Koinonia

Last night we started a 4-week Bible Study on Growing in Community. I suggested that one of the key components of the early church was the concept of koinonia. Acts 2:42 describes how the earliest Christians spent their time. "They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship (koinonia), to the breaking of bread and to prayer."

Darrell Guder suggests in the book Missional Church says this about koinonia.

"It is the communal reality of holy living, mutual support, and sacrificial service. Challenging the old competitive order of independence, self-interest, and private privilege. Christian community indicates a new collaborative order of interdependence, shared responsibility, mutual instruction and commonality (koinos)."

We as the church should be a new community of people not formed solely by human intentions or efforts but knit together by the Holy Spirit. If we are truly to embody koinonia we must not "conform any long to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of (our) mind(s)" (Rom 12:2). We must remember that "the old has passed away, the new has come" (1 Cor 5:17).

Such a community of people will not be the result of purely natural effort, because we will get sick of one another. It is only possible through the supernatural work of God in Christ through His Spirit.