All our churches are joining together on Maundy Thursday to share a meal, with bread and wine.

It is a chance to share in fellowship with each other, to commemorate the Last Supper, and reflect on the events of that fateful evening.

Attendance is free.

What is an Agape Feast?

If you were to ask a Christian today what a Christian meeting was like in the days of the apostles, you would probably get different answers – preaching, singing, worship praise, a celebration of the Eucharist? It was probably all these things, But we may not realise that it centred around a meal. The early Christians referred to this meal as the agape – the love feast.

For the origin of the love feast, we need to look no further than the Last Supper. “As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body’”. So the very first Eucharist was taken in the context of a meal.

This continued to be the normal setting in which Christians met together for fellowship and worship. Acts 2:46 tells us: “Continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.”

It seems this was more than communion; it was also a meal at which not only bread and wine, but all kinds of food was eaten, a meal which had the double purpose of satisfying hunger and thirst and giving expression to the sense of Christian brotherhood.

At the end of this feast, bread and wine were taken according to the Lord’s command at the Last Supper, and after thanksgiving to God were eaten and drunk in remembrance of Christ, and as a special means of communion with the Lord Himself and through Him with one another.

During the second and third centuries, the agape was eventually separated from the Eucharist.