What is Church Anyways? - Part 8
Ξ March 24th, 2006 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Theology |
Lets have a quick look at fellowship. Fellowship has a place in pretty well every aspect of the church. It should be a part of Sunday morning, small groups, and any other secondary service or gathering the church might have. We must remember that relationship is absolutely key to work in the Kingdom. While Jesus had His crowds where he taught and performed miracles, He also had his small group - his disciples. Through what we read in the gospels, it’s clear that Jesus loved his disciples. They were his closest friends and the ones He invested most of his teaching energy.
The point is that Jesus understand’s the importance of relationship. He would far rather you sit and talk to the homeless man whom you have just fed, than to see you just drop a loonie is his hat.
We need to make ourselves available for these kinds of personal encounters. I for one am terrible at it. I’m fine in front of a big group. I’m fine with my close friends who already know me. I’m nt good with the peopel I don’t know. This is just a part of how I am. So I have to make a real effort to make myself available to new peopel during times of fellowship. As a leader, it’s very important that I am accessable because otherwise things start to look eliteist. It’s not helpful for people to see the church leadership as some up high, unreachable group of individuals that don’t really care to know the rest of the people.
So at every opportunity we really should be fellowshipping. This will grow a caring community of people. This will make a church body feel loving and home-like. It is a worthy goal of any church to be trying to make people truly feel at home when they come to their meetings. Home is not a putluck lunch where no one talks to you. Home is not a service where someone says that they hope you feel welcome but no one actually welcomes you before or after the service.
As we fellowship and grow relationships, we will get to know one another. We’ll get good at knowing each others needs and setting out to meet them without having to aks for what we need quite as often. We’ll just start functioning more and more as a loving and caring community.
We need to intentional about out fellowship and our relationship building in all our meetings. No meeting should be so pressed for time that there is no time for visiting before and/or after the gathering.