, patent and bread. We talked about Jesus saying “do this in remembrance of me”. We talked about talking to their parents about what they are learning and how they will receive communion. We talked a lot! sometimes too much off topic, but they were sharing with me and with each other and that was also important.

Two questions I have asked regularly are “what did you do since our last class to make Jesus happy?” and “what can you do next week to make Jesus happy?”

This lead to some interesting conversations and outreach ideas.

So our question to all of you is - What will you do to make Jesus happy?

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