‘No’ to infant communion in the LCA
General Synod has voted to not introduce the practice of infant communion in the LCA. It did however endorse the church’s existing practice of offering the sacrament to children ‘at the earliest appropriate age’.
The resolution was in line with the recommendation from the 2018 General Pastors Conference (GPC) that the LCA’s position on infant communion (Infant Communion: a reappraisal CTICR 2012, and DSTO Vol 1E Infant Communion, 1986) not be changed.
The question had been referred to GPC by the (then) General Church Council following a proposal to this Convention of Synod from St John’s Unley ‘that the LCA encourage the practice of admitting very young children, including infants, to holy communion’.
The report of the Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations (CTICR) to General Convention in 2013 stated that ‘it does recommend that the age of first communion be significantly lowered’. But it did not specify an age at which children could receive the sacrament, ‘since the decision as to the earliest appropriate age should be made by the pastor in consultation with the parents’.
