Some Practical Illustrations
5
FELLOWSHIP
The Implications of Koinonia
There is a constant tendency for the meaning of words to be distorted, and for their currency to be devalued, so that words which once throbbed with life are now dead or dying. This is the case with the word “fellowship.” It is an overworked and undervalued term. In common usage it means little more than a genial friendliness, a superficial gregariousness, what Australian Methodists call a PSA (Pleasant Sunday Afternoon) or a good gossipy get-together over a nice cup of tea.
Yet strong forces are at work toward its recovery: biblical, historical and practical.
To begin with, we have good biblical warrant for asserting that it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18)—an affirmation which Calvin at least saw had a wider reference than to marriage. Aloneness is not the will of God either in ordinary life or in the Christian life. People need fellowship (which we shall still for the moment leave undefined), and it is God’s will that they should have it.
But this basic, biblically recognized need is not completely met by Sunday churchgoing, or even the larger midweek meetings of the church. There is always something unnatural and subhuman about large crowds. They tend to be aggregations rather than congregations—aggregations of unrelated persons. The larger they become, the less the individuals who compose them know and care about each other. Indeed, crowds can actually perpetuate aloneness, instead of curing it. There is a need, therefore, for large congregations to be divided into smaller groups, such as one imagines the house-churches were in New Testament days (for instance, Romans 16:3-5; Philemon 1-2). The value of the small group is that it can become a community of related persons; and in it the benefit of personal relatedness cannot be missed, nor its challenge evaded.
This is true of the human family. Our growth into maturity, according to the purpose of God, takes place in the context of a family group. It is the complex pattern of relationships between parents, children, brothers and sisters which, more than anything else, governs our development into adult stature. It is the only child and the one-parent family who often suffer, although even in their case there are usually relatives, neighbors and friends. Similarly, it is lone members of the congregation who hold themselves aloof from a more intimate Christian fellowship, who are likely to stunt or damage their spiritual progress.
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say, therefore, that small groups, Christian family or fellowship groups, are indispensable for our growth into spiritual maturity. The preservation of solitary Christianity is possible for churchgoers who sit sadly isolated in a pew or hide behind a pillar, even if they attend a socalled midweek “fellowship” where large numbers again gather. Their baptism has made them members of the visible community. By their church attendance they become outwardly conforming members. But still they may not truly belong either to Christ or to the people of Christ.
Small groups are indispensable for our growth into spiritual maturity.
Turning from a biblical to a historical argument for small groups, many famous movements of the Spirit of God have either begun or expressed themselves in the intimacy of such fellowship. This was certainly true of the English Reformation, whose roots can be traced to the group of scholars who met in the White Horse Inn in Cambridge to study Erasmus’ Greek Testament. It is also true of Methodism, whether one thinks of the original Holy Club in Oxford or of the class meetings of the developed Society. Reference could also be made to the Praying Societies of Scotland and to the fellowship meetings of the East African revival. It is from such small and unpretentious beginnings that great movements have sprung up and spread.
The third argument is pastoral. In every church of any size, if it has clergy, they tend to concentrate on nurturing the new convert, visiting the sick, interviewing those to be baptized, confirmed or married, comforting the bereaved, counseling those who ask for help and training workers for witness. But they cannot hope to see or visit all the members of their congregation regularly, at least if it is at all sizeable. Nor indeed should they. The pastoral oversight of the congregation, as we have seen, does not belong exclusively to the ordained ministry.
In one sense every Christian may be regarded as a bishop.
Moreover, the Bible indicates that each of us is our brother’s keeper. It even hints that in one sense every Christian may be regarded as a bishop, because a certain episcope (“oversight”) is entrusted to every member of the congregation. “See to it,” we are told in Hebrews 12:15, where the verb is episkopountes, “that no one fails to obtain the grace of God” (RSV). If this is so, it is in fellowship groups that the ideal can become a reality, for in these the minister delegates some episcope or pastoral oversight to the lay leaders, and all learn to care for each.
