The Ideal Fellowship

The Christian parachurch group, The Navigators, use a hand illustration to reinforce the idea of a balanced Christian Life. Those five components are Bible Study, Prayer, Fellowship, Witnessing, and Scripture Memory. A Christian, who neglects any one of these is not living a balanced Christian life. I admit, I fall down in every area. However, I do engage in Fellowship and Bible Study on a regular basis. I just do it intentionally in a one to one relationship. I do it corporately.

I do think our pursuit of God should be individual, but I think it should also be a corporate quest. We need each other. We need each other's insights. We need to hear each other's exhortations. We can't do it alone. I want to describe my ideal fellowship. Perhaps others will join.

The ideal fellowship must have a strong doctrinal statement. It must be so solid it rarely changes. It must be rooted in history and deep in theological understanding. It shouldn't be trendy or adapted to modern customs and values. The fellowship needs to know who they are and what they believe. It shouldn't be changing to fit the whims and desires of modern people.

The ideal fellowship should exist to carry out the Great Commission. It should be a place to gather for the worship of God and the sharing of the Sacraments. It should be a place to receive instruction. It must not neglect Witnessing.

Numbers don't matter. It could be big or small. What matters is the doctrinal statement, the closeness of the fellowship, and its commitment to witnessing.

The fellowship would honor great music. Contemporary Music is not Great Music. It is too subjective. It is based on personal experience. We need rich, doctrinal truth, because truth transforms. Others' experiences do not transform. We seek to be transformed in our own thinking. The scriptures should transform us.

The ideal fellowship should be Coventant and Reformed. I didn't use to think that way. I was more open to the freedom to experiment I found in Bible Churches. Some had elders. Some had deacons. Some had believer's baptism by immersion. Some just dedicated babies at birth. They all seemed to intend to follow the scriptures. It is just that they didn't have a connection with the past. The connections they had seem to be disconnections more than anything. People had come out of mainline churches. They were all escaping the mainline churches to something more authentic and real without the denomination labels. They didn't recite creeds and confessions because they tended to stress hard doctrines that were exclusive, devisive and uncertain.

The Bible Churches tended to say that all they needed was the scriptures. That sounded good on its face, but it ignored Church History. The Great Creeds and confessions settled questions that people are still asking today. We don't have to keep asking questions about the nature of God and Christ for example. The doctrine of God and Chirst was settled by the Council of Nicaea. We don't need to ask that question anymore.

We don't really need to answer the question of faith versus works. We know salvation is by faith alone.

We don't need a step by step how to manual. We simply need a fellowship, heavily rooted in scripture, with a heavy emphasis on worship, confession, and verse by verse exposition.

We could all benefit from a closer community. We really need to care about each other.

Finally, we need to be diverse, in terms of age, sex, marital staus, and socioeconomic level. Our diversity, though, must not divide us. It will not divide us as long as the study of the Scriptures remains our primary focus. We need to do more than just study the Scriptures. The Scriptures should challenge us and change us.

The Loss of Appreciation for the Lord's Day

My wife and I went to a mall yesterday, which was a Sunday. I preferred to stay home, but she wanted to go out and do some shopping that she didn't have time to do during the week.

I am growing less comfortable with shopping on Sunday. We can't even take one day to reflect upon the fact that we were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

I looked around at all the other people crowding the mall. It was a nice to be outside. I don't think all those people would be there in blustery weather, but there they were. They were consuming. That is our pasttime.

I reflected upon our Sunday School lesson in Revelation. I recalled the message, "come out of Babylon," and I recalled how the merchants of the earth marveled as Babylon fell in one hour.

It could happen here. The United States is deeply mired in debt. We are so far in debt that even if we quit spending, we'd still be obligated to pay for Medicare, Social Security, and the military, far beyond our ability to do so.

We can spend more than we tax ourselves only because other countries are willing to buy our debt from us. We are enslaving the next generation.

The next generation is living off of our spending spree. They are staffing the stores. They are the entry level clerks, making pocket money while they pursue an education. The young people are spending their money as fast as they make it. They aren't saving. They would be fools to save, because inflation is going to rob them of savings. Yet, failing to save is going to make them even more dependent in the future.

I think our Creator had a better idea. There comes a time when our endless quest to consume must stop. There must be a time to rest and worship our Creator. We are His. We belong to Him. The created world is not the most important.

We must make much of Christ. We must glorify Him and we must enjoy Him.