This is part of an eight part series on the importance of fellowship. Read the other parts here:
Part 8: Unconditional Love
Part 7: Honesty
Part 6: Fighting Superficiality
Part 5: Sanctification
Part 4: Why You Need It (Yes You)
Part 3: Dealing With A Dead or Dying Church
Part 2: Accountability
Part 1: Introduction
I realise it has been over a month and a half since I have written anything even remotely political. Over the past couple years of this blog, I have found it much harder to articulate thoughts on my faith - and instead relied heavily on politics, economics and philosophy.
I am not sure what’s wrong with me.
Experiencing biblical fellowship over the past nine months has had a radical impact on my life. But more than that, these last nine months have been cataclysmic opening of things that I have been convinced about for most of my Christian life, but I had been simply bereft of the language (both externally and internally) for articulating them. I hope the writing from this past month has provided a clear idea of some of my thoughts on the matter.
This subject - superficiality - is one I probably could have written before this transition took place, albeit, without the doctrine and theology that I have now amalgamated into my thinking. This doctrinal ally, I hope, will enable to me to write this blog without the personal feelings and experiences that had coloured my thoughts of superficiality (and erroneously defined “fellowship”) in the past. None of us should ever presume to be unbiased or unaffected by past events, situations and relationships - reading this guys blog (and keeping grace in perspective) reminds me that my own past mistakes aren’t that bad, and that those who have annoyed, angered or offended me didn’t do anything so severe.
In a lot of ways, this series has been a detox and I will write it as long as it serves a benefit for me and hopefully encourages others to seek out reliable, biblical and sanctifying fellowship.
Superficiality: The Enemy of Sanctification
That is the main problem with superficiality in fellowship - there is no way sanctification can take place. As I mentioned last time, sanctification is critical in fellowship - it’s part of God’s design for it. We have to be allowing God to use us to make each other holy. We have to be open to the Holy Spirit making us more like Christ, and we have to admit that we aren’t going to get all the answers by flipping through our bible alone, casually attending church or waiting for an angelic visitor to reveal hidden mysteries to us.
But we are doing ourselves a great disservice by holding superficial relationships up as fellowship. I was in a discussion with a friend of mine in leadership some time ago about this subject, and I noticed how his conversation about fellowship slipped seamlessly in and out of sanctification and superficiality. On the one hand, he was speaking about being accountable and offering encouragement to one another as fellowship but then he would speak about having a church barbeque and movie-night as ways to stimulate fellowship.
I’ll post more from Why Small Groups - it’s just articulated too well not to use:
You may think fellowship with God is all you need. After all, doesn’t the Bible teach that God and his Word are sufficient for all our needs pertaining to life and godliness? Yes, it does. But the error comes in limiting the means God uses to help us apply truth to our lives. Only the Spirit can illuminate Scripture to our minds and give us the power to obey it.
Yet the Spirit often chooses to employ other people as a means of communicating his truth to our ears and heart. Who are we to argue with him? He will of course use teachers of the word through sermons, books, and tapes. But he will also use the regular guy in your small group—and there’s the rub. We can ignore teachers, close books, and turn off tapes. When we do pay attention, we can conveniently misapply teachings. But the people closest to us, if they’re doing their job in fellowship, are not likely to let us ignore God’s urgings so easily.
The chief reason we love superficiality is because it removes the danger of being confronted with truth that we don’t want to hear. That’s right - not only are you harbouring pride and dishonesty in your heart about who you are, but you are actively protecting it, keeping it from being exposed by talking about the weather, sports, celebrity gossip, your new couches, music or anything else that blocks God’s truth from working in your life.
This applies to all of us to some degree. Remember, we aren’t yet sanctified - so sin still pollutes us and affects us. Our natural man wants to survive. We all have to take this word as for us - we need to systematically set up fellowship because there are going to be times when we don’t want to deal with our sin.
Case in point. I meet with a guy regularly to keep me accountable, encourage me and regularly point out my own blind spots to sin in my life. How often to I want to meet with this guy? Almost never. It isn’t because he’s not a swell guy - on the contrary, we share common interests and passions, and our personalities seem to mesh well. It’s not because I think he’s going to point out something to me that’s way off, judgemental or wrong. It’s because I am terrified that he is going to share truth with me that tears down my pride and exposes my weakness.
If I did fellowship simply “as I felt led” then I would never do it. Who feels led to be humbled? Good luck finding someone like that! No, it is important to set up relationships where you share some trust, and to put in a framework that enables you to benefit from fellowship.
Think about church. Sometimes Sunday morning church is annoying. Can’t we just all meet together whenever we feel like it? Yes we can - but if we didn’t institutionalise one day a week or so to meet - we’d probably neglect it sooner or later.
Dumbing it Down
Superficiality is the dumbing down of fellowship - where the forms of fellowship still exist (communication, relationships, emotions, passions, connections) but the substance has been completely removed. I believe this is a direct consequence of abandoning deliberate, systematic fellowship. When the zeal for change and reform fade, and we begin to want to plateau, then fellowship is slowly replaced with superficiality.
Solve this slide by setting up a devotion with your spouse. Meet with another believer to pray for one another. Join (or create) a small group at your church which deals with application. Ask another believer to watch your behaviour and to feel free to point out areas where you are blind to your own sin. Worship God with passion corporately, singing and proclaiming how great He is.
Most importantly, know that God’s truth is only going to improve things. The initial discomfort is just your natural man resisting. If you are with even remotely mature Christians, then no one is going to judge you, and in fact, you are likely going to be a means of grace for others - encouraging them by your own exampl to seek fellowship themselves.
On to Part 7: Honesty.
I’ve been mulling on your post today and one question/comment has come to mind. You speak of this fellowship idea as a “new” thing you’ve come to appreciate since moving to a new location and attending a new church. Obviously, your new church has a good attitude about fellowship and they’ve generously reached out to you. Something you, apparently, didn’t have so much of back at your last location.
My question is this: I’m wondering how much of what you’ve experienced recently has been made possible because you had an opportunity to “start over” with a new congregation. One thing that possibly hinders us from having a willingness to be humble and vulnerable is our history with current friends/congregation. For instance, I might subtly think, “Suzie thinks of me as X, she’s always thought of me as X, and it would be a shock if I let her know I’m really Y” and thus I’m unwilling to let Suzie know my failings, hurts, disappointments with God, etc. On the other hand, if I go to a new place, nobody knows me or has any preconceived ideas about who I am or who I “should” be–somehow there’s a bit more social and spiritual freedom available to open up to others. Likewise, I have no history of knowing their shortcomings, so I might be more willing to trust them (whether or not they deserve it).
I don’t mean to be making excuses here for an unwillingness to be open with others; I’m just observing that once the social and spiritual patterns (some would say “ruts”) have been set, it is much harder to suddenly become open and willing to be in an accountability relationship.
Yes, Thainamu, I think you have an excellent point.
Let me first state that nine months ago I was not in a void of fellowship or in a horrible place. I was with people sincerely trying to do their best (myself included). But where I am at now, there is a very deliberate emphasis on right application and right theology when it comes to certain things, fellowship among these things. I don’t want this to come across as a critique of external factors (church, other people, etc…) but hopefully I have made myself clear that we ourselves our to blame for a lack of fellowship in our lives (re: I am responsible if my fellowship has been lax).
But yes, history makes for a huge hindrance. Being able to be with new believers who did not have biases about me (and whom I did not have biases against) was liberating.
But, then again, I see people around me who have been in this church for years and years being sanctified in the same way I am. Our church also places an emphasis on grace and sanctification - therefore people will change as God works in them. People would be discouraged from thinking “Suzie thinks of me as X, she’s always thought of me as X, and it would be a shock if I let her know I’m really Y.” Of course, we do still think things like this, because that is in our nature. And yes, it has been easier for me to experience fellowship because these kinds of thoughts were completely non-existent because we were new.
I think this reveals just how complicated fellowship is - and why the model of barbecues and pizza nights is going to completely fail every time. It’s why leadership has to be active, and the body needs to systematically pursue fellowship (both in doctrine and application).
Does that get at a little of what you are asking?
Yes, it does. You summarized it well:
“But yes, history makes for a huge hindrance. Being able to be with new believers who did not have biases about me (and whom I did not have biases against) was liberating.”
The point you made earlier is really the crux–somehow God intended us to be in fellowship with other PEOPLE (not just books, radio sermons, on-line church) to bring growth in our spiritual lives. We also absolutely need people for social reasons, but often it is easy to confuse the two or substitute one for the other.
Agreed. One of the major points I am trying to make is that God actively intervenes in our life through others. I don’t see exceptions to this rule. I didn’t really understand this before I came to England - confusing the social with the spiritual. This left me really questioning the need for this thing that was being called “fellowship.” I think the social aspects of people are often a personality thing, a choice thing or a preference thing - I am plenty happy with very little social contact. But as far as the spiritual is concerned - we desperately need fellowship with each other (because we need fellowship with God).
I can fully relate to the superficial stuff. I feel my flesh pulling me that way all the time, but whenever I take the initial step to put myself into situations where I feel vulnerable, it comes naturally. Its like my flesh wants to be an introvert, but spiritually I am an extrovert. I want to know people and I want them to know me. I want to encourage them, and if they choose to encourage me, I appreciate it.
What makes this challenging for me is how people want to categorize preachers as some kind of superhuman Christians. While I know I am superhuman in some respects, I don’t think I am any more superhuman than anyone else filled with the Spirit of God. Inwardly I want to respond the way Paul and Silas responded to the people who called them Jupiter and Mercurius. I want to prove to people that I live in the same world they live in, and am genuinely interested in their lives and spiritual development - that I’m not some part of some preacher super-class. In fact, when I minister it has always been a practice of mine to destroy that perception.
Some of the most spiritually edifying conversations I have had in my church have been with a man who many would consider to be mentally handicapped; I really don’t think he is. I think he’s just odd to people. He makes people uncomfortable because he praises God loudly and boisterously. Although he has no education and is poor, he is one of the richest men in faith I have had the pleasure of knowing. And whenever he gets the chance, he’s telling people about Jesus. At one time, he had a terminal case of throat cancer, but the Lord completely healed him years ago and his cancer has not dared to return. He told me of a woman in a soup kitchen, where he volunteers, who had cancer of the nose. He boldly approached her and prayed that the cancer would be dissolved. The next time he saw her she was completely healed.
These are the kinds of Christians I want to be around and fellowship with - people whose lives demonstrate the person of Christ in word and deed; these are the kinds of people that challenge me. I want to surround myself with people who are laying down their lives and people who are desirous to do the same.
Hey, folks! You won’t be seeing me around ZFT anymore, but I had a testimony I just had to share regarding the man I wrote about in the previous post. He’s the guy who, by many, is considered mentally handicapped. His name is Bob.
Anyway, a couple of days ago, a woman from our church called our pastor and asked him to pray because they were on the way to the emergency room. Her husband had previously had heart problems, and after doing some yard work he started having some very alarming symptoms and even started coughing up blood. My pastor asked whether he should meet them at the emergency room. She said, “No, we’ll call you and update you on what happens.”
Later in the evening my pastor received a call from the woman. He asked whether they needed him to come to the hospital, and she went to tell him how Bob just happened to be at the hospital visiting someone and saw her and her husband. When he learned what had happened, he went into the room and laid hands on the man. And guess what? The Lord raised him up. When they ran tests on him afterward, not only did they find nothing wrong, they could not detect any of the prior heart damage that they expected to see and they sent him home!
Was this just a fluke thing? Do these things happen “sometimes” and are unexplainable? No, they are perfectly explainable by the fact that Jesus is alive! I think many people treat Jesus like he is still in the grave. But he isn’t. He isn’t physically here on earth, but he told his disciples that it was advantageous for them that he go away. Why? Because if he went away, the Father would send the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name. And the very works Jesus was empowered to do, believers would also do. And many of us are doing them, and proving to the world that Jesus has risen from the dead. He still forgives sin, heals the sick, and raises the dead. When the Holy Spirit is in manifestation this way, the power of God to convict the sinner of sin is present, and as Paul said, the Gospel is “fully preached” (Romans 15:9).
God bless you all. Goodbye.
Chris A, I like hearing your stories. I like considering the implications. Personally, I don’t doubt that God, through the Holy Spirit, works real, honest supernatural miracles from time to time. I just wonder why it doesn’t “always” happen–and yet, I know why (or at least I think I do
I don’t like that you’re leaving. Especially, I don’t like that you’re leaving without saying why. But if you feel you must, then you must. I’m sorry to see you go, and I’m sorry if you felt persecuted to the point that you felt you had to leave.
Thainamu, he didn’t feel persecuted at all. Chris outlined to me why he is making some changes and working on other things and they have nothing to do with “feeling persecuted.”