Ecclesiology 7 - A New Church - part 5: Koinonia

     Koinonia (meaning "fellowship"), along with agape (meaning "love"), are some of those Greek words that Western Christians enjoy bandying about, but we mainly use them to name things; Koinonia Class, or Agape Chapel.  I'm always half expecting to find Koinonia Toothpaste at the grocery store or see an ad for the new Ford Agape SUV.  I'm not convinced that we actually know what the words mean.

    In Chapter 7 of The Problem with Wineskins (subtitled "The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit"), Dr. Snyder has a lot to say about koinonia, and all of it is important.  I cannot hope to condense the entire chapter into this post without leaving out a good deal of insight.  What is to follow is a series of quotations of what seem to me the most important sentences within an important chapter with only so much verbiage from myself as is needed to make the whole thing coherent.  If my efforts fall short, I highly recommend the reader purchase a copy of the book, if only to read this chapter in its entirety.

    The church today is suffering a fellowship crisis.  It is simply not experiencing nor demonstrating that "fellowship of the Holy Spirit" (2 Chor. 13:14) that marked the New Testament church.  One seldom finds within the institutionalized church today that winsome intimacy among people where masks are dropped, honesty prevails, and there is that sense of communication and community beyond the human - where there is literally that fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  But what, specifically, is the koinonia of the Holy Spirit?  And what does it tell us about church structure in our day?

    Two things the fellowship of the Holy Spirit emphatically is not:

(1) It is not that superficial social fellowship which the very word "fellowship" often denotes in churches today.  Such fellowship is generally no more supernatural than the weekly Kiwanis or Rotary club meeting.  Most of what passes for fellowship in the church is a friendly fraternizing - appealing, but easily duplicated outside the church.  Typical church fellowship seldom reaches the level of koinonia.  The church today has become accustomed to a pleasant, superficial society, which is at best a cut-rate substitute for koinonia.

(2) On the other hand, koinonia is not simply some mystical communion that exists without reference to the structure of the church.  We may talk about "the fellowship of the church" as though it were something that automatically, and almost by definition, binds believers together.  But the abstract concept is hollow apart from the actual gathering together of believers at a particular point in time and space.  "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them" (Matt. 18:20).  [Note the absence of the  word "thousand" after the word "three"].  One can have fellowship with God when one is alone, for God is spirit.  But one cannot have fellowship with another believer who is not present, despite our mystical language.  The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is not some ethereal power that spiritually binds believers together while they are physically separated.  Rather, it is that deep spiritual community in Christ which believers experience when they gather together as the church of Christ.

    More positively, we can describe the fellowship of the Holy Spirit in the following terms:

(1) The koinonia of the Holy Spirit is that fellowship among believers which the Holy Spirit gives.  It is precisely that experience of a deeper communion, of a supernatural communication, that perhaps every believer occasionally has felt in the presence of other believers.

(2) It is the fellowship of Christ with his disciples.    As Robert Coleman observed, "[Jesus] actually spent more time with His disciples than with everybody else in the world put together."  These men not only learned from Christ; they shared a depth of community that was the prototype of the koinonia of the early church.

(3) It is the fellowship of the early church.  The first Christians knew an unusual unity, oneness of purpose, common love and mutual concern that was more than either the immediate joy of conversation or the knowledge of shared beliefs.  It was an atmosphere, a spiritual environment, that grew among the first believers as they prayed, learned and worshiped together in their own homes (Acts 2:42-47; 5:42).

(4) It is analogous to the unity, fellowship and communion between Christ and Father.  In John 17, Jesus prays that his disciples "may be one as we are one" (v. 11) and for all future Christians that "they all be one: as you, Father, are in me and I in you, so also may they be in us, that the world may believe you sent me" (v. 21).  Koinonia is the fulfillment of this prayer in the church.  It is a supernatural sharing between the Three Persons of the Godhead and the church on earth, inseparably involving both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Christian fellowship between believer and God (vertical) and believers with one another (horizontal).  [When we, as the church, are not "one in the Spirit," but a hodge-podge collection of individual sects and denominations, then there is no reason for the world to believe in Christ or the God who sent him.  Our lack of koinonia creates more atheists and agnostics than either humanism or mysticism can ever hope to do. -ed.]

    Failure to see this vital interconnection between the individual and group aspects of the Spirit's working weakens our understanding of the individual believer and of the church.  First of all, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is a function of the church gathered, not the church scattered.  The church must make sufficient provision to be gathered together if it is to experience koinonia.  Second, the church must meet together in a way that permits and encourages communication among its members [which our current worship services certainly do not].  A third implication for wineskins involves the element of freedom.  Paul gives us the principle, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (2 Chor. 3:17)  Where there is koinonia there is also freedom and openness, an atmosphere that permits "speaking the truth in love" (Eph. 4:15).  The implication here is that the church must provide structures that are sufficiently informal and intimate to permit the freedom of the Spirit.

    This is not, of course, to argue against the proper use of planning, form, and liturgy.  Believers need those times of solemn corporate worship in which the High and Holy God is honored with dignity and reverence.  But in the midst of the dignity and reverence many a lonely believer inwardly cries out for the warm, healing touch of koinonia.

    Finally, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit suggests a learning situation.  Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit came he would "teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" (John 14:26).  He would testify of Christ and guide the believers into new truth (John 15:26, 16:13).  The Holy Spirit comes to teach, to reveal the Word.  

    Since it is the same Spirit of God who inbreathes and speaks through the Holy Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21), and since these scriptures themselves testify of Christ (John 5:39), it follows, then, that the koinonia of the Holy Spirit is naturally related to Bible study.  The implication here is that the church structure must provide for Bible study in the context of community.  The idea of the koinonia of the Holy Spirit, then, suggests that the church should provide structures in which (1) believers gather together, (2) intercommunication is encouraged, (3) an informal atmosphere allows the freedom of the Spirit, and (4) direct Bible study is central.

    Most contemporary church patterns and structures clearly do not meet these criteria.  But there is one structure that does: some form of a small group.  It is my conviction that the koinonia of the Holy Spirit is most likely to be experienced when Christians meet together informally in small groups.

    Adding a thought of my own, a litmus test of our present koinonia: James tells us that, among the features of worship in the first century church was communal confession in which all the parishioners would go around the room confessing all their sins to one another.  Is that something your church does?  Is it something you would be comfortable doing?  No?  Might I suggest that we find this idea to be embarrassing because of too much pride in the Christian and too little koinonia in the church.  And, of course, our groups are too big.

Pax

P.S. If the above discussion doesn't seem persuasive, the fault is mine, not Dr. Snyder's.  As stated in the introduction, I have omitted large swaths of material in a effort to make this post more easily digestible.  I strongly urge the unconvinced reader to refer back to the original text before forming a negative opinion.