This is what John Wesley found. On 25 April 1742 he recorded in his Journal:
I appointed several earnest and sensible men to meet me, to whom I showed the great difficulty I had long found of knowing the people who desired to be under my care. After much discourse, they all agreed there could be no better way to come to a sure, thorough knowledge of each person than to divide them into classes, like those at Bristol, under the inspection of those in whom I could most confide. This was the origin of our classes at London, for which I can never sufficiently praise God, the unspeakable usefulness of the institution having ever since been more and more manifest.1
And Dr. R. W. Dale commented on this procedure:
Methodism made one striking and original contribution to the institutions of the church, in the Class-meeting. Never, so far as I know, in any church had there been so near an approach to the ideal of pastoral oversight as the Classmeeting, in its perfect form, provides.2
Certainly the house-church or home-group movement has been steadily gathering momentum in many parts of the world. In most cases it has no articulated biblical, historical or pastoral rationale. It seems to be largely spontaneous, a genuine movement of the Holy Spirit. If it needs to be explained in terms of human experience, it is probably to be understood as a protest against the dehumanizing processes of secular society and the superficial formalism of much church life. There is a widespread hunger for a life which is genuinely human and absolutely real.
But these images fall far short of what the New Testament calls koinonia. We need to rescue it from its caricatures and recover its New Testament authenticity.
At the heart of koinonia is the adjective koinos, meaning “common,” so that koinonos is a “partner” and the verb koinoneo is to “share.” In particular, koinonia bears witness to three things we hold in common. First, it expresses what we share in together (our common inheritance); second, what we share out together (our common service), and third, what we share with each other (our mutual responsibility).
OUR COMMON INHERITANCE
In common usage fellowship describes something subjective, the experience of warmth and security in each other’s presence, as in “We had good fellowship together.” But in biblical usage koinonia is not a subjective feeling at all, but an objective fact, expressing what we share in together.
Koinonia is an objective fact.
So Paul could write “you share in God’s grace with me” (Philippians 1:7); John could write “… that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3); while Paul added “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:14). Thus authentic fellowship is trinitarian fellowship. It bears witness to our common share in the grace of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Is this not what makes us one? We come from different countries, cultures and churches. We have different temperaments, gifts and interests. And yet we have this in common: the same God as our Heavenly Father; the same Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord; and the same Holy Spirit as our indwelling Comforter.
It is our common participation (our koinonia) in God (Father, Son and Spirit) which unites us. And this is most vividly expressed in the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist. For “is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16).
OUR COMMON SERVICE
Koinonia also expresses not only what we have received together, but what we give out together; not only our common inheritance, but also our common service. As we saw in chapter one, the early Christians “devoted themselves… to the fellowship” (Acts 2:42). This is the first use of koinonia in the New Testament canon. It does not occur in the Gospels. Indeed it could not, for there was no koinonia before the Holy Spirit came.
It is clear from Acts 2:44 that Luke is thinking of the common life which the early Christians enjoyed, for koinonia is the word Paul used of the collection which he was organizing, and koinonikos means generous.
We are to share not only our material wealth but also our spiritual wealth.
Although only a minority of Christians is called to total voluntary poverty, we are certainly to love one another and to care for our poverty-stricken brothers and sisters. But koinonia challenges us to share not only our material wealth but also our spiritual wealth, that is, our knowledge of the gospel. Thus Paul could write “I thank God… for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now” (Philippians 1:5). And it is not far fetched to see Andrew, Peter, James and John as an illustration of this. They were koinonoi (partners) in their little fishing business on Lake Galilee. Now Jesus calls them to be partners in fishing for human beings, and catching them for the kingdom of God. Yet there is strange reluctance among us to engage in personal evangelism. We sometimes sing “Oh for a thousand tongues to sing my dear Redeemer’s praise.” But it is a useless wish. For one thing we will never have a thousand tongues. For another, if we had them, we would not know what to do with them when the one tongue we have is often silent.
