Let's Do Lunch and Other Thin Fellowship Promises

Who Put the Vinegar in the Salt

Part V: The True Spirit of Fellowship

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men”

(Matthew 5:13NIV).

A popular Christmas carol invites all to “Deck the halls with boughs of holly.” Whenever I sing it, I am struck with the simplicity of the call to come together in fellowship: “Sing we joyous, all together…heedless of the wind and weather.”

Something about Christmas that brings out the socialite in the most reclusive. There is a sense that the season is to be shared. But what about the rest of the year? When the New Year is old and the fervor of the season has waned? Will the desire for fellowship burn out with the return to the mundane? Is the art of fellowship dead in the church? Maybe we’ve forgotten what fellowship truly means.

Over the centuries, the church in America became a social institution, exclusive clubs where only those that looked, dressed, and acted a certain way felt welcomed. Perhaps Christians cloistered themselves out of fear of contamination, quoting that light has no business with darkness. Losing its ability to salve a hurting world, is it any wonder church attendance fell dramatically over the last several decades?

Fortunately, many churches today are experiencing a resurgence of social Christianity and have come out from the vestibule to the streets of the needy. Believers are spending less time organizing the monthly pot luck dinner and are more engaged in community work. Volunteers stack cans in food pantries, and women’s groups knit blankets for premature babies, worthwhile efforts, to be certain.   

But I wonder if the impact on those outside of the church might still be received as different kind of aloofness? Do we inadvertently demean in our effort to uplift? For all our good deeds fall short, if we are not motivated to reach outside our walls with the same love that is found within. If we extend our fellowship with only a handout and not a handshake, have we given the same subliminal message as our secluded forbears? Does fellowship require more than erecting a shelter? Have we traded one form of indifference for another more insidious because it hides beneath a veil of caring? Or does God require us to extend His Grace through genuine affection for even those who do not think as we do or value what we value?

Fellowship denotes a sense of belonging.

Our fellowship with others is an extension of our fellowship with God. He loved us even in our iniquities. Then when we stopped warring with Him, accepted his provision of Salvation, our spirits were aligned with Him. Our joy complete.

When we relate to others with that same unconditional love, a love that planned a way of reconciliation from the beginning of time, then and only then can we begin to appreciate the true spirit of fellowship whether inside the church walls, lunch with a friend, or ministering to the homeless. For our fellowship mirrors the joy we find in God’s Grace. This then is our joyous measure

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light,

 we have fellowship with one another…” 1 John 1:7a).