Here is one last excerpt from my favorite chapter of Donald Miller’s “Searching For God Knows What.” Here Miller uses Communion to illustrate just how far removed today’s church is in many ways from that of the first century church, especially in terms of real life community. Miller writes:

How odd would it seem to have been one of the members of the early church, shepherded by Paul or Peter, and to come forward a thousand years to see people standing in line or sitting quietly in a large building that looked like a schoolroom or movie theater, to take Communion.

How different it would seem from the way they did it, sitting around somebody’s living room table, grabbing a hunk of bread and holding their own glass of wine, exchanging stories about Christ, perhaps laughing, perhaps crying, consoling each other, telling one another that the Person who had exploded into their hearts was indeed the Son of God, their Bridegroom, come to tell them who they were, come to mend the broken relationships, come to marry them in a spiritual union more beautiful, more intimate than anything they could know on earth.

- Donald Miller in chapter 10 of Searching For God Knows What