The Necessity of Biblical Fellowship
By Steve Stevens
Many people today use the word fellowship when thinking about going out to eat after church or when several churches participate in a special service, or anytime Christians get together. While those things have an element of fellowship, they alone do not meet the biblical definitions of fellowship. A disturbing trend in American culture is the increasing isolationism that is bred by our modern lifestyles. The advent of such modern conveniences as air conditioning, television and the Internet, make it easy for people to stay isolated inside their homes. Because some jobs now allow people to work from home, It is nearly possible now to never even need to leave one's own home. It is a sad reality that most suburbanites can live for many years without ever knowing the next door neighbors.
Because of these lifestyle changes, America has been called "the loneliest place on earth" by one author who pointed out that in most churches today, a Sunday gathering is usually a group of individuals who happen to gather in one location rather than a people in fellowship together. Isolationism and individualism has been substituted for accountability and biblical unity (fellowship). Many modern churchgoers would find it foreign or uncomfortable to be in an open and honest relationship with other Christians. This attitude is often passed along from the church leadership itself. Many pastors find themselves in an unhealthy situation where their wife is their only friend and confidant. Church leaders may well be loneliest people on the planet. Without high trust, biblically based friendships, which hold men accountable to each other, leaders are modeling a flawed Christian lifestyle for church members.
It seems that even the widely promoted idea of unity is often only given lip service because of the isolated nature of modern church organizational structure. It is almost impossible for leaders to have real unity with others who live in different cities, lead separate lives, oversee different churches, and see each other only on an occasional basis. Superficial relationships are the natural result of such a structure.
All of these factors combined have brought forth a growing discontent with the superficial nature of “church”. Many families are sadly opting instead to “home church” thinking that maybe further isolation is the answer. Some are moving from church to church looking for real relationships. People are realizing that just attending church and being involved in programs does not meet the deepest needs of the human spirit. Today, church leaders are scrambling to find answers and in so doing have birthed “seeker friendly” churches that use entertainment oriented presentations to hold people’s interest. Others use a calendar full of social programs and outreach programs and service programs to keep people so busy that they don’t have time to feel unfulfilled. But, busyness cannot fulfill the longing in one’s heart for true community (fellowship). Whole multi-million dollar industries are spawned that supposedly give people “purpose”, but people aren’t missing “purpose”, they are missing a connection that the original New Testament Church had which made it so successful. They are missing fellowship. The answer doesn’t lie within the structure of yet another church program or religious fad. The answer is found in going back to the Scripture.
Acts 2:42 says “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”
Notice that one of the four elements described was “fellowship”. Apparently it was an important ingredient to the success of the church to be listed in a description of their activity. Why is this?
The Greek word used is koinonia, which is translated as partnership, that is, (literally) participation, or (social) intercourse. We can see from reading the Book of Acts that the church primarily met in each other’s homes and “had all things (in) common”. They met in each other’s homes and ate together, prayed together, sang together, confessed their faults to each other, worshipped together and studied and applied God’s word to their lives together.
This constituted a “blueprint” for the Apostolic Church. Today, every church is following a “blueprint” of some kind. The way we “do church” will greatly affect the results that we get. The truth is that many American churches are following a non-biblical “blueprint” that dismisses the importance of fellowship or changes the meaning of it and whether they know it or not, this unbiblical pattern will yield the predictable results of isolationism, individualism and consumerism. That is why following the biblical pattern is so important, because it will yield biblical results. Who can best know the heart and soul of humanity beside the Creator? Can we really believe that Jesus established the Church without any pattern or blueprint to follow? Can we afford to dismiss any of the elements of the early church as optional? Can we expect the same success in saving souls and discipling Christians to maturity by using different methods? The answer to these questions is no, we cannot simply follow our own pattern and expect God to bless it.
So while some give the idea of true biblical fellowship lip service, the Acts “blueprint” called for every believer to be inextricably connected to other believers through fellowship. This one simple truth is greatly underestimated in modern American culture, but the Church is and was the most counter culture organization of its day. The need people have for fellowship is one of the strongest needs of human emotion. The need to belong and be accepted for who I am is a necessary basis to face our character flaws and bring them into the light of biblical fellowship so we can grow spiritually. To be loved by others and to be a significant part of something greater than myself is a cog that is missing in the machinery of modern church structure. The original Apostolic Church practiced fellowship daily instead of the modern church model of “attending services”.
Acts 2 says that they “broke bread” from house to house. The term means they ate meals together often and what shows acceptance and love more than sharing a meal together? Paul was rebuking the Corinthian Church because they had begun to show contempt for the Lord’s table (1 Cor. 11:17). Segregating themselves into classes and refusing the poor the same provisions as the rich (1 Cor. 11:21). They did not have the common purpose that the Jerusalem church had because cultural philosophies were being mixed with biblical truth and causing divisions (1 Cor 11:18-19) just as it is doing in our day. It is a sad testimony that many churches today have cliques and factions that are grouped according to cultural, race or class barriers.
Another of the true elements of fellowship is the confessing of faults to one another. The book of James says: “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16). While we often hear the last part of the verse quoted out of context, the right interpretation is that of brothers and sisters praying for each other’s shortcomings, personal sins and faults. Could it be that there is not as much healing in the modern church because so much sin is covered?
Also, In 1 John 1:7 the Bible says that “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” This goes along with Pro 28:13 “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” First John indicates that if I refuse to confess my faults to another (be an island as it were) then I am saying that I have no sin and deceive myself and the truth is not in me (1 John 1:8). But John says that if I walk in the light I have fellowship with other people and the Blood of Jesus cleanses me. Is it possible that the churches where people are isolated and disconnected, where people place the highest value on privacy and individualism, are places where there is a multitude of covered sins and therefore the people are not prospering spiritually? I believe this is the reason for so much discontentment among churchgoers today.
But why don’t people build relationships and confess their faults and pray for each other? It is because there are few safe environments in modern congregational assemblies today. Since biblical accountability and relationship are rare, many people are dying spiritually on the inside while maintaining a façade of external appearances. There is a pattern of keeping up outward appearances rather than exposing weaknesses to the light. This is a victory for Satan, but we are not ignorant of his devices. That is why the biblical method of home fellowship was so successful for the first 300 years of church history. It was during the reign of Constantine when Christians began meeting regularly in public buildings instead of homes that Christianity became a “religion” instead of a way of life. Today every church leader has a responsibility to provide the biblical blueprint for relationships to flourish and safe environments for true biblical fellowship. This is the New Testament pattern and why the Apostolic Home Fellowship is built around Home Friendship Groups rather than church buildings and formulated growth programs, which have largely failed the modern church in America.
