Does Koinonia Really Mean That I Have to Go Watch American Idol with My Church Family?

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The point, though, is just to say that biblical fellowship is not just chit -chat, it's not just engaging in entertainment together.

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Biblical fellowship is not even a verb, it's a noun, it's something we have. All right,

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Tim, the question for today is, does Koinonia really mean I have to go watch American Idol with my church family?

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Yeah, well, believe it or not, when I first became a Christian, I went to a church that did this very thing. So they had small groups, and their small groups consisted of a bunch of church members getting together and watching

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American Idol together. Well, who wouldn't love that? Well, I mean, it was ironic. I mean, it was ironic to say the least, right?

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American Idol, yeah. I mean, you know, and we asked at that point, you know, can't we learn about the

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Bible? Hey guys, is it cool if we just read the Bible for a little bit? Yeah, so we asked, you know, and then the response that we got at that point was, you know, there's two groups of people here.

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There's a group of people who want to learn the Bible, and then there's a group of people who, you know, are not that mature in their faith, and so we're going to watch

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American Idol essentially in order to hang out and have community. You don't want to make the weaker brother stumble, do you,

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Tim? That's right, right. We had that be all about, you know, the group of people that wanted to worship and serve the singers of...

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Are you being serious? Did someone actually say that? Not the weaker brother thing. I was joking about that, but the whole, like, there's two groups of people in the church.

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That was the associate pastor, yeah. I'm just... It's like, it's like,

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I know you wouldn't lie to me, but I don't want to believe you. I don't want to hold out hope.

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It actually happened, yeah. Oh, man. No, but, right, so, you know, the question that was coming from some people on YouTube basically asking about, asking to elaborate on, you know, what fellowship is, what biblical fellowship is, and, you know, the reality is if you go to church long enough, one of the things you'll realize is that, you know, many pastors, many churches are going to talk a lot about fellowship, but then, you know, if you're a person who, you know, has your eyes open, you're paying attention, it seems like what we're talking about with this term in general often is just hanging out and doing worldly things or, you know, participating in entertainment, and it doesn't seem on the surface that it often has that much spiritual value.

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So the question behind the question is, well, what actually is biblical fellowship? You know, what is koinonia in the

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Bible? That's the Greek word for fellowship. And how does that distinct from just, you know, any other kind of camaraderie or fellowship that you're going to have in any other areas of life?

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Does that make sense? Yeah, so, you know, biblically speaking, koinonia is close association that involves mutual interest and shared values.

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So koinonia is just a common word for fellowship in the Bible, but then you can have fellowship that centers around a lot of different things.

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That's the point. So in J .R .R. Tolkien wrote the book Fellowship of the Ring, and fellowship in that sense was there was a camaraderie, there was a brotherhood, there was a group of people that had come together and they're unified, and this unity is centered around a shared mission to bring the ring to mortar, right?

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Now, I mean, a lot of people have fellowship, you know, in the plain sense of the word, around sports teams.

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A lot of people have fellowship around whatever video game they like to play, right? So you can build community, you can have brotherhood.

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Often it centers around the idea of there being some kind of quest, there being some kind of mission, there being some kind of task that you're doing or some kind of form of entertainment that you're going to pursue.

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So in general, koinonia, even in the Greek, it's just a neutral word that means this close association revolving around mutual interest, but then as it's used in the

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Bible, the problem is that the Bible doesn't use it like in the sense that Christians are going to have unity around worldly things.

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Does that make sense? Tolkien Meaning, like, our unity is found in our mission, like the

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Great Commission mission. That's where our unity is found. Our unity is found, it's centered around Jesus and what

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Jesus did on the cross for us. So 1 John says, you know, these things we write to you so that you may have fellowship with us, koinonia with us.

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And truly our fellowship is with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ. So the kind of fellowship that's biblical fellowship is going to be centered around what

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Jesus did on the cross. The point is that has further reaching implications than just simple, like, we have shared interest, we have shared values here.

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Like, whatever Jesus did for us, he fundamentally changed our priorities and our values to such a radical extent that now we are committed to living the rest of our life for him.

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And like, the kind of fellowship, the kind of unity that we should have, it should be a lot deeper than simply just trivial kind of, you know, interest that we're going to share in and be engaged in, if that makes sense.

