The Case for Community (Part 2)
What is Biblical Community?
This article is part of a three part series. Read Part 1.
The word “community” gets thrown around all the time. Everybody wants it or is using the idea to sell you something. Because of that, I am almost hesitate to use the word. I do because I believe it’s the most understandable, modern language to communicate the Biblical concepts of oneness and fellowship.
Here’s a question for you: When was the first community? Your initial thought might be the first tribe of humans or Adam and Eve in the Garden. But community started long, long before that.
The God of the Bible has always existed in three persons: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. (Gen 1:1–2, 26–27; Matt. 3:16–17, 28:19; Col 2:9; Eph. 1, 4:4–6) And these persons of God have always loved, served, and been on mission together in perfect unity.
Before God was the author of community, God was community.
Three distinct persons…one being…perfect community.
Jesus, with the weight of the world on his shoulders and staring down the barrel of his own rejection and death, prays,
Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. (John 17:11b)
This blows my mind! Jesus prays that his people would be one, even as He and the Father are one. What!? How on earth could we experience that type of oneness?
The truth is, Jesus has already given us perfect unity both with the Father and with each other through his death and resurrection (Eph. 2).
Community is a theological reality for those of us who have trusted in Christ.
More than Brownies and Buildings
The Bible uses the word “fellowship” to describe what it looks like to have this close of a relationship. Admittedly, although it’s completely Biblical, I struggle to utter the word “fellowship” because it’s meaning has been so neutered by the western church. We say things like, “On Wednesday night, we’ll have food, fun, and fellowship” or “after Bible Study we’ll have a time of fellowship.” When use this language, we’re essentially communicating that our community in Christ means we should hang out and eat brownies together. Biblical community is more than snacks and small talk.
In the church, sometimes we name our buildings things like Fellowship Hall. The danger with this is that fellowship is not a gathering or the place people gather. Nor is it best cultivated in the comfort of church facilities. It’s displayed in our living rooms, kitchens, workplaces, third places and forged in the fires of suffering and mission.
Community is not a Bible Study, church service, building, service project, or dinner party. It’s not an activity, event, or program. It’s so much more than brownies and buildings.
Are you guys hippies?
Koinonia is the Greek word translated “fellowship” in the New Testament (Ac 2:42; I Co 1:9, 10:20; II Co 8:4; Eph 3:9; Php 1:5, 2:1, 3:10; I Jn 1:3, 1:6, 1:7). It literally means “sharing” or “partnership”. Strong’s defines it as “the close association between persons, emphasizing what is common between them.” The church in Acts was devoted to the fellowship. They shared their time, homes, food, wisdom, and resources with one another. They spent nearly every day together. They shared so much that that they would literally sell their stuff and give the money to those who had less in their community (Ac 4:34). Through 21st century western eyes, many individualist Americans might have viewed the early church as a cult or hippy compound. In reality, they were sharing their very lives because Christ had shared His on their behalf.
Another important Greek term used in relation to the church is Oikos — translated as “House” or “Household”. Numerous times, we see the church meeting in homes in the New Testament (I Co 16:19; Rom 16:5; Philem. 2; Col 4:15). We tend to think of a “Household” consisting of an immediate family. However, the early church was patterned after the extended family structure of the Greco-Roman household. David S. Lim notes that “it was a community composed of immediate family members, freedmen-clients, hired laborers, tenants, slaves, and sometimes even friends and business associates.” Interestingly, the homes in that era were designed to accommodate these household units, sometimes, up to 40–50 people. How would you like to live with your in-laws AND co-workers?
In the New Testament, Koinonia is primarily displayed in the Oikos. This means, Biblical community looks less like attending a church service or Bible study and more living the Christian life with a bonded extended family.
Community is the sharing of life between people on a common mission.
This is the type of community that best displays the Gospel. This is the type of community our churches need. This is the type of community that our friends and neighbors are looking for.
In Part 3 next week, I’ll post about our culture’s deep longing for belonging.