OUR MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY
In the first two aspects of koinonia, we are all facing the same way, although in one or other of two directions. But in the third aspect of koinonia, when we concentrate on what we share with each other, we are not facing in the same direction. We are rather gathered in a circle facing each other.
Put another way, in this third aspect, we are neither all recipients, nor are we all givers, but we are a partnership in giving and receiving, as Paul says to the Philippians, since he had shared the gospel with them and they had shared a gift with him (Philippians 1:5; 4:15).
Similarly, Paul saw the collection he was organizing from the Greek churches for the Judean churches as a symbol of Gentile Jewish solidarity in the body of Christ. For since the Gentiles had come to share in the Jews’ spiritual blessings, it was appropriate that the Gentiles should share in their material blessings (Romans 15:27). Philippians 4:15 would have been an admirable text for MRI (Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence), which was the program commended at the Anglican Congress in Toronto in 1963.
Another example may be found in Romans 1, where Paul says that he longs to visit them, partly to impart a spiritual gift to strengthen them, and partly that they might be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both theirs and his (Romans 1:11-12).
It is in this connection that we need to consider the many “one another” words in the New Testament. They describe the reciprocity of Christian fellowship. The commonest example is the command to reciprocal love. Jesus said “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).
To love each other has very practical consequences.
Not that this command is romantic or idealistic. To love each other has very practical consequences, both negative and positive. Negatively, if we love each other, we will not stand in judgment on each other, or speak evil against each other. We will not bite or devour each other (as if we were wild beasts). And we will not provoke or envy or lie to each other.
Positively, if we love each other, we will be kind and compassionate to each other, forbear and forgive each other, submit to each other and build each other up, practice hospitality to each other ungrudgingly, encourage each other, admonish and comfort each other, pray for each other and bear each other’s burdens.
SOME PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATIONS
One of the most encouraging features of the world Christian scene today has been the recovery of small groups. Many historical movements have begun in the intimacy of small groups. The English Reformation started when a group of Cambridge scholars met in the White Horse Inn to study Erasmus’s Greek Testament. The Methodist Revival began in the Holy Club in the 1720s in Oxford, and continued in the class meetings. The East African Revival began in the 1930s and has continued with fellowship meetings. Today there is a worldwide proliferation of cell groups, home groups or house churches.
In London we call them fellowship groups because we are anxious that they will exhibit the riches of New Testament koinonia. Fellowship groups express what we share in together as we pray and feed on Christ in his word. They express what we share out together. They are encouraged to be outward-looking, to look for opportunities of service, such as inviting local people to evangelistic evenings, visiting the sick and elderly people in their neighborhood, volunteering to cater for church events and interceding for the world and the church.
Fellowship groups also share with each other. Every time they meet, an opportunity is given to members to share their joys or sorrows, doubts and fears and needs. Of this third type of fellowship John Wesley wrote in his Plain Account of the People called Methodists:
It can scarce be conceived what advantages have been reaped from this little prudential regulation. Many now happily experienced that Christian fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before. They began to ‘bear one another’s burdens’ and naturally to “care for one another.”… And “speaking the truth in love, they grew up into him in all things who is the Head, even Christ.”3
Thus fellowship group leaders become mini-pastors, and the pastoral oversight of the congregation is decentralized and shared.
Fellowship groups are composed of human beings, and all human beings differ from one another. We have no desire, therefore, to stereotype a group’s program or development. Nevertheless we believe that true Christian koinonia involves the rich and comprehensive sharing which I have tried to unfold. And therefore we constantly keep before our eyes the threefold biblical ideal. We are anxious that the groups will not become unbalanced and degenerate into being merely Bible reading groups, prayer groups, study groups or action groups. We want the fellowship groups to be true to their name, expressing the fullness of koinonia. So we keep asking ourselves: are we growing in Christian maturity together? Are we serving the Lord, the church or the world together? Are we increasing in love and care for one another?
Then we may say with confidence and joy, “we had good fellowship together.”