I want to publish my first of two important paths for congregations in my series on evangelism before the demands of Holy Week and Easter occupy the minds of my fellow colleagues. For the past ten years, I have pointed congregational leaders toward the creation of these important and parallel paths.
Remember that the Episcopal definition of evangelism ends with the phrase “within the fellowship of the Church.” I have pointed out the importance of this phrase in my previous blogs on this topic. We can never separate as, American evangelicals often do, the preaching of repentance and turning to Christ from the work of making disciples within the fellowship of God’s people that we commonly call “The Church.”
When working with church leaders, I call this first path The Path to Membership. It is really The Path of True Fellowship. Let me remind all of us that what we call fellowship today, the coffee hour and potluck suppers, is really a terrible use of the word “koinonia”. One of my dear mentors, Bishop Frey, always pointed out when teaching on the life of the Church that the better translation of this Greek word is “Solidarity.” As you know, Solidarity was the name chosen by the Polish resistance and liberation movement against communism and Soviet totalitarianism and is much more powerful than the word fellowship today.
Any reading of the New Testament and especial Acts tells us that the solidarity/fellowship of the early church bonded the followers of Jesus into a community of love with one another that it even threatened the power of Rome. “The blood of the martyrs" may have been the "seeds of the Church,” but the obvious love of one another that the early Christians exemplified drew thousands into relationship with Christ and one another. Often this included slaves!
This is why the story of Perpetua and Felicitas held such a dramatic place in the early disciples of the second and third centuries. An aristocrat willing to die for her faith was stunning to Roman leaders, but the willingness of her slave to forgo freedom and chose death because of her love of her sister in Christ confounded the order of the Roman world. In a society where as much as 80% of the empire at times were part of the slave system, no wonder the Roman Empire was threatened and persecuted the early Christians. That power of love lived out would ultimately undermine the power of pagan society and despite their efforts to destroy them, this fellowship of the Beloved ultimately won over even the Empire itself.
Why do I so belabor this point? Because as our secular society opens the door to paganism and superstitious cults, the rediscovery of this true fellowship becomes more important with each passing day. Cults bind souls. Fellowship frees them! How do we know when so-called Christian Fellowships like the Branch Davidian have become a cult? It becomes one when it binds members not only to one another but to some sort of charismatic leader who has become the interpreter of truth.
The Path to Fellowship needs to be intentional. We cannot just welcome new “members” into the Church and hope that attendance in worship, participation in stewardship, and occasional coffee hours will build this kind of community. These activities are not wrong or bad, but they are much less than true fellowship. For example, last Sunday, I handed the reserve sacrament to a Stephen’s minister of our home Parish at the end of the Eucharist. Afterward at coffee, she explained to me that she was taking this to a widow of the parish who was now suffering from dementia in a nursing home. She told me that she and three other woman friends had committed themselves to the support each other. When one of them was left with no family to care for her, is now surrounded by institutional care (sic), and has become lost even to herself, these three women were committed to remembering who she was and is to them and her Church. There it is. Koinonia!
I challenge clergy and lay leaders to create an intentional path to such membership/fellowship to build their local communities. Sadly, Church membership often means welcoming new people, introducing them to other members, inviting them to participation in baptism or confirmation or reception, and then hoping they will volunteer someday to serve one of the parish's ministries. How can we do this more intentionally?
One of my mentors, Lyle Schaller, used to suggest that congregations use different types and sizes of groups to accomplish needed ministries. He pointed to the 15-to-30-person group which he called a class as best for instruction. Most choirs actually fit this definition, they learn and sing. And of course, church school classes and adult education are often done best is this size. The 30-to-70-person group he called a mission group because it is often best size for such ministries as Stephen Ministries or various outreaches to the wider community. But he always underscored that the best group for discipleship was the small group of 6 to 12 people.
“That’s what Jesus did!” He would say with a smile to underscore his point. He would then say that it doesn’t matter whether you call them Home Fellowships, Bible Studies, or Support Groups, their real importance is that given enough time together, their true purpose is Christian formation and relationships. I always marvel at the continual conversations around the church as to whether a congregation should have small groups. My response is always, “Only if you want to have a real Christian community or if you are just satisfied to have a “Parish.”
After Easter, I will finish my series on evangelism with The Path to Discipleship. This obviously overlaps with fellowship, but it is, of course, much more. For now, ask yourself and other leaders, does our community have a clear and intentional path to fellowship and can we describe it and invite all members to it?
