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All Saints Church |
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Thorpe Acre Road, Loughborough, |
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Values: Fellowship
*Fellowship – Simply means: “a group of people who share a common aim or interest” or “to hold something in common”. Word used in secular circles too. But there is much more depth and riches to discover as we explore what this means in a Christian context. The root Greek word is “Koinonia”. In the NT this word is translated “fellowship” (12 x), sharing (3x), contribution (2x), participation (2x). It also has its roots in terms like community, communion, joint participation and intimacy. Focus in on fellowship in terms of the quality of our community life together. *I tend to find it helpful to think in pictures and as I thought about this subject I eventually settled on the image of a river – because it is such a fluid and dynamic image. A river is full of life and movement, it does not have neat edges, you cannot fit it into neat boxes, in fact it sloshes about all over the place. A river goes places. In places it runs very fast offering a white-water ride experience, other parts are still and quiet. It has an effect way beyond its borders, sometimes flooding over a vast area. It can transform with tremendous power, it can refresh, sustain and renew. It is itself constantly being renewed. Each part is connected to every other part. It is a thing of beauty, it can carry people, but it can also be rocky and uncomfortable. It can give life but just occasionally, when things go wrong, it can also be destructive. *So how does this picture fit with Christian fellowship – what is sloshing around together in our
community life? 1. Firstly – God is! Father, Son and Holy Spirit: - part of
the flow of this 1John1.3: 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. Paul wrote: God who called you into fellowship with
his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.
(1 Cor1.9) 2 Cor. 13.14: May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit by with you all. Through and through God is part of our community life together. God the Father loves us and cares for us, Jesus modelled good community life by getting down on his knees with a bowl of water and some soap and washing his disciples’ feet. He did it because he saw that it needed doing – their feet were hot, dusty, sweaty and horrible. No-one else thought it was their job – Jesus showed them how they should treat each other. He went on to say that if they loved each other, if they modelled a caring and loving community themselves then many others would be drawn into faith. People would encounter Jesus through the actions and way of life of his followers. On the day of Pentecost God breathed out the Holy Spirit with such power and life that a nervous bunch of waiting believers were transformed into a vibrant Christian community. The Holy Spirit both sent them out and gathered them together. Almost immediately, when the Spirit comes, they are out on the streets proclaiming that Jesus is alive – clearly in languages that were understood by the many nationalities that were in that city. The Christians were sent out but they were also gathered together. They had no formal lessons in how to be a
Christian community but the work of the Holy Spirit among them was such that they
were drawn together, meeting in the God himself, is a community of persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit who relate together with incredible unity and intimacy. It is into that community that God invites us – we are invited into relationship/fellowship with God and with each other. So God is very much part of Christian fellowship – we cannot have genuine fellowship with each other without God and nor can we have fellowship with God without being in some way a part of the fellowship of his people. For all its faults we cannot take church out of what it means to be a Christian because God draws us into community. We are the Body of Christ. God who is in community himself, invites us into fellowship with himself and with his people. 2. We are: – a glorious mix of ages, personalities, likes and dislikes, abilities and gifts, faults and failings, needs and wants. Some people seem to be right in the thick of things, out in deep water and others are paddling around in the shadows. Some enjoy going with the flow, others prefer the safety of a sheltered pool, or else are clinging to a rock for dear life for fear of getting out of their depth. What is your immediate response to “where are you in this river of fellowship?” Are you where you want to be? Is there something hindering you from becoming more involved? Do you need to challenge yourself in terms of your relationship with God or with the church community as a whole? Is it time to get your feet off the bottom? Do you need the support and encouragement of other Christians to help you? So God draws us together into fellowship with himself and with a community of people who also know and love him. I want to spend the rest of this sermon unpacking a few of the things that are floating around in what is meant by fellowship and then leave cell groups, if and when they look at this sermon, to spend a bit more time thinking about the various ingredients that comprise Christian fellowship. ·
Belonging: It is good to feel that we belong. Anyone can belong to this church – there are no entrance fees, no exams to pass, not even a form to fill in unless you want to be on the electoral roll. Everyone is welcome to our gatherings together as church – some will come because they are Christians who want to worship and to grow in faith, some will come because they are hungry and are looking for God (just as welcome as the already committed Christians), some will come for some other need – to be loved and valued, prayed for, forgiven, because they have always come, hear banns being read, looking for an argument! Everyone is welcome – unless intent on destruction. We want to be a church without walls (open to everyone) –
hopefully some will come here and find God, they will discover by belonging
to this church community, the love and grace of God which is for them. One of our challenges is to help people to know
that they are welcome here and accepted just as they are. How many people will walk past this building
this week and think, I would like to go but I don’t think I am good enough,
or I would like to go but I am not sure if I am welcome, but I am not sure
