Fighting for the Fellowship
Robert Dawson
Hebrews 10:24-25
Darrell Robinson in Total Church Life writes, ''A church will never grow beyond its fellowship. If the fellowship is right, the church will continue to minister, witness in love and be built up in maturity and in number. But if the fellowship is not right, the church will decline and eventually die. If the fellowship is disrupted, everything else goes down. Attendance will drop. Giving will decrease. Outreach will stop. Building the fellowship is crucial to the growth of a church.''
Fellowship is important but it is one of those words that gets thrown around a great deal. It's one of the churchy kind of words that is often used but seldom defined. To most people, fellowship is handshaking, smiles, laughs, sitting down to a nice meal or just a good old-fashioned hug. In a church, all those should be found in abundance. They are definitely part of our understanding of biblical fellowship but there is more to it than that.
Fellowship goes farther than just getting together and hanging-out. It about more than gathering for the sake of gathering. It is gathering for a purpose, a purpose greater than just meeting my personal needs.
- It is about building relationships but relationship with a purpose. Fellowship is about the church coming together to worship, disciple, minister and to evangelize.
- One of my NT professors, Dr. David Beck, said that fellowship denotes a partnership and then gave this vivid definition. He said, ''Fellowship is two fellows in the same ship rowing in the same direction.''
- Fellowship requires a kind of tough love and dogged determination to love one another despite our minor differences and personality quirks and stay united on the task for which we have been chosen. We have been chosen to seek God, to serve others and to share Jesus.
This morning, I want to look at ways we can build and maintain fellowship. We'll look at it from the perspective of the front ...
Robert Dawson
Hebrews 10:24-25
Darrell Robinson in Total Church Life writes, ''A church will never grow beyond its fellowship. If the fellowship is right, the church will continue to minister, witness in love and be built up in maturity and in number. But if the fellowship is not right, the church will decline and eventually die. If the fellowship is disrupted, everything else goes down. Attendance will drop. Giving will decrease. Outreach will stop. Building the fellowship is crucial to the growth of a church.''
Fellowship is important but it is one of those words that gets thrown around a great deal. It's one of the churchy kind of words that is often used but seldom defined. To most people, fellowship is handshaking, smiles, laughs, sitting down to a nice meal or just a good old-fashioned hug. In a church, all those should be found in abundance. They are definitely part of our understanding of biblical fellowship but there is more to it than that.
Fellowship goes farther than just getting together and hanging-out. It about more than gathering for the sake of gathering. It is gathering for a purpose, a purpose greater than just meeting my personal needs.
- It is about building relationships but relationship with a purpose. Fellowship is about the church coming together to worship, disciple, minister and to evangelize.
- One of my NT professors, Dr. David Beck, said that fellowship denotes a partnership and then gave this vivid definition. He said, ''Fellowship is two fellows in the same ship rowing in the same direction.''
- Fellowship requires a kind of tough love and dogged determination to love one another despite our minor differences and personality quirks and stay united on the task for which we have been chosen. We have been chosen to seek God, to serve others and to share Jesus.
This morning, I want to look at ways we can build and maintain fellowship. We'll look at it from the perspective of the front ...
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