The Order for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper to the Sick: A History of the Development of the Ritual in the North American United Methodist Context

ABSTRACT This article examines the historic Methodist practice of communing the sick and its continuation in the United States, focusing specifically on Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Church, and United Methodist Church contexts to explain how The United Methodist Church has arrived at its current liturgical form and practice of administration of the Lord’s Supper to the sick. Beginning with a summary of the importance of receiving Communion with the sick in mid-eighteenth century England, the article tracks the development of the order for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper with the sick included in John Wesley’s Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, through rubrics in the church’s Discipline in the nineteenth century, across various official and unofficial orders developed in the twentieth century, to its present form in the “Service of Word and Table with Persons who are Sick or Homebound” found in The United Methodist Book of Worship.