Fellowship Grows Amid Harmony

Wang Congyou

"Building a harmonious church" is a major topic involving the church and its administration, as well as coordinating external neighborhood relationships and internal structural matters such as personnel management and a system of procedure. Of course it also involves several of the church's own development problems. This article only attempts to speak of one person's viewpoint on the relationship between achieving a ministry of fellowship in the church and the building of a harmonious church.

Fellowship ministry is a beneficial extension of the church's pulpit ministry

It is very difficult for pastors to communicate individual love and concern for believers via a single Sunday service. If you add onto that a church's large size, then the pastor is left with almost no time to enter into deeper fellowship with each believer. This makes it nearly impossible to understand the spiritual needs of his congregation. Some believers are very dissatisfied with the preaching they receive--it does not touch the heart, or speaks only of non-essentials. However one cannot simply conclude that there is a supply and demand inequality between the pew and the pulpit, for ratios of 1:100, 1:1000, or even larger between pastors and believers in China will surely cause some difficulties in pastoral care. Therefore, some well-organized and well-led fellowship groups whose thinking is consistent with that of shepherding the church as a whole have become useful complements to the pastoral ministry. One example is "caring fellowships" whose goal is to practice the Lord's teachings and care for their neighbors; "prayer fellowships" which aim at providing intercessory prayer for others. The focus of these types of fellowships is on leading believers to make what is spoken from the pulpit concrete and put it into action. In other words, the pastor in the pulpit is to make clear God's truth and the fellowship groups are to live out God's truth in their activities.

From a practical perspective these fellowships can not only help their members (believers) put into practice the Word from the pulpit, but through their practice they can at the same time help the believers earnestly listen to and absorb the sermon message in order to better assimilate into a life of fellowship. Thus the result will be a fruitful complementarity between the fellowship and the sermon messages, thereby promoting the harmonious development of the church.

Fellowship ministry is an important link to effective pastoring

As the number of Chinese believers continues to grow, properly pastoring a congregation has become a difficult issue facing many among the limited number of pastors, especially young and middle-aged pastoral workers. So some pastors constantly remind their congregations from the pulpit not to lose their intimate relationship with God amid the busyness of the world, yet these pastors are being so exhausted by all manner of things that they have lost joy in their work. This leads to hasty preparation of sermons at the eleventh hour, which makes their situation go from bad to worse. To build the physical church it is critical not to lose sight of building the intangible church, as it is the very life force of the church.

In my view you cannot neglect love and concern for the flock in "building a harmonious church." In fact fellowship in the church can actually bring its strengths into play. Fellowship ministry can increase members' sense of belonging. When the church is large and the pastors few, often members have many problems and needs that cannot be adequately communicated to the preachers in order to be effectively helped. Therefore in the development of the church there will at times be some members who begin to drift from the church; in their view the church's cupboard is bare and they are unable to receive true spiritual help. This type of phenomenon certainly poses a challenge to the harmonious development process of a church. It sometimes even affords opportunity for heretical lies to spread, which upsets the proper order of the church. Faced with this situation, fellowship groups can become effective complements. For example a fellowship group can help the sisters and brothers of an outside fellowship group of lay volunteers better merge into the church. Another example is a new-believers fellowship that can provide helpful answers to faith questions. More importantly, each fellowship group's own activities not only promote bonds of affection between the members of that fellowship, this will increase the sense of belonging they feel toward their churches.

In addition life in fellowship can assist the members to solve their own faith and life issues, effectively easing the pressure upon pastors. Many churches have developed visitation programs to address believers' specific needs, but it is difficult for pastoral workers to actually make the visits due to their busy schedules. However due to the smaller scale of fellowship groups, these visits can be made by members, so everyone becomes familiar with one another and finds it easier to communicate, resulting in greater efficacy of the visits. Fellowship ministry definitely complements the work of pastors to a certain degree, as well as more tangibly displaying the church's love and faithful care for its members.

Fellowship ministry is a way to share the administrative burden in the church

In some churches now, the "responsible" brother or sister must be consulted in nearly everything. This seems reasonable, but in reality this does not lend itself to harmonious development. The responsible person is very important because s/he must lead the overall development of the church, not because s/he is responsible, and therefore all power must devolve on the responsible person or that person must manage all matters great and small. A leader who takes all things upon him- or herself is not a good leader. It is very difficult for a pastor who oversees all important matters him- or her self to become a good church leader. A harmonious, healthy church should have a structured administration, which is why building fellowship groups at each appropriate level is so beneficial to easing and sharing the administrative burden.

One church, for example, started an "audio-experts fellowship," a pioneering move among local churches. Why do I say this? Because the fellowships in the local churches, e.g., youth fellowships, fellowships for seniors, Bible reading fellowships, or even the more specialized fellowships such as a "legal fellowship" and "literature fellowship" were all aimed at a general audience of believers. However this "audio-experts fellowship" was aimed at those responsible for the audio equipment in the churches. Originally there were only one or two audio experts in the church, falling far short of what was needed. There were frequently situations when there was no one overseeing the audio or the audio situation was utterly chaotic. In addition, the situation caused those audio experts to be suspicious of other people messing up the audio equipment, creating conflicts between church members. So through the implementation of these fellowships the experts were able to train others to manage and use the audio equipment, those involved enjoyed a spirit-filled fellowship experience and a sense of service to others. Audio-related issues in the associated churches no longer trouble the pastors, but are handled by this fellowship. It is apparent that this fellowship not only rewarded those involved by easing tensions in the church, but also alleviated administrative pressures.

I have expounded here upon the positive impact of certain fellowship groups on the harmonious development of particular churches; however one thing that must be clarified is that the usefulness of fellowship groups should not be exaggerated. If commitments to fellowship groups are emphasized over those to the church then a circumstance may arise where fellowship groups flourish while worship becomes barren. The author recognizes the benefits of fellowship groups in the development of the church, but these groups should be tied to the gospel ministry of the church and their existence should promote the overall development of the church. Another aspect to consider would be when believers are drawn away to fellowship groups elsewhere because of the failure of the church to organize their own.

There is much work to be done in the process of constructing a harmonious church. The church should set out from its own characteristics and needs, seeking an appropriate way for its own harmonious development. In this author's view, however, the development of fellowship ministries plays a decisive role in this process because the harmony they bring is not a matter for public boasting, rather it takes root in the hearts of people and produces great fruit.

Translated by Derreck Arce from Tian Feng No. 358, October 2009.