fellowship on Neighborhoods

The neighborhood bar is possible the best counterfeit there is to the fellowship Christ wants to give his church. It’s an imitation, dispensing liquor instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but...

Scripture calls us to offer a radical welcome to strangers, but we are not able to give what we do not have. Before we can love our neighbor, we must love and care for ourselves so we can have somethi...

The ancient Greek word for intimate fellowship is koinonia. In the church, we can suffer from what might be called koinonitus: fellowship turned in on itself; cliques and enclaves and tight-knit group...

Did you know that the history of the word “fellowship,” is, rather simply, a relationship among fellows? The idea of a fellowship being that two or more people have been bonded together in some signif...

A Sound Foundation Acts 2:42 would make for a solid outline for a worship service, checklist for a congregation’s life together, or personal schedule for an afternoon. Most of what we are called to d...

So if we want to get the church right, we have to learn to see it as a salad in a bowl, made the Right Way of course. For a good salad is a fellowship of different tastes, all mixed together with the ...

There can be more genuine fellowship among those who share the same disposition than among those who share the same beliefs, especially if that disposition is toward kindness and generosity

Sometimes to follow in the footsteps of Jesus is to walk away from others or to let them walk away from us.

We become who we are in the environment of home. We are shaped by our families. Home is formative. Sociologist Cody C. Delistraty explored the most recent scientific literature for Atlantic Monthly an...

There are some men and some women in whose company we are always at our best. While with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous words. Their mere presence is elevation, purification, s...

We are called to be food and drink for one another.

In each of my friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity.

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community...Let him who is not in community beware of being alone...Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plu...

[W]hat makes the word koinonia untranslatable, and therefore a good candidate for direct appropriation into English (or any language where it may be needed), is the profound and singular connotation o...

For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends.

The Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book The Home We Build Together , points out to the reader that in scripture the description of the creation of the universe in Genesis is given a mere thirty-fou...

Our love to God is measured by our everyday fellowship with others and the love it displays.

John's Only Question While Peter sucks up all the oxygen in the room with loads of questions, John only gets one direct question to Jesus recorded in the Gospels. In the passage immediately pre...

[Koinōnia] is at the heart of the Christian understanding of the triune God as a rich relationship not between individuals but between persons who indwell one another in a loving harmony of friendship...

What is meant by fellowship in this verse? Gossip? Cups of tea? Tours? No. What is being referred to is something of a quite different order and on a quite different level. “They met constantly to hea...

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread; and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. ...

John's Only Question While Peter sucks up all the oxygen in the room with loads of questions, John only gets one direct question to Jesus recorded in the Gospels. In the passage immediately pre...

Leader: Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, All: by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, t...

Why did it disturb the religious leaders that Jesus ate with “sinners”? To eat with someone is an important symbol of fellowship. And in those days, the Jews had a rule: one is not to have such fellow...

Preaching Commentary A Christmastide Community A recent podcast reminded me that there is no such thing as a “neutral” marking of our time—our minutes and our hours, our days and our weeks, our mon...

Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgrims making their way to ...

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.

Our bond, which you resent, consists in mutual love, for we know not how to hate; we call ourselves ‘brethren’ to which you object, as members of one family in God, as partners in one faith, as joint ...

Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.