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So are you basically saying, hey, the only way we can have fellowship is if we, you know, meet for like Bible studies or to go share the gospel together or, you know, something along those lines?

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I guess, how does that look practically? Well, fellowship is a noun, not a verb, right?

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And so we typically use fellowship as a verb, meaning it's something we do, right? So let's go fellowship with each other.

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Let's go have fellowship. Let's go do that, right? And so, but the issue is that it's something we have.

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Like, it's something that's one for us. And so it is this fundamental unity that's one for us in Jesus.

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So when churches are using it in general, churches are using it to be a verb that we're doing, hey, we're fellowshipping with each other, which typically involves like just small talk or something like that, right?

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Small talk centered around some sort of common interest. And I mean, you can imagine being at a church and you're just engaging in small talk around your sports team or something like that.

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And then you're eating fried chicken together. And then the pastor gets up and he says, hey, you know, didn't we have wonderful fellowship today?

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And it's like, well, not necessarily, right? We didn't necessarily have any fellowship today. We didn't talk about anything spiritual.

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All we did was talk about sports, you know, and just enjoy eating together. And like, there's nothing, the point is there's nothing wrong with doing that.

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There's nothing wrong with a bunch of Christians getting together and watching sports, sports game together.

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There's nothing wrong with a group of Christians getting together and eating together. But, you know, like to your question, does like, is the only way that you're really going to have that is if you're engaging in a

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Bible study? It's like, no, like there's this unity that you have that centers around being people that are engaged in a shared mission.

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So like one of the things that happens is that, you know, when Christ saves you, he transfers you out of the realm of darkness into his realm of marvelous light.

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And you have this unity that's unexplainable that you can't really explain with Christians, even if they're across the country from you, right?

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And you meet them for the first time, you hear their story, and you realize we're unified, right? And like there's a love and affection that you have for them and a willingness to sacrifice for them significantly because they understand the most important things that are in life to you, right?

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So they have the same story that you have. It may be slightly different details, but we love the same God. We're serving the same

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God. And we're, there's that unity, right? There's that brotherhood. And that's really what the word fellowship means is that sense of brotherhood, that sense of unity.

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And that's what you're talking about. Typically, you're talking about that sense of we're on the same team, right? The fellowship of the ring, right?

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It wasn't something they did, right? They didn't, it's something they had, like they were joined together in a common bond on a shared mission together.

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Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So it'd probably be more helpful for people to think about things, you know, or at least when they're thinking about fellowship to think about it as a noun as opposed to a verb and think to themselves, hey, do

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I actually have like, do I actually have the sort of camaraderie with my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially in my local church setting that it seems like I'm supposed to have with them?

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Is that, is that, is that what you're getting at here? Yeah, yeah. And so it should be like, it should be that what you're doing when you're getting together in a church function or something like that, it should be what's happening is, um,

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And when you say church function, you're talking about like official, you know, I mean, you can get together as a church body.

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Like, um, you can get together as a church body and, you know, go do any number of things and that's fine.

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Like, I'm not really commenting on that one way or the other. I'm just like, you know, we have an outreach event that we call, uh, with Ultimate Frisbee at the university, whatever.

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Okay. All right. In engaging in Ultimate Frisbee, that's not fellowship biblically. I'm not saying it's wrong.

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I'm saying it's not fellowship and you're not expressing fellowship by playing. What you're doing is your common interest at that point is the

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Ultimate Frisbee, right? Now you can have a subversive message in the back of your mind, uh, subversive, and I'm not using that in a negative sense.

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Like you can have a plan in your back of mind. I'm going to use this in order to evangelize someone. That's great. Right. That's, that's neither here nor there.

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Like, but what I'm trying to say is like the act of playing Ultimate Frisbee together is not an act that's expressing fellowship.

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That's just, you're enjoying a sport. Yeah. Does that make sense? But, and I know you just mentioned this, but when, couldn't you say that there's some sort of fellowship?

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I mean, if we're talking about like, normally these things are centered around some sort of objective or quest or whatever, couldn't, couldn't you argue that,

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Hey, in one sense, that is still fellowship because you have like a group of guys, for example, who are saying,

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Hey, we're going to go and we're going to go, you know, try and share the gospel. Right.

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And we're going to, it's, you know, we have this Ultimate Frisbee thing, for example, or, you know, uh, whatever, whatever you wanted to do.

