Another word I heard often was “fellowship.” People talked about “getting together for fellowship.” There were several “fellowship gatherings” on the church calendar. The church even had a “fellowship hall.” I had heard the word fellowship before, but I did not know what they meant by it, so I decided to learn by observation.
The first thing I observed was that fellowship involved eating, a lot of eating: church banquets, church lunches, church breakfasts, all held in the “fellowship hall.” Every Sunday morning, coffee and cookies were made available at the “fellowship time” before the worship services. I also observed that fellowship often involved Christians getting together to play games, board games, parlor games, but never card games, well, not REAL card games. And I learned that even if a group of Christians just hung out together, that, too, was fellowship
Eventually, I arrived at a conclusion about fellowship. At the time, I was writing songs about the changes I was experiencing in Christ and had an idea for a song about fellowship. The hook line was going to be, “They call it fellowship, but it looks like fun to me.” That is what I first perceived fellowship to be, Christians getting together for fun, food, and to just hang out. I have since learned that there is far more to fellowship than Christians coming together socially.
The word fellowship describes the new, God-given relationship that Christians have with God and with one another by the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus. In Christ, we have been united with God and with one another in fellowship. Christ’s church IS the fellowship of believers in Christ.
Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, using the biblical metaphor of a shepherd calling his sheep, notes that when a shepherd calls his sheep, they not only come close to the shepherd, but they necessarily come closer to one another as well. When Christ our shepherd called us to himself, we were brought close to him and to one another as members of his flock.
So, we gather as Christians for “fellowship” because we are in fellowship with one another in Christ. Our gathering together should be for good, for building one another up in faith, in Christlikeness, in holiness, “stirring one another to love and good works,” the outward evidence of our fellowship in Christ. And if there happened to be a plate of food involved, I’d not complain.
