Growing Through Fellowship
"For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones."
Ephesians 5:30 (NKJV)
Someone once described a church as a group of porcupines in a snowstorm: we need each other for warmth, but the closer we get, the more we poke each other. There is painful truth in that image. Anyone who has been part of a church for any length of time knows that the community of believers is simultaneously one of the greatest gifts and one of the most challenging realities of the Christian life.
But here is what I want to say clearly: the challenge is not a reason to withdraw. It is precisely the reason the community is so valuable.
God designed us to grow in relationship, not in isolation. The Bible uses organic images for the church: a body, a vine, a building being fitted together. In every image, the individual parts only function properly in connection with the whole. A branch separated from the vine does not become a more independent, self-sufficient branch. It simply withers.
Proverbs 27:17 says that as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Sharpening involves friction. You cannot sharpen a blade without contact and resistance. And so the very things about community that feel uncomfortable, the different personalities, the different perspectives, the occasional friction, are often the very mechanisms through which God shapes us.
The New Testament instruction about fellowship is remarkably practical. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another. The word 'encourage' in the original means to come alongside. It is a picture of deliberate, active presence in the life of another person.
Are you genuinely connected? Not just attending a service once a week, but actually known, actually accountable, actually investing in the lives of others and allowing others to invest in yours? There is a version of Christianity that is entirely private and entirely comfortable. But it is not the version the New Testament describes.
Be part of the body. Let it cost you something. Let it give you something. That is how growth happens.
Prayer: Lord, thank You for placing me in the family of Your church. Help me to be a genuine contributor to that community, not just a consumer of it. Where I have withdrawn, draw me back. Where I have been difficult, make me gracious. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Pastor Ras
All Nations Community Church
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