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

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

It's something we have. Tim, the question for today is,.

Does Koinonia really mean I have to go watch American Idol with my church family?

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 American Idol together.

Well, who wouldn't love that?

Well, I mean, it was ironic. I mean, it was ironic.

American Idol, yeah.

I mean, you know, and we asked at that point, you know, can't we learn about the Bible?

Hey guys, is it cool if we just read the Bible for a little bit?

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. 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 American Idol, essentially, in order to hang out and have.

Community. You don't want to make the weaker brother stumble, do you, 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. 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 this church? Yeah, that was the associate pastor, yeah.

I'm just... It's like, I know you wouldn't lie to me, but I don't want to believe you. I don't want to hold out hope.

I actually haven't yet. Oh, man. No, but it, right, so, you know, the question, though, is 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.

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

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

That's the point. So 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, you know, group of people that had come together and they were unified, and this unity was centered around a shared mission to bring the ring to mortar, right?

Now, I mean, a lot of people have fellowship, you know, in the plain sense of the word around sports teams. A lot of people have fellowship around whatever video game they like to play, right? So you can build community, you can build, you can have a brotherhood.

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

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

Does that make sense? Meaning like our unity is found in our mission, like the Great Commission mission. That's where our unity is found. Our unity is found, it's centered around Jesus and what Jesus did on the cross for us.

So 1 John says, you know, these things are right to you so that you may have fellowship with us, koinonia with us, 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 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. 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.

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

Tavis. So are you basically saying, hey, the only way we can have fellowship is if we meet for Bible studies or to go share the gospel together or something along those lines? I guess how does that look practically?

Well, fellowship is a noun, not a verb, right? And so we typically use fellowship as a verb, meaning it's something we do, right? So let's go fellowship with each other. Let's go have fellowship. Let's go do that, right?

But the issue is that it's something we have, like it's something that's one for us. And so it is this fundamental unity that's one for us in Jesus. 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?

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. And then you're eating fried chicken together.

And then the pastor gets up and he says, hey, didn't we have wonderful fellowship today? It's like, well, not necessarily, right? We didn't necessarily have any fellowship today. We didn't talk about anything spiritual.

All we did was talk about sports and just enjoy eating together. And the point is, there's nothing wrong with doing that. There's nothing wrong with a bunch of Christians getting together and watching a sports game together.

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

It's like, no, there's this unity that you have that centers around being people that are engaged in a shared mission. So one of the things that happens is that when Christ saves you, he transfers you out of the realm of darkness into his realm of marvelous light.

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? And you meet them for the first time, you hear their story and you realize we're unified, right?

And 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? 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 God. 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.

And that's what you're talking about that sense of we're on the same team, right? The fellowship of the ring, right? It wasn't something they did, right? It's something they had, like they were joined together in a common bond on a shared mission together.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. So it'd probably be more helpful for people to think about things, 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 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?

Is that what you're getting at here?

Yeah, yeah. And so 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...

And when you say church function, you're talking about like official...

I mean, you can get together as a church body and go do any number of things, and that's fine. I'm not really commenting on that one way or the other. We have an outreach event that we call with Ultimate Frisbee at the university, whatever.

Okay, all right. Engaging in Ultimate Frisbee, that's not fellowship, biblically. I'm not saying it's wrong. 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 Ultimate Frisbee, right?

Now, you can have a subversive message in the back of your mind, subversive, and I'm not using that in a negative sense. 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 neither here nor there. But what I'm trying to say is the act of playing Ultimate Frisbee together is not an act that's expressing fellowship. That's just you're enjoying a sport.

Does that make sense?

TB. And I know you just mentioned this, but couldn't you say that there's some sort of fellowship? I mean, if we're talking about normally these things are centered around some sort of objective or quest or whatever, couldn't you argue that, hey, in one sense, that is still fellowship because you have a group of guys, for example, who are saying, hey, we're going to go and we're going to go try and share the gospel, right?

We have this Ultimate Frisbee thing, for example, or whatever you wanted to do, but then the goal at the end, handing out candy at trick-or-treating time, but then, trick-or-treating time, Halloween, but then the goal is ultimately to share the gospel.

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

JG. The goal to share the gospel would be an expression of the fellowship you have, right? So, you have a fellowship, you're on the same mission. So, for the Christian, you know, the mission is to win the world, right?

For Frodo and for them, the mission was to cast the ring into the fire, right? And then their life revolves around that mission, right? And so, there's a fellowship. It's not the thing you do, it's the thing you have, right?

It's the brotherly unity that you have. So, that's what you have. And now, you may express that by doing an outreach event where you play Ultimate Frisbee with the hope of winning a new soul, right? But what I'm trying to say is you're not fellowshiping.

By playing Ultimate Frisbee, okay? TZ. Yeah, like you're not fellowshiping in the sense that, hey, that was necessary for fellowship, right? JG. 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. 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 Frisbee, right?

Like throwing that Frisbee is not unifying you. Yeah, it's not unifying you. You're not even expressing anything spiritual in that act, and nothing spiritual is happening in that act. Like, the mission is something else, right?

And so, you're just going out, hanging out, and having a good time as Christians, and that's fine,.

With a plan to try to evangelize onto it. Does that make sense? TZ. So, should those people not have to go to anything like that? JG. Yeah, I'm not necessarily trying to comment.

On what are appropriate means of evangelism. I'm just trying to say,.

Whatever's happening there is not fellowship, is what I'm saying. TZ. No, no, no, no. I just mean.

Anything like that. JG. I mean, yeah, look, I mean, if you've got a bunch of guys together, and then they all have, like we used to have halo lamb parties back in the days when we were young, right? TZ.

Yeah. JG. Now, we had a fellowship centered around halo lamb parties. But nothing spiritual was happening there. But we were a bunch of Christians. We got together, and we played halo together. It was fun, right?

TZ. Right, yeah. JG. So, you don't have to overthink that and say that, well, because that's not uniquely a spiritual activity, then it's worthless. 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?

That's a good thing. That's a permissible good thing. God's given us all things ritually to enjoy, and it does have benefits in life to doing those kind of things. And why not do it together with your church family?

But if you really want to be unified as a church family, you don't treat those things as an end in and 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.

Does that make sense? TZ. Yeah, yeah. JG. Yeah, so if you're just getting together, and you're saying, hey, look at all the spiritual good we're playing tennis together or playing basketball together or whatever or playing ultimate frisbee together.

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

TZ. Right, yeah. Because.

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

JG. 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.

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. 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 Jesus, right? So, but the point though is just to say that biblical fellowship is not just chit-chat. 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? So, it's a unity, a camaraderie we have based on what Jesus has done. TZ. Okay, fair enough.

This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

Please reach out to us with your questions, pushback, and potential topics for us to discuss in future episodes at BibleBashedPodcast at gmail .com and consider supporting us through Patreon. If you would like to be Bible Bashed personally, then please know that we also offer free biblical counseling which you can take advantage of by emailing us.

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.