The Crumbs of Heaven... and Other Gluten Free Communion Lessons

We hosted a local denominational gathering at our church this past week. It was a tremendous honor, and we were blessed to have about 120 people from around Milwaukee come to meet and worship with us, to do the business of the larger church, and to have dinner.

As part of the worship service, we celebrated communion together. Because I was the host pastor, and because our new local denominational moderator is awesomely on board with all things gluten free, we used gluten free bread.

My husband and I also cooked dinner for the seven people at the meeting with gluten free needs. For once, they got to have dinner with everyone else, just without the gluten. We set up a separate serving station and cooked everything over at our house in our dedicated kitchen. It was delicious and awesome. I was like a proud momma showing off my beautiful church and its beautiful people.

That is the good part of the story.

The not-so-good part of the story is this:

For many of those gathered, this was their first experience having gluten free communion. It was a new concept, a new idea entirely. So I wanted to make sure it was seamless. I wanted to show them how easy it could be, how they'd never even really notice the difference between gluten free communion and "regular" communion.

My church uses Udi's bread for our standard first-Sunday-of-the-month communion. It is sliced into little bite-sized pieces by our wonderful deacons, and it holds up really well.

But since this was a really prestigious gathering, I wanted to use special bread. I wanted to bake loaves myself. Delicious loaves. Tasty, tasty loaves. Loaves made with love.

So I did. I baked loaves from Pamela's bread mix. They looked delicious. They smelled delicious.

But when we served communion for these 120 guests, via intinction, the loaves fell apart. Halfway through the serving I was literally standing in a pile of crumbs. There was bread in my shoes. The bread crumbled into the communion cup as people tried to intinct. There were thousands of crumbs. One person had to lean over the line of people and ask me for another piece of bread because hers turned to so far into crumbs so quickly she had nothing left to dip.

It was still beautiful and holy and wonderful and so, so good to include the seven people who are usually excluded from the Lord's table because of food issues. But... but... it could have gone so much better.

I was so grateful for one of my fellow gluten free pastors who was near the end of the line. She came up, saw the pile of crumbs, saw my flushed cheeks, held out her hand, and said, with such kindness and boldness:

"This is great. Lay it on me."

Sigh.

It was a reminder that no matter how much we plan and prepare, sometimes our best efforts turn into a bit of a disaster. I'm grateful that I serve a denomination that likes to laugh. People giggled a little, which is not a bad thing. We serve a God of joy. We are a people of crumbs.

But I've certainly learned a lesson. Test the breads. Don't reinvent the wheel. Don't try to be "fancy" to impress people when tried and true may be best.

And above all, gluten free bread can be tricky to intinct, so beware.

The part that really makes me sad is that I may have turned a lot of people off to trying gluten free communion ever in their churches. They saw the crumbs and the awkwardness in trying to dunk a handful of crumbly bread into a chalice of juice and may have thought, "Well, we're never trying this mess!" I hope against hope that this isn't the case, but my pile of crumbs and I certainly did give them reason to pause.

Do you have any disastrous communion stories to share, gluten free or otherwise? It'd certainly make me feel a bit better... I think my ruby-red cheeks are just starting to return to their normal color.

Ah, gluten. If only we could eat you, things would be so much simpler!