Post No. 5 - Reading Time: 3:00

I was blessed to be back in church yesterday and to see all our people here at Calvary once again. Missing two Sundays because of the weather put quite a gap in our fellowship with one another. 

Of course the good thing is that you realize how much other believers are a part of your life,  Even though you miss them, it’s good to realize this fact once in a while. That’s the way a body works; it’s supplies what you need and you supply what it needs.

In our monthly Leadership Team meetings in 2023 we constantly kept coming back to the same thing when it came to the purposes of our church—fellowship. Sometimes we overlook this aspect of our Christian lives or write it off as inconsequential. However, it actually is a top priority of what the church provides in a community.

As we reexamine our purpose as a church this year, you can be sure that the fellowship of the saints will top the list of our purposes. I’m not ashamed to say we are a church based on fellowship.

In light of this, it’s hard for me to understand a new generation who feel they no longer needs the fellowship the church provides. True, they have found a camaraderie among other interests and peoples, but those “fellowships” usually don’t provide lasting bonds nor deep trust.

That’s why a breach of trust in a church is so devastating. The essence of why we give ourselves to others is based on trust. To betray that thrust despoils the essence of true fellowship.

In a biblical fellowship of believers there is an understanding that each one will value the other. There will be a place for everyone. There will be a sense of protecting the fellowship from anything or anyone who will threaten or destroy the trust which has been established.

Camaraderie is defined as a mutual trust and friendship among people who spend a lot of time together. So the second thing I see is many believers attend church so seldomly that they maintain an independence from the fellowship. They hold themselves in reserve, neither giving nor receiving those things which build trust and bind us together.

As a result, these standoffish believers slowly lose the meaning of fellowship and see nothing in the church which they value or need.

For me, I want to study this concept and operation of fellowship in our church more and more as we adopt it as one of our main purposes among our members and within the community in which we serve. Maybe we have only touched upon the depths of it and what God intends to provide for us through the fellowship of the saints.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching AND TO FELLOWSHIP, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” — Acts 2:42 (NIV)

Until next Monday, may the Lord bless you! Pray for us!

Pastor Brian Jenkins

Calvary Assemblies of God