Ahead of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Churches Together in England (CTE) has encouraged local churches to take special care in the way they arrange united services of Holy Communion.

"The celebration of the Eucharist together is crucial to our unity," said the Revd Bill Snelson, General Secretary of the CTE, "but unfamiliar practices and misunderstandings can become stumbling blocks and can cause unnecessary hurt."

The Churches' Group for Local Unity recently published "Guidelines for Methods of Administration of Holy Communion and for the Disposal of Remaining Eucharistic Elements." While these guidelines were originally intended as advice for Local Ecumenical Partnerships, they have a wider relevance when congregations from different traditions are coming together for an ecumenical service that some may find disconcerting.

The Guidelines say that the Eucharist is central to the lives of most Christians: their understanding of the faith, their personal experience, their spirituality and their piety are affirmed, or threatened, by particular forms of celebration of the Eucharist. Such is the profundity of experience, that unfamiliarity is very disturbing.

The Guidelines draw on the advice on the 1984 Lima Document of the World Council of Churches - "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry". This document says: "On the one hand it be remembered, especially in sermons and instruction, that the primary intention of reserving the elements is their distribution among the sick and those who are absent, and, on the other hand, it be recognised that the best way of showing respect for the elements served in the eucharistic celebration is by their consumption, without excluding their use for communion by the sick."

"The aim of the Guidelines," said Bill Snelson, "is to increase awareness and to encourage open and sensitive conversation between people with differing emphases and traditions."

Item from: Churches Together in England