This week, I’ll be sharing about my first visit to Citizens of Heaven, a church community located in downtown Chattanooga that’s come up in conversations quite a bit over the past few months. I’ll dive deeper into those conversations soon, but for now, I want to reflect on something specific—communion.
I attended their quarterly service dedicated entirely to this sacred practice, and it gave me pause. Communion is beautiful, but for many, it can also be complicated. It brings with it layers of tradition, personal belief, and sometimes even pain. For some, it’s a reminder of belonging and grace. For others, it can stir up memories of exclusion, rigid theology, or unspoken wounds from church experiences. That tension matters. And this week’s service made me think more deeply about how we approach the table—who we believe it’s for, what it symbolizes, and how it can either invite or alienate. I want to share more about that experience, and why I think how we do communion says a lot about what kind of community we’re trying to be.
I also need to make a confession, in an effort to be fully transparent: Over the past 18 months, I’ve only taken communion a handful of times. Not because I don’t believe in its significance—if anything, the opposite is true. It’s because I hold it with such reverence that I haven’t wanted to approach it casually, or in spaces where it felt disconnected from what I believe it’s meant to embody.
For me, communion has never been just about personal reconciliation with God—though that’s certainly a sacred part of it. It’s also about reconciliation with one another. It’s about connection—to the Body, to the people sitting next to you, and to the collective work we’re called to do in the world. When I take communion, I want to believe that we’re committing not only to Christ, but to each other. To being a community that feeds the hungry, cares for the hurting, and bears one another’s burdens.
Communion, for me, is sacred because it’s about shared responsibility. It’s about reminding ourselves that faith isn’t just personal; it’s profoundly communal. That’s why this particular Sunday hit me differently. Not because everything was perfect, but because it stirred up what I’ve been missing—and what I still long to find.
One of the things that has been especially difficult for me over the past five years or so is how often communion can feel like an afterthought. Like something tacked on at the end of a service rather than a sacred center. I’ve sat through so many moments where the bread and the cup are passed around with little reflection, little pause, and little weight—like we’re just checking off a spiritual box so we can move on with the rest of our Sunday.
Can we just pause for a second and talk about those commercial communion cups—the ones with the tiny juice shot and the wafer sealed in the lid like a snack pack from heaven? Every time I peel back that crinkly plastic, I can’t help but wonder what the early church leaders would think. Like, imagine trying to explain to the Apostle Paul that the body and blood of Christ now come individually shrink-wrapped for convenience. “Behold, brother, your salvation… in a 2×2 plastic cup.”
I know it’s meant to be efficient and sanitary, but there’s something wild about the mass production of what was once a deeply communal, table-centered experience. I picture the early church breaking bread over a meal, pouring wine, telling stories, weeping and laughing together—and now we’ve got communion kits that feel like they belong in an airline snack box. I’m not saying God can’t work through foil lids and wafer fragments… but man, if Peter saw that little cup, I think he’d need a minute.
But, all that aside, communion is not a box to check. It’s a holy sacrament. A moment that should stop us in our tracks. A call to remember the radical love of Christ and the sacrificial nature of the kingdom he came to establish—not just for us individually, but for the healing and wholeness of the whole community. When we rush through it, when we strip it of its depth, when we treat it like a side note instead of the sacred act it is—we lose something essential.
At its heart, communion is a disruptive invitation. It asks us to slow down, to examine our hearts, and to reorient ourselves toward Christ and each other. It’s not just about remembering that Jesus died—it’s about remembering why: to reconcile us to God and to one another. It’s an act of surrender, of unity, of restoration. And when we reduce it to a ritual, we risk forgetting its power. We risk forgetting who we’re called to be—together.
This is one of the reasons I deeply appreciated the intentionality behind the service at Citizens of Heaven that was solely focused on the sacrament of communion. It wasn’t rushed or sandwiched between announcements and the final worship song. It wasn’t treated like a ritual to get through or a spiritual snack to tide us over until lunch. Instead, the entire gathering was built around the meaning, weight, and beauty of the table.
There was space to reflect, to confess, to remember. There was a sense of reverence—like we were being invited into something ancient and holy, not just observing a tradition, but actively participating in it. It felt less like checking a box and more like being re-centered in the story of Christ’s love, sacrifice, and the call to live that out in real community. That kind of sacred slowing down reminded me why communion matters, and what it can look like when the Church treats it as the heartbeat of who we are—not just a symbol, but a practice that binds us to Jesus and one another.
Last week, someone asked me what my plans were after this year-long journey wraps up—specifically, if I planned on regularly attending church again. I didn’t have an answer. I just stared at them, and for a moment, the silence hung in the air. It was awkward… mostly for them, but a little bit for me too.
Here’s the thing: I don’t believe you attend church. I believe you are the church. Somewhere along the way, we’ve traded that identity for a destination—a building, a service, a schedule. But I can’t pretend that stepping into a sanctuary on Sunday automatically reconnects me to something holy. I’m still trying to unlearn the version of church that told me presence equals participation.
The early church gathering was deeply communal, intimate, and centered around shared life—not just shared doctrine. Believers met in homes, broke bread together, and pooled resources to care for one another’s needs (Acts 2:42–47). The focus wasn’t on performance or polished production, but on presence, vulnerability, and mutual discipleship. Worship wasn’t led from a stage—it was embodied around a table. Leadership wasn’t about status—it was about servanthood. Communion wasn’t an afterthought; it was a centerpiece.
In contrast, today’s typical Sunday morning service often mirrors a more institutional model. We file into rows rather than gather in circles. We sing along to a worship team, listen to a sermon, maybe greet someone briefly, and head home. It’s more passive than participatory, and sometimes more focused on content delivery than spiritual formation. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with structure or tradition, what we’ve gained in order and excellence, we may have lost in relational depth and shared responsibility.
The early church didn’t just attend gatherings—they were the gathering. And their radical way of life pointed not to a building, but to a person: Jesus. That’s the challenge—and invitation—for us today.
I’ll close with this: I participated in communion when visiting Citizen’s of Heaven. I’ve actually participated in communion several times over the past 33 weeks. And sometimes I haven’t. This ebb and flow has become part of my honest walk with Jesus—learning to come to the table not out of obligation, but out of authenticity. To not fake reverence or belonging just to keep up appearances.
I’ll be returning to Citizens of Heaven in a couple of weeks for a more “typical” Sunday morning experience, but I felt it important to share this experience as well because sometimes it’s the less typical, the intentionally different, that reminds us why we even gather in the first place.
This communion-centered service wasn’t just refreshing—it was recalibrating. It helped me remember that at the heart of our faith isn’t a performance or a polished production, but a table where we are invited to show up as we are. It reminded me that church isn’t meant to be consumed; it’s meant to be participated in. And it stirred something in me I didn’t even realize had grown quiet—hope that sacred spaces still exist where the mystery of Jesus is honored with humility, not just routine.
Searching for Jesus in A̶m̶e̶r̶i̶c̶a̶ Chattanooga 