The sacrament of Holy Communion is one way God has promised to gather the church and to give grace to all who participate. That gathering and giving rests upon the word of promise given by Jesus Christ, and it celebrates that word through reading, singing, and preaching. But this sacrament is more than word and words. It also involves eating and drinking as a part of its ministry of grace. At the last supper, Christ took a piece of bread, blessed the bread by giving thanks to God, broke the bread and gave the broken bread to his disciples while they were at table together.
Communicants normally receive both elements, bread and wine, in the Holy Communion.
Today, Lutheran congregations use a variety of methods for the distribution of Holy Communion. Others use a loaf of bread which can be broken into pieces for each communicant or broken as it is distributed. The form of the bread for holy communion seems to have undergone a change when in the West the theology of the sacrament began to focus on the miracle of Christ's presence in the sacrament and the possible sacrilege of mistreating crumbs that might fall from the eucharistic bread. Neither of these concerns need shape our practice today. It is simple to distribe real bread if the bread is wrapped in a clean cloth so that it need not be handled excessively by the minister and so that crumbs are not dropped during the distribution.