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But then the goal at the end of, you know, we're, or, you know, like, um, handing out candy at, at trick -or -treating time, but then, but then trick -or -treating time,

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Halloween, you know, but then the goal is ultimately to share the gospel.

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You know, couldn't you say that that is like a, with the way that you're using that word fellowship, that, that does fall in the definition because you're, you do have that shared, uh, common goal.

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The goal to share the gospel would be an expression of the fellowship you have. Right.

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So you're in, like, you have a fellowship, you're on the same mission. So like for the Christian, you know, the mission is to win the world, right.

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For Frodo and for them, the mission was to throw, cast the ring into the fire.

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Right. And then their life revolves around that mission. Right. And so there's a fellowship, there's this, um, you know, not, it's not the thing you do.

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It's the thing you have, right. It's the unity, the brotherly unity that you have. There's a, like, so that's what you have.

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And now you may express that by doing an outreach event where you play ultimate

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Frisbee with the hope of winning a new soul. Right. But you're, what

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I'm, what I'm trying to say is you're not fellowshipping by playing ultimate Frisbee. Okay. Like, like you're not fellowshipping in the sense that,

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Hey, that was necessary for the fellow, for, you know, fellowship. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's just a tool that you may use in order to help open up opportunities to engage yourself in the mission.

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But the unity you have, the fellowship you have is centered around Jesus and what he's done. And it doesn't go up and down every time you throw a

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Frisbee. Right. Yeah. Right. Like it, like it's not dependent on your team winning or losing.

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Yeah. It's not unifying you. You're not even expressing anything spiritual in that act. Right. And that nothing spiritual is happening in that act.

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Like the mission is something else. Right. And so that's just, you're just going out, hanging out and have a good time as Christians and that's fine.

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You know, with a plan to try to evangelize onto it. Does that make sense? So should, so should those people not have to go to anything like that?

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Yeah. I'm not, I'm not commenting on, you know, what are appropriate, I mean, I'm not necessarily trying to comment on what are appropriate means of evangelism.

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I'm just trying to say whatever's happening there is not fellowship. No, no, no, no, no. I just mean like anything like that, you know?

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I mean, yeah, look, I mean, I, I, like if you got a bunch of guys together and then they all have like a, like we used to have halo lamb parties back in the days, you know, when we were young.

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Right. Yeah. Halo. Now we had a fellowship centered around halo land parties, but nothing spiritual was happening there, but we were a bunch of Christians.

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We got together and we played halo together. It was fun, right? Right. Yeah. Right. So you don't have to overthink that and say that, well, because that's not uniquely a spiritual activity, then it's worthless.

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You know, you're free to do that. And why wouldn't you want to get together with your friends and watch sports together or play sports together?

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Like there's like a, that's a good thing. That's a permissible good thing. God's given us all things richly to enjoy.

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And there does have benefits in life to doing those kinds of things. And why not do it together with your church family?

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And then, you know, but if you really want to be unified as a church family, you might want to, you don't treat those things as an end in of themselves, so to speak, you might want to actually iron, sharpen iron in those moments and use those moments to talk about spiritual things.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So if you're just getting together and you're saying, Hey, like, look at all the spiritual good we're doing as we're playing tennis together or playing basketball together or whatever, or playing ultimate frisbee together.

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Nope. Like you're just enjoying the creation that God's given you, but you may not be growing in that in unity with each other or unity with God.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So if you want to do that, you're going to have to get past the small talk centered around small common interest, move into more substantial things at some point.

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Right. Right. Yeah. Because we're unified in Christ, at some point you have to get to the Christ part of it with each other.

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Right. Right. Right. So, I mean, like with our, you know, Halo group, for instance, that we have, I mean, we had plenty of spiritual conversations in the midst of that, and that was a means of sanctification for us, but it was those spiritual conversations that grew us, not, you know, learning to kill each other better in the game.

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Right? Right. You get what I'm saying? And there were guys who came that we could never have a spiritual conversation with, no matter how hard we try.

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It just, that was it for them because they're, the only fellowship they had was centered around the interest, right? Not around the person

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Jesus, right? So, but the point though, is just to say that biblical fellowship is not just chit chat.

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It's not just engaging in entertainment together. Biblical fellowship is not even a verb. It's a noun. It's something we have, right?

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So it's a unity, a camaraderie we have based on what Jesus has done. Okay. Fair enough. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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