A mini coloring book and small posters to help the Sunday school teacher tell the story of Elijah ascending to heaven in a chariot of fire.

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Eric Walberer

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Sunday School Teacher Resources

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Jim Joyce - When I was 16, I decided to leave home and live on the street.  I thought real living was having fun and going after a thrill.  I became a regular user of drugs and alcohol. In my parents' home, God and spiritual things were most important. Just as I decided to leave the house, it occurred to me, “If I leave, I will leave behind the gospel. This will be my final decision to reject God.” It was as real as if I was opening a door and walking into hell. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to be lost. I wanted to be saved...

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THE BREAD

At the Lord’s Supper is the loaf a symbol of the human Body of the Lord, and also a symbol of His mystical Body—the Church?

When thus gathered, are we an expression of that Body on earth? It has been stated by a well-known teacher that “the Church which is Christ’s Body” (Ephesians 1:22-23)" TARGET="_blank">Ephesians 1:22-23) is spiritual, and spiritually discerned, lying altogether beyond the range of the natural senses and is without organisation or expression on earth.”
It has often been remarked that the order of things in 1 Corinthians 10" TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 10: differs from that of the following chapter, in that in the ioth the cup precedes the bread, whereas it is the bread which comes first in the i ith chapter, where we have the actual order of the celebration. In the former chapter, it is a question of communion which rests on the blood; in the latter, of remembrance, which views primarily the Person. Certainly in 1 Corinthians 11" TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 11: , the loaf represents the literal human Body of the Lord, according to His words: “This is My body, which is given for you.” How else could such words be understood, than as referring to His literal Body, which was crucified for us, and in which He bore our sins, and which the bread represents?

But in 1 Corinthians 10:17," TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 10:17, we read: “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread,” or as the R.V. margin has it, more clearly and I judge, more correctly: “Seeing that there is one bread, we, who are many are one body.” I do not think it is necessary for us to assert that “we are an expression of the body on earth,” for this may, as it has too often done in the past, savour of pretension, but rather that the one loaf is the expression of the one mystical Body of Christ. I do not think that this is out of harmony with the statement quoted above by the “well-known teacher.” The one loaf does not define the unity of the Body, it affirms it and we say, “Amen”!

W.H.

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Highfield Road Gospel Hall Toronto has been in the news for a video that was posted online from a conflict between a group of neighbors and a group of people from the church.

Incorrect Assumptions

The street preaching was interpreted by some neighbors as "an attack", "a protest" or a "method to drive out gays from their neighborhood".  "Messages of hate" and "homophobic" as other descriptions appeared on blogs across the internet. Predictably comments from Christians and gays alike condemned the group for its perceived attacks.

Corrections

To the credit of journalists Daniel Dale and Jesse McLean, from The Star, interviews were conducted with people from both sides of the street to try to shed some light on what the two groups were saying. In the article Viral video in Leslieville is not what it seems , the reports show that the church was not, and never has used its sermons, singing or prayers as weapons in the culture war.  

 ----- quote from article -------------

“I don’t like how the whole issue is being distorted,” said Blair Chiasson, a civil servant who lives with his partner, Paul Collins. “Nothing happened. Nothing happened.”

Christine Oddy was on her porch when she heard a sermon which featured, she said, “something about blood running down the street, souls going to purgatory.” She approached the parishioners. “You are hateful people, that’s what you are,” she can be heard saying on the video.

Online, hundreds of others joined her in condemnation. Prominent U.S. sex writer Dan Savage, who is gay, called the parishioners “Christofascists.” Another gay blogger called them “Christian terrorists.”

To Chiasson, however, they are the unthreatening “church people” — and they did not do anything wrong.

Chiasson, 45, said he believes Highfield parishioners only choose to read the Bible from a spot near their house because a fire hydrant prevents cars from parking there.

He said the parishioners preached on the street long before he and Collins, 47, arrived 13 years ago. Moreover, he said, he and Collins have never felt personally targeted by the parishioners, have never heard them say anything homophobic, and have not even been present for three years on the summer Sundays when the infrequent sermons occur.

He said the parishioners are “a part of the neighbourhood” with the right to speak freely. The neighbours who confronted them, he said, “overreacted.”

“We don’t even know the people that started this,” he said. “So the people who are apparently our defenders, we don’t even know who they are.”

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Some churches try to target gays with provocative statements that are meant to enrange and belittle their opponents.  Churches like Westboro Baptist are well known for proudly display signs saying hurtful and provocative things.  However, the churches that meet in Gospel Hall buildings are careful to refrain from political involvement or name calling.

The debate now has turned to whether or not preaching on the street is a right or an annoyance.  In a follow-up article, reporter Jessica McLean asks the question - A righteous disturbance or a democratic right?

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BREAKING THE BREAD

Is it right to take the loaf, that which answers to the Body of our Lord and break it in two, and then hand it round the Assembly?

In Matthew 26:26;" TARGET="_blank">Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22;" TARGET="_blank">Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19," TARGET="_blank">Luke 22:19, we read that the Lord took bread and gave thanks (or blessed) and brake and gave unto His disciples saying, “This is my body,” and Luke adds, “which is given (not broken) for you.” In 1 Corinthians  11:23, 24, the Lord Jesus is said to have followed the same order, with the words, “which is broken for you,” but this, R.V. changes simply (and with sufficient MS. authority) to, “which is for you.” Now, compare this with Luke 24: 30," TARGET="_blank">Luke 24: 30, where a simple meal was about to begin (for it can hardly be maintained that the two disciples had spread the table of remembrance that evening at Emmaus, in the condition in which they were of unbelief and ignorance of the true meaning of all that had taken place), and where we read that the Lord took bread and gave thanks, as he sat down to the meal, and then brake it. I do not, therefore, think we must put undue emphasis on the breaking of the bread even by the Lord, though far be it from us to affirm that any act of His was not significant. However, the brother who gives thanks in the Assembly for the bread or the cup, would shrink from any pretention to be taking the place that the Lord rightly took. His giving thanks is no official act, but only as representing the Assembly, and his breaking the bread is only for the convenience of distribution. The true breaking of bread is done by all, each one for him or herself, as we read in 1 Corinthians 10:26" TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 10:26: “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ”? What is important is that the giving of thanks should take place before the loaf is broken for distribution, for the loaf is one, and this must be maintained, for it not only represents the one holy Body of the Lord given for us, but His mystical Body, the oneness of which is thus witnessed to. “The bread which we break is it not the communion of the Body of Christ? seeing that there is one bread, we who are many are one body” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17," TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 10:16-17, R.V., margin).

To pass a whole loaf around would be very inconvenient, and would necessitate its being divided in some way by the one who received it first, which would come to the same thing as that to which the questioner objects. The breaking of the bread by the saints is not a dividing of the Body of Christ, but a communion in it (“Him we all in common share”), a remembrance of Him in the act, and a proclamation of His death.

W.H.

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