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| Fellowship – Is your group or church dead or dyi |
This is a continuation of a post left by WriterGal at http://www.thoughts.com/prayer/blog/what-is-fellowship-reall y-141197/
Writer Gal,
You brought up so many excellent points that I thought your comment deserved a thread of its own.
Regarding relationships – you are so right! God definitely designed us for relationship. Christians need to be in relationship with non-believers so we can share God’s love, compassion, and mercy with other people.
Christians also need to be in relationship with other Christians so we can pray for each other, encourage each other, admonish each other, and exercise our spiritual gifts? Have you ever met someone who possessed all the spiritual gifts (teaching, healing, prophecy, etc.)? Of course not. God have each of us a gift or two so we could use that gift in support of the Christian body. This is what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 12.
I like your point about small groups/Bible studies/friendship groups that isolate themselves. On a larger scale, this applies to churches too. If your group/church never invites in new people, how can you let your light shine in the world? How can others learn more about God in greater depth? And if groups and churches don’t send out people – multiply into other groups and other churches – how will their be room for new people to join?
I like your use of the word “stagnation”. I refer to isolation in groups as “stale air syndrome”. Have you ever noticed how your apartment or home collects odors when the windows are all closed? And have you noticed that people get colds more often in the winter? That’s partly due to the temperature change, but it’s primarily due to increased bacteria growth because bacteria grows best in stagnant air spaces.
The same thing happens in groups and churches – of you don’t send people out and invite new people in, your group becomes spiritually, emotionally, and mentally stunted in its growth. You learn few or no new ideas, you get no fresh perspective, and you get no infusion of new energy. You also build no excitement or expectation when your group/church isn’t building toward something bigger than itself.
So, yes, inclusivity is vitally important to the healthy fellowship of groups and churches.
Have you ever been in a stale or stagnant group/church? What did you do to get “fresh air” into your group/church?
Dana
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Posted by prayer on 2008-10-24 14:01:37 | Rating: | Views: 91
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