what would be expected of me… Don’t get me wrong – I do not think that mission is just about trying to get people into church and nor do I think that being church is just about coming to a service on Sunday or just about what goes on in this building. It is much more than that. But it is often through coming along and belonging first that people find faith rather than the other way round – you don’t have to already be a person of faith to belong to this church. But having reached this level of being church, the level of basic belonging, I want to invite you further in. There is more, much more to being a Christian fellowship/community than coming to a building called church and sitting through services week by week. Come further in and explore more about what it means to be a Christian fellowship: ·
Knowing
and being known: A community is a place where you know folk and they know you. Isn’t it great when people remember your name (and devastating when they don’t), when you know you will be missed if you are not here, when people know if you are unwell, or having a tough time or whatever. As I look round at this church I can see that there are enough of us here to make it virtually impossible for us all to know everyone else well, or even to know everyone’s name. Those at the back cannot even see those at the back of another wing. If you don’t meet over coffee you may not even realise you go to the same church. Does it matter? – yes it does. It matters if you come week by week and no-one really knows you. It matters if no-one can help pick you up when you are down or rejoice with you when things are good. It matters if you are not finding opportunities to give of yourself and your talents into this fellowship. We are all the poorer for that. It matters if you do not feel yourself to be a part of a supportive Christian community once you leave this building. It matters if you go away feeling unloved and unknown. But how do we build community in even a middle-sized church like this? For me as one of the clergy here, try as I do, I know that I cannot hold in my memory everything that people tell me about themselves and their lives. Unless someone tells me I may not even notice if you are missing one week and it may be several weeks before I start to think – I haven’t seen so and so for a long time – only to discover that you have been lying in a hospital bed for weeks wondering why no-one has visited. In a church even of this middling size the model of clergy as sole providers of pastoral care simply does not work very well. We need a model of church where we all share a responsibility to care for one another, with the clergy being part of the enabling and support team. · Small groups It isn’t possible for everyone here to know everyone else very well. But that does not let us off the hook. It doesn’t mean that we stop trying. We need to work on building community and getting to know one another. Phil Potter: Real love and genuine community begin only
when we break through the thin veneer of our meetings and find practical ways
of dealing with our dirty feet.” Part of the way in which we try to build community in this church is through cell groups – small groups where we can know each other better, where we can both give support and receive it; groups where we can reach out together, groups where the life of that group spills out into all the places we find ourselves Monday to Saturday as well as here on a Sunday. Groups where we encourage and support one another in mission and ministry. If we look back at Acts 2.42-47 – this cannot have just been one big congregation of several thousand people gathered on a Sunday. There were 3,000 new Christians on day 1 alone. They are often meeting in homes, often sharing meals together, they are caring for those in need, and day by day more and more people are coming to faith in Jesus and joining this Christian community. At this stage there was not much organisation – community life happened naturally because of the work of the Holy Spirit amongst them. Organisation inevitably had to come soon as the church grew and spread to many different places. The early church was not perfect – no church ever was or is – I am glad about that – because that means I do not have to be perfect to be a member! No cell group is perfect either but I can’t think of any other way in which we can be the vibrant, supportive, growing and effective sort of fellowship that God calls us to be. So if you want to join a cell group talk to Keith or me. If you want to join one but none are at a good time for you then still talk to us – perhaps it means we should be starting a new group. We could look at so much else under this title of “fellowship”. We could look deeper at how we can be a caring and sharing fellowship, we could look at what it means to be a healing community- and by that I do not just mean the healing that can come through prayer ministry but also the healing that can come through being loved, valued and accepted as the person that you are, the healing that can come when people come along side you and take time to listen, the healing that can come when your burdens are in some way shared with others. How many people these days have no experience of what that sort of community is like, people from broken homes, dysfunctional families… If we have a great community here then we have a lot to offer people who are broken and hurting in various ways. If people can see for themselves that we love one another and that that love is for them too then we will find more and more people wanting to join us. So the sort of community that God calls us to be is: · One that is filled by the presence of God so that people can encounter him through the love of his people expressed in word and action. · One where people matter, where all people are welcomed, known and valued. Where people are able to give as well as to receive. · One where we are sensitive to the needs of one another so that we weep with those who weep but also one where we rejoice with those who rejoice. · One that is safe, where we need not fear harm or rejection. · One where there is real joy at being together. · One where we are generous and practical in our care for each other. Such a fellowship will grow and flourish and its life will slosh all over the place to Thorpe Acre and beyond. So lets go in deeper, take our feet off the bottom and let God carry us in the flow of his Spirit as we grow in our relationship with him and with one another |
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