Why We Often Lack Fellowship

In a recent conversation with my son, who is away at college, he shared that he felt that he was not deeply connecting with other Christians on campus. This is his second semