Fellowship

David Mathis (Habits of Grace) on true fellowship. I found this SO helpful when thinking through what church life should look like, especially the last line (in bold) which is a very helpful way of seeing how true fellowship shouldn't lead to the 'holy huddle' mentality and separation from the world but is the way the world will see Jesus.

The koinonia—Greek for commonality, partnership, fellowship— that the first Christians shared wasn’t anchored in a common love for pizza, pop, and a nice clean evening of fun among the fellow churchified . Its essence was in their common Christ, and their common life-or-death mission together in his summons to take the faith worldwide in the face of impending persecution.

True fellowship is less like friends gathered to watch the Super Bowl and more like players on the field in blood, sweat, and tears, huddled in the backfield only in preparation for the next down. True fellowship, in this age, is more the invading troops side by side on the beach at Normandy than it is the gleeful revelers in the street on V-E Day.

But this fellowship is no isolated commune or static, mutual-admiration society. It is a “partnership in the gospel” (Phil. 1: 5), among those giving their everything to “advance the gospel” (1: 12), knit together for “progress and joy in the faith” (1: 25). It is the fellowship in which, as Paul says to Christians, “you are all partakers with me of grace . . . in the defense and confirmation of the gospel” (1: 7).

 In such a partnership as this, we need not worry too much that we will forget the lost and sequester the gospel. Real fellowship will do precisely the opposite. It must. The same Jesus who joins us commissions us. The medium of our relationship is the message of salvation. When the fellowship is true, the depth of love for each other is not a symptom of in-growth, but the final apologetic: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13: 35).