The excerpt below is from a manuscript by Leland Yialelsis. It is one of the best works on relational gatherings I have read and it is highly recommended. If you are interested in understanding the heart of why gatherings are so important, you should put this one on the top of your list. This hasn’t been published and Leland is offering his manuscript free. The link is at the bottom.
The local ekleesia, as the community of Christ, becomes the place where each member finds the friendship and fellowship each human so longs for. In this community there are no lonely people. In this community there are no empty hearts. In this community there are none longing for the human touch. In this community the fellowship creates the friendship. The community is strong enough to recognize that there will be struggles and there will be times when conflicts arise. But in this community the commitment of the members is first rooted in their commitment to their Lord Jesus and then to one another. So, when a conflict arises it is worked through and becomes a building block of that genuine fellowship rather than an element that divides and destroys. This is a true community because fellowship exists because each individual is uniquely important and is considered so by the others. The fellowship is strong because each is an equal with the others. Real fellowship exists because none feels superior and none feels inferior. Real fellowship exists because each has had the opportunity to give something to the community, to the others, and each has received something. The fellowship exists because the fellowship itself is understood to be central to the very life of the community. There is nothing that takes precedence over the creation of true and genuine fellowship. There are no rituals that are more important than the interaction of the members. There is no physical thing, whether it is a building, the furnishings, the land, or the architecture that is more important than the fellowship itself. The fellowship experienced within, and because of, the wider context of the community exists as a center of hope. There is the shared belief that not only has the good news of Christ’s redeeming grace touched each of their lives but that He will take the next grand step in the great plan of God and bring the Kingdom of God into living reality on this earth. The fellowship celebrates their faith in the Power that has restored them as individuals and has made them members of the Kingdom of Heaven. They celebrate their faith that Christ will one day vanquish the present Prince of Darkness now bringing suffering to this world and the Kingdom of Heaven will exist in reality and not only as the “blessed hope”. But the fellowship exists, the community exists, because here in this circle each finds an experience that exists nowhere else on earth. Here each member gives and receives love like it is given and experienced nowhere else. Here, because this is the community of grace, it is the community of Love! Love is the ultimate expression of the experience of community. It is the power that makes this community unique. It is the reality that makes this community radical. Love is the force that makes this community a threat to the world about it. It is the love that makes this community totally and truly Christian.
The local ekleesia can function as a community, as the very body of Christ because it has accepted and follows His same material values. It, like Him, has no place to lay its head. It is focussed on the Kingdom to come and not on the pursuit of earthly riches. Because it is a truly spiritual community it expends no energy on things. All of its energy is expended on its members and on others within its circle of influence who have real need. It is a community that does not “talk” love. It is a community that lives love and puts its “money” where its mouth is. The resources of the community are used for people, for service, to build the fellowship. This community understands the words of Jesus to Pilate that His kingdom was not (and still is not) of this world. The local ekleesia is the community of Christ because it loves as He loved. The local ekleesia gathers for the primary purpose of giving each member an opportunity to share with the other members and to receive from the other members.
One very significant difference between the church and the ekleesia is, when, and, for what purpose, the members are expected to use the gifts of the Spirit. In the church the members are expected to use their spiritual gifts during the times when the members are scattered in their homes and away from the church. They are expected to use their spiritual gifts for the purpose of evangelization, “soul winning”. It is amazing that such a strange idea would persist for so long. Why would anyone think that the members of the body would function best when the members are all scattered and then function least when they are all gathered in the church? Yet this is the odd teaching that exists within the theology of the church today. In the ekleesia it is exactly the reverse. Each member of the community of the ekleesia understands that the gifts given to each by the Spirit are most helpful to the “body of Christ” when that “body” is gathered together. It is when all the “members”, each with their special gift, come together that the exercise of the gifts becomes most important. The gifts are there to help the community be the body of Christ and are intended for the building up of the body. Notice Paul’s advice to the Corinthians, “When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.” 14:26 and “For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted;” V. 31. In the ekleesia it is understood that the exercise of the gifts given by the Spirit when the members of the community gather is what makes them all a “body”. “Each of you” (the literal translation of the Greek) has something to share, be it a song, a story, an experience, a lesson drawn from life, with the others that are there. There are no silent, inactive, passive, observers in the community of the ekleesia. It is the unique blending of each of the gifts at the time of the gathering of the members that contributes to the “edification” of all. Note again Paul’s advice to the Ephesians, “… Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” Ephesians 4:15,16. The essence and the purpose of the gatherings of the community is the opportunity for “Every joint” and “the proper working of each individual part” to function so that the “body” can “build” itself in love.
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