The Sunday bulletin included an announcement, “Join us for a time of fellowship after worship today.” The congregation moved from the worship space/sanctuary to the fellowship hall for coffee, donuts, oatmeal, and juice. The fellowship hall went from a quiet space to a dull roar of laughter, conversation, and people moving around. There was a community who had worshiped together and were now building community but was it truly fellowship.

We have a tendency at times in the church to take a good word and make it churchy, losing the greater meaning. Fellowship has too often become a gathering with food that occurs periodically in the church. We gather around tables and there is conversation, but is there always fellowship?

In Greek the word koinonia is translated, “fellowship, contribution, share, association, communion, close relationship, generosity, gift, participation.” We see it used in several locations, but most often quoted is Acts 2:42 after Pentecost, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” We also see it used in 1 John 1:3-7, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

1. Stanley Jones in speaking about his need for a ministry like the Christian Ashram stated,

“Without [the Ashram], I would have lacked a disciplined fellowship. I would have been a lone wolf howling at the pack about what they should do; an outsider. Now I am an insider, forced to live out my life in a close-knit fellowship of the spirit. They are responsible to me and I am responsible to them, at a very deep level, the level of experimental living. If I have given them anything, they have given me much more. Moreover, their transformations have been an invitation and a spur to further transformations in me. They have helped make me. But the Ashram group has not only helped make me as a person, they have also helped my message” (SOA, 233).

We need fellowship that goes beyond the food on the potluck table to a fellowship that establishes a transformational community working in our lives. We need a space where we can share our pains, our hurts, our sorrows, and our sins so that healing and forgiveness can be experienced. We need a fellowship that makes us better followers of Jesus and Kingdom citizens. We need a fellowship of sharing and close, intimate relationship.

How are we pursuing fellowship where we are in deep relationship and sharing our lives with other people in meaningful ways? How are we making time regularly for intentional community and fellowship that makes us better followers of Jesus? As our children return to school to learn, maybe we need to learn more about koinonia to get away from the churchy way of considering fellowship to a deeper community of sharing, generosity, and participation.

Prayer: Lord, I confess I fall at times into the churchy understanding of words, missing out on your true vision. Forgive me when I oversimplify your challenging call for fellowship. Help me find those people with whom I can build true fellowship in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.