I don't see why someone who hasn't accepted Christ as their savior would  want to take communion in a Baptist church.   Therefore why not offer it to anyone who claims to be a Christian.   So what if one or two aren't really safed.   God know which ones are sincere.   Besides you might be visiting from out of state and feel you really want communion.   

You'd be surprised on who would want to take Communion, whether they understood it or not. Not in just the Baptist Church but in almost any church.

I don't know why some churches don't practice open communion. I am glad that mine does. I do think that people should know what they are doing when they participate,  they should know that is is a sacred act, that they need to prepare themselves for it by making sure they have confessed their sins to God and that they are in a good relationship with their fellow men, that they haven't hurt anyone and not made reparations. I also think that people who don't believe that Jesus is their personal Savior do not have any reason to want to participate.

I agree with you, Roodog. We need to prepare ourselves before participating in communion. In fact, in my church, we participate in the ordinance of foot washing, just as Jesus washed His disciples' feet and told them that they should do this for one another.

I didn't know that some churches taught that a person needs to participate in communion in order to be saved. That's not what the Bible says. However, we need to participate because Jesus said to do it in remembrance of Him. But then, I did know that some churches teach that we need to do certain things (good works) in order to be saved, like God's grace isn't enough.

The Lord's Supper/Communion is a remembrance, a ritual if you will, that has special significance to each believer.  At any given time that significance may be more or less vivid, more or less personal, more or less just a thing of habit than at other times. 

I've never understood why some congregations put artificial limits on who is "allowed" to participate.  One we went to in Oklahoma years ago had the rule that only members of that particular congregation were welcome to participate and would not allow a former member who was attending seminary in another state (and of course had found a church home near the seminary) to participate when he was home for Christmas.  I can perhaps see a logic in not allowing casual visitors who are there for the first time, but a former member???  It begins to look like a control issue in those circumstances.

I do think one should only partake if one is a believer, but then I can't really fathom an adult wanting to participate if one is not a believer...kids are a different story...they want to because they can't understand why they shouldn't if the rest of the family does.