By the Lord’s design and according to the Lord’s will, Christian churches regularly celebrate the Lord’s Supper. In the 20th century, it was common for church members to find this being offered only once each quarter, just four times a year. By the 21st century, it was not unusual to find the Lord’s Supper once a month, or sometimes even each week. This has happened, not just because of a desire to imitate the practice of the early church with frequent observation of the Lord’s Supper. More often, it came about as a result of the very real spiritual benefit it brings to believers (as the Lord intended), and therefore a desire to make that available to church members more often than just once every three or four months.
However often a local church might observe the Lord’s Supper, hopefully many will recognize that the first Sunday in October is known as World Communion Sunday. This was first observed in 1933 at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was initiated there by Rev. Hugh Thomson Kerr to unite Christian churches through a shared celebration of Communion. It was adopted by the Federal Council of Churches in 1940 and became a worldwide event. Today it is observed by churches of most major denominations. It provides an opportunity for believers around the globe to have a sense of oneness in Christ that stretches across many cultural, geographic, language, and even doctrinal barriers.
Whenever the sacrament is observed, all hymnals provide rich musical resources for people to be focused that day on what Jesus accomplished for us in His atoning death. Some of those will be in the hymnal section on the Lord’s Supper. Others will be found in the topical section on the suffering and death of Christ. Since this historical event is such a central matter in the Christian faith, these are hymns with which a congregation should be familiar and with which there should be an ongoing effort to increase familiarity with this repertoire.