About DJ Turner

Curating this collection, the Communion of the Saints, was much more challenging than I had expected it to be. I have designed special communion services for many contexts, so I have a broad understanding of the nuances and implications of many aspects of the Mercy Feast. I will happily admit that I have probably spent hundreds of hours thinking about how to tell the story of communion from different angles. But this one was very challenging for me.

First, this is the first time I’ve ever tried to tell the story across multiple gatherings. Normally I have to be brief as the entire message is set inside of a single service. When you are accustomed to brevity, finding ways to expand upon and really dig into concepts can be more challenging than one might think.

Second, I curated this collection at a time in my life when I was undergoing personal struggles in my faith. I remember many nights staring at my computer trying to focus on the task at hand, but wrestling internally with God who felt so distant from me. The struggles I was facing were spurred by a group of my local gathering with whom I had been struggling for a few years. It wasn’t until I dove into the fourth narrative and really started to wrestle with the idea of forgiveness and repentance in the context of a greater community that things started to fall into place for me. As many teachers, writers, painters, songwriters, curators, and other creatives will likely tell you, God uses the preparation for the creation of our art to change us as much as to change the people who will ultimately experience the creation.

This collection, and the curation of it, has had a profound impact on me and my interactions and relationships with my local community of Christ followers. My prayer is that it will have a similar effect on you and your local community.

The Communion of the Saints, the participation in the Mercy Feast, should change us–both as individuals and as a community. Many of the concepts in this collection will be very familiar to those of us who have followed Christ for a while, but my hope is that seeing them…sharing in them…together will have a profound impact on our communities, how we interact with each other, and how we view the world around us. This video is a brief summary of some of the content from the preceding narratives. It was created to refresh our memories and senses to the work of the Holy Spirit in the narratives leading to this point, and lays the groundwork for the actual participation in the Mercy Feast.

In the second narrative of the Clayfire collection, Communion of the Saints, we move into a sensory-rich experience. With the smell of baking bread filling the space and the meditation to be read aloud (along with the appropriate actions and symbology included with the meditation), my hope is that your gathering will begin to see, hear and smell the reality of the Communion of the Saints. The Mercy Feast is more than a cognitive, abstract idea. It is more than ingesting the elements and remembering (though those are very important aspects). The Mercy Feast, or Communion of the Saints, is a full-sensory experience designed to bring the whole of us into deeper communion with God and each other.

One of the most moving pieces of this collection to create was the Participation video in the first narrative. As I prayed about which texts and common prayers to use, I was struck by the similarities between the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. It’s not surprising, but it had never struck me as being so profound until this collection. So this video is a melding of the Apostle’s Creed, The Lord’s Prayer, and Scripture from the New Testament. It centers around the theme of the Communion of the Saints and further attempts to draw us into unity around words that so many of us have spoken throughout time.

The Mercy Feast, or Communion, is one of the most important acts in which a gathering of Christ-followers can participate. It is a reminder of why we follow Christ and just how great is God’s love for us. While the sacredness of the participation in the Mercy Feast is commonly observed by Christians of all walks, the community aspect of it is often overlooked. Yet, the Communion of the Saints is an ancient concept, one that binds us to each other in the local gathering as well as across the world and through time. It is the recognition that the blood and body of Christ unite us in His name.

This is the idea behind the Communion of the Saints collection. As I have experienced the Mercy Feast in a variety of settings and with different congregations, one thing has always struck me. It’s a very personal experience. I don’t want to down-play the importance and holiness of that personal moment of partaking in the elements, but what if God intended for it to be more? This collection explores the idea of communion among a body of believers, with the Mercy Feast at the center of that exploration…for we all participate in the same body and the same blood.

The collection is organized into 4 distinct “movements” across 5 narratives. The first week is a welcoming in — to both the concept of the collection and into the community taking this journey together. It is designed to lay the foundation for the remaining four narratives. The second and third are explorations of the individual elements. What implications are there to the body/bread and blood/wine in this sacred feast? These two weeks are a lifting up of our eyes and hearts to the meaning of the feast. The fourth week allows us to look across at those with whom we worship in this smaller gathering. It’s an opportunity to make things right and see our local gathering as a unified part of the Body of Christ. The fifth week is a sending out, for the Mercy Feast means nothing if its impact does not extend beyond the walls of the church.

Each narrative is intended to build on the ones before, each pointing to and leading up to the fifth narrative. In my local context, this collection would not have the community celebrating the Mercy Feast together until the fifth week. This delay allows intentionality in understanding and preparing hearts, minds and relationships for the celebration… building anticipation and providing opportunities for contemplation and a renewed passion for the feast. Understanding that this does not work in all contexts, however, there is a spot in each narrative for the sharing of communion, for those local gatherings that might not be comfortable with delaying the feast until the last narrative.

I hope those who choose to share this collection with their local communities experience the unity and intimacy that comes from a true understanding of the Communion of the Saints.