A Christian who lives in isolation from other believers will fail to receive the blessings as well as the maturity resulting from godly interaction. – Joel Beeke

Recently, the digital media company, Morning Brew asked, What’s the most memorable dining experience you’ve had? Here are some responses: 

• “In Bordeaux, I had a three-course meal where one of the courses was [in] their cheese cellar…they just handed us a plate and knife and told us to help ourselves. It was a feast of cheese that a cartoon mouse would dream of, and I still do!”
• “My husband and I tried reindeer hotdogs from a walk-up stand in Norway and ate them sitting along a pier overlooking a fjord.”
• “I visited Machu Picchu in the ՚70s and stayed in nearby Aguas Calientes long before it was built up. There was one place to eat, which offered either eggs or chicken. They ordered chicken at a nearby table and there was a sudden squawking out back. I ordered eggs.”

Aren’t those great? Yet they all were either individual or family dining experiences. And there’s nothing wrong with that, yet one of the main purposes for a church is fellowship. Church family is about us. It’s one of Jesus’ foundational plans to help us to grow. 

The local church and Christian life go against the grain of our culture.   Our culture is either self-focused or biological family focused. Yet, we will never grow spiritually or be all Jesus intends for us unless we break out of those confines. Christ-followers are to be a new family. We’re to be a spiritual family. In fact, as seen in the life of Jesus, if our blood relatives aren’t believers as Jesus’ weren’t until after the resurrection, then we have much more in common with our spiritual family than our biological one. 

Jesus’ plan is that His followers be a new family. That was His plan with those 12 disciples. From the beginning His purpose was to bring us together as a community. That won’t happen naturally. It’s supernatural, the work of the Spirit. 

The New Testament uses metaphors for the church of a body, army or building. Each of those requires unity, yet there is diversity in the midst of unity, not uniformity. We’re not clones. None of will grow spiritually if we’re isolated, individualistic or primarily associate with those like us.

Did you know that you can’t get fellowship listening to a sermon? You can’t get fellowship reading a book. Fellowship only happens when Christ-followers come together. It’s hard to have fellowship just attending a worship service. It’s no accident then that throughout the New Testament there is fellowship around a meal. What are outcomes of fellowship?  

We are a Christian Counterculture. 

Pagans gather together on ethnic, economic, political, chronological or gender divisions. Read the New Testament. That’s not the church. We’re to be distinctly different. 

Jesus’ plan is for His followers to come together even if there is great diversity. We will be united for all eternity, that uniting starts here! 

It’s a powerful message of the power of the gospel to a lost world that segregates into tribes. Terms such as “family,” “together,” “fellowship” are all used in the New Testament for us. Jesus said, by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. You can’t love people you don’t spend time with and don’t truly know.

At Grace, we’re scheduling some fellowship opportunities to cultivate fellowship this during the coming months: Men’s Steak-outs, All Church Road Rally, Women’s Mini-Golf, Dinner for Eight, even a Brewers’ Game. Those are just a few that we’re planning. Yet, they will only help us gain ground in growing fellowship if those in our church make them a priority. 

And please don’t depend on us. Use the time and home God has entrusted to you. Take the initiative and get together with others in our church family. Invite others to join you for a meal or go out together.

It could be after a worship service, even something simple like a fast-food restaurant. Invite those you don’t know or don’t know well. Have others over for a cook-out. Hot dogs and beans are fine. It’s more important to gather than to attempt to impress others with your home or culinary skills. 

There’s a huge difference between hospitality and entertaining. 

In her book, Entertaining, Martha Stewart says, “Entertaining, like cooking, is a little selfish, because it really involves pleasing yourself with a guest list that will coalesce into your ideal of harmony, with a menu orchestrated to your home and taste, with decorations subject to your own eye.”

Hospitality is biblically and distinctly different. 

Biblical hospitality offers our best to Jesus first, understanding that our best to others will fall into place. It transforms our selfish motives and elevates our guests. When the hospitable host or hostess swings wide the door, all the attention focuses outward: You’re here! We’ve been waiting for you. No one is more important today than you, and I’m thrilled you’ve come.

Our posture in hospitality is one that bends low, generously offering our heart and ourselves to another despite whatever interruption it might be to our own plans or comfort. It’s opening up to others with no need to worry about what to say or how to act. Come as you are. It’s the difference between status-seeking and servanthood. It’s “Here I am” versus “here you are.” It moves from self-serving to simply serving. There is no grand blueprint for hospitality aside from loving others like you love Jesus.

The main reason we open our door is because we’re driven by the core principles of hospitality: loving Him, loving His will, and following His command to love others in His family. Extending hospitality is about freely giving of ourselves while granting others the freedom to be themselves. Shifting our focus from us to them removes needless walls.

Fellowship gives us a flesh and blood picture of Jesus. 

Each of us together shows all of God’s graces to the world. No one is perfect. We all sin, yet each of us has a purpose here to show aspects of the Lord Jesus to those around us. Each of us has been given specific spiritual gifts. When we come together in fellowship, as a whole we are demonstrating God. 

Think of it like a cake. You need flour, sugar, eggs, oil, and more to make a cake. The eggs will never be flour. None of them can up the cake alone. Yet together, all those ingredients make a delicious cake and it’s like that with fellowship. All of us together show Jesus and reveal the glory of God.

Spring is here! Let’s please our Lord and spring into fellowship. If you do, please let me know! I love it when our church family comes together!!