The Pastoral Ministry of Passing the Communion Trays
As someone who grew up in a Church of Christ and still attends one, I have watched Communion trays being passed basically every Sunday of my life… but I have never thought of it as a ministry opportunity. Until recently, that is.
I was baptized at 15, and since I was a male and in a small church, that meant I got drafted almost immediately into helping pass trays during the Lord’s Supper. At my church, we had four tray-passers, which also corresponded to what happened up front: the bread-prayer, the cup-prayer, the offering-prayer, and the… fourth guy. Most of us started as that fourth guy, a.k.a. the “silent partner,” but before long, we’d get “promoted” into one of the praying positions!
Why do I tell you this? It’s because I imagine my early experience may be familiar to you. For a long time, whenever I passed the trays, I was worried about “doing it right”: praying in a way that felt correct, not forgetting words I had planned to say, not bumping into someone, not neglecting a row, not forgetting a tray, not spilling the juice, not tripping as I walked up or down the aisle, etc. And because I was worried about my own “doing it right”—or maybe “avoiding doing it wrong”—I wasn’t really focusing at all on my brothers and sisters in the pews.
Fast forward to a recent Sunday, when I got to observe a friend serving as a tray-passer at my church here in Abilene. He was just filling in; his wife was supposed to pass the trays, but she was sick that Sunday, so he jumped in for her. As I watched my friend pass the trays, a few things happened that I got to discuss later with him, and the combination of action and reflection gave me the great gift of new insight into ministry! On that recent Sunday, I saw and heard how passing the trays can be much more than “doing it right”—it can be a form of pastoral ministry.
The first thing that happened was close to the front of the auditorium. There was a family with multiple little kids, ages five to nine or so. The kids were old enough to get their own Communion cups—a lot of children at our church take Communion—but when my friend arrived at their row, the parents tried to get their own cups and also to help their kids get theirs. By the time they were done, and after much ado, everyone was served… but the mother had gotten a cup for her youngest child while that child also proclaimed loudly that he would get a cup for himself. End result: five people in the pew, six cups in hand.
Then, a little further back, there was a mom trying to hold an infant while also tending to a toddler and passing a tray all at the same time. You can guess what happened: the infant squirmed, the cup got knocked, and immediately there was grape juice on the tray itself, on the infant’s outfit, and (probably) on the mother’s clothing as well.
When my friend finally made it to the back row, the trays in our section were starting to run out of cups. A great problem to have, right? Well, not if you have visitors. And there was a couple I’d never seen before, right there on the aisle in the last row. I don’t know for sure if they were newcomers, but it didn’t feel like a great time to run out of Communion supplies! My friend scurried over, got another tray, and was able to serve them successfully.
So, where and how did the pastoral ministry occur? In my friend’s reactions to these situations. As we reflected on what happened, I realized that all three of those situations were opportunities not only for the congregants to get anxious, but for the server to do so as well. Oh, no—they got too many cups! Oh, no—she spilled the juice! Oh, no—we’ve run out of supplies! In other words, “Oh, no—something’s gone wrong!”
But something different happened instead, and it was due to the way my friend responded to the situations and to the people involved. To the couple with the young kids and the extra cups, my friend just smiled and said, “Hey, having too much Jesus is never a bad thing!” And they smiled back. To the mother who spilled the juice in the tray, he said, “No problem—it happens to the best of us.” And she smiled back. To the couple on the back row, he said, “What a good problem to have! Hold on just a sec, and we’ll get this taken care of.” And they smiled back.
Now, my friend was just reacting in the moment. But like me, he’s had exposure to the teaching and legacy of Charles Siburt, so he’s heard about being non-anxious in ministry for many, many years. And he’s been formed into the kind of person who has a good shot at reacting to stressful circumstances in a non-anxious way.
In this particular situation, as a Communion tray-passer, he had the opportunity to minister to his brothers and sisters. He had the opportunity to be pastoral by remaining non-anxious in a moment that could have created anxiety for those being served. They could have been condemning themselves for their parenting or motor skills, or judging our church for not being prepared, or worried that we were judging or condemning them for what was happening. But I think that he was able to communicate the welcome of Jesus by means of a smile, a kind word, a helping hand, and a non-anxious presence.
I’m aware that sometimes we have denied women the opportunity to pass Communion trays because we have described it as a “leadership role.” I’ve also heard of multiple patriarchal contexts elsewhere in the world where only women pass trays because the Christians there think of it as a service role. Based on the experiences of my friend, I would submit that it is actually both: an opportunity to lead by serving, to exercise pastoral care toward our brothers and sisters.
Who would have thought that passing trays could be so important? I daresay our Lord would have, as Luke 22 suggests. There, in verses 25-26, during the gathering we know as the Last Supper, Jesus said to his disciples, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves” (NIV).
In moments as seemingly mundane as the passing of Communion trays, we get to help shepherd our people by serving them. In doing so, we follow in the footsteps of the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:1-4).
