A couple months ago, the pastor of my home church offered to teach me the basics of the Lutheran doctrine needed to be considered worthy of taking Communion. I kind of let the offer slide because it would be one-on-one and I find such situations quite awkward. But one thing led to another and we ended up arranging a set of three meetings, where he would teach me the proper material.
Perhaps because he saw that I already knew a lot of the stuff, he ended up going over the stuff more quickly than he would with a Confirmation class. The whole thing took about four hours over the course of three meetings. At the last meeting he gave me a small book containing the Small Catechism and expansive explanations of the various parts.
It impressed me just how much the Lutheran church wants you to know before you can take Communion. For a denomination that comes off as fideistic to me, they sure expect you to know quite a bit! When I wanted to get membership in the Assemblies of God I was simply given a small paperback book explaining their main doctrinal points. But to get into the Lutheran church you need to know the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, as well as understanding of baptism, Communion, and confession. That's pretty intense, and I daresay thoroughly Biblical. In a couple weeks I will be making an affirmation of faith, but even before then I think I'm now "qualified" to take part in Communion in the LCMS.
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