On the night before His crucifixion, Jesus took bread and a cup, gave them to His disciples, and told them to keep doing this until He returns. Twenty centuries later, His church is still doing it. At Grace Fellowship Church in Sarasota, the Lord’s Supper is not a religious add-on. It is one of the most central acts of our life together — a sacred, weighty, joyful proclamation of the cross.
“For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.” — 1 Corinthians 11:26
The Lord’s Supper — communion, the Lord’s table — was instituted by Jesus Christ Himself on the night He was betrayed. He took bread, broke it, and said, “This is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” He took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me” (1 Corinthians 11:23–25).
Communion is, first, a memorial — the church looking back at the cross with deliberate, undistracted attention, taking the historic event of the crucifixion into our own bodies, into our own mouths, into our own week. It is a physical sermon preached without words.
It is, second, a proclamation — the church telling the truth of the gospel together, every time we eat the bread and drink the cup. We proclaim it to ourselves, to one another, to the angels, to the powers of darkness, and to the watching world. The Lord died. He is risen. He is coming again.
“Do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19). Christians forget. The Lord knew this, and gave us a meal we cannot eat without thinking about His death. Every time the bread is broken, the gospel is preached again to our deepest places.
“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). The Christian who comes by faith really meets the risen Christ at this table — not in the bread itself, but through it.
“For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17). Communion is not a private moment. It is the body of Christ, eating together, declaring that we belong to one another because we belong to Him.
Every supper is a deposit on the banquet of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9). Jesus said He would not drink the cup again until He drinks it new with us in the kingdom (Matthew 26:29). Communion is a forward-looking meal as much as a backward-looking one.
Paul gives the church one strong warning about the Lord’s Supper: “Whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Corinthians 11:27–28). To eat unworthily is to come carelessly — without faith, in unrepented sin against a brother, with a heart that despises the blood.
The point of self-examination is not to keep the Christian from the table. It is to keep the Christian from coming to the table the wrong way. We come, not because we are worthy, but because Christ is worthy and the table is His. We come confessing sin, trusting His blood, at peace with our brothers and sisters as far as we are able (Matthew 5:23–24).
If you are a Christian — born again, trusting Christ, walking with Him — this table is for you, even on the weeks when you feel weakest. If you are not yet a Christian, we will not invite you to take the elements until you are. We would love it for you to be reconciled to God first, and then we will gladly welcome you at the table the next time we gather.
“And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.'” — Luke 22:19
At Grace Fellowship Church in Sarasota, we share communion regularly as a body. The bread is real bread. The cup is real cup. We eat together, we look at the Lord together, and we let the cross do its work in us again.
We do not believe the bread becomes the literal body or the cup the literal blood. We believe Christ Himself is really present at His table — not in the elements, but with His people, by the Spirit, as we come in faith. The Reformers called this spiritual real presence, and it is enough to feed any believer for a lifetime.
If you visit, you will see communion handled with reverence and warmth. Bring your sins. Bring your weakness. Bring your faith, however small. The Lord is at the table.
The Supper is not only remembrance; it is quiet formation. Week by week, the cross stays present, and the believer who takes the bread and cup is being shaped by what is remembered — softened where the heart has grown hard, steadied where it has grown careless, grown up in Christ meal by meal until He comes.
— Sundays at 10:00 AM · 4350 17th Street, Sarasota, FL.