Below is the second excerpt from Safe Houses of Hope & Prayer by R. Maurice Smith. You can find out more about Maurice by going to his website risingrivermedia.org. The first excerpt can be accessed by clicking here.
I would dare say that most Christians in traditional institutional churches never achieve or experience genuine fellowship (what I would prefer to call genuine community). Why? Because genuine fellowship is messy, takes work and requires perseverance. For time pressed leaders, it is much easier to teach people to death with impressive Bible notes in PowerPoint presentations than it is to work through the personal issues which stand in the way of genuine community. And lectures you can control are easier than dialogues which you can’t.
Our English word translated “fellowship” is the Greek word koinonia which comes from the Greek word koine, meaning “common.” Fellowship is the holding of certain things in common. In the life of the organic house church it is a mutual sharing of our lives together. We share a common life in the Kingdom of God and drink from a common River of His Spirit in the bond of Christ.
The desire for genuine koinonia was not new in the ancient world, nor was it exclusively Christian. The Classical Greek philosophers had envisioned a utopian fellowship that they described as koinonia. But all classical attempts to achieve this koinonia by human effort had failed miserably. But now, through the death and resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God had accomplished in the Church and the Kingdom of God what the efforts of men throughout the ages had never achieved: genuine fellowship. And this fellowship, this genuine koinonia, was manifested in the organic house churches of the New Testament where believers shared their lives with one another. They shared meals together in one another’s homes. They prayed together, endured persecution together, worshiped together and, at times, they even died together. They preferred one another’s company above all others and gave sacrificially to meet each other’s needs. To express it in contemporary terms for today, these early house churches were made up of people who loved to hang out together. They shared an affinity an attraction based on common interests – that surpassed the natural – it was supernatural. True koinonia or fellowship means that as Christians we share a common life in the Kingdom of God.
A quick word is in order at this point about genuine koinonia or community versus pseudo-community. In genuine community the reality is that baggage happens and this frequently results in conflicts. But mature believers look past the conflict and work together to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2) and help each other unpack their baggage and resolve their conflicts. Unfortunately, this is a new experience for many people who have only experienced the pseudo-community of most churches (traditional and otherwise).
In his excellent book The Different Drum Dr. M. Scott Peck describes pseudo-community this way:
“The essential dynamic of pseudo-community is conflict avoidance. The absence of conflict in a group is not by itself diagnostic. Genuine community may experience lovely and sometimes lengthy periods free from conflict. But that is because they have learned how to deal with conflict rather than avoid it. Pseudo-community is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict resolving.”
Genuine community, genuine koinonia requires intimacy, vulnerability and conflict resolution with both God and men. Genuine koinonia requires a willingness to work through differences, baggage and conflict. If we are to be successful as organic house churches and as Safe Houses of Hope and Prayer, then we must pursue genuine community in our house churches and create a safe place where it can take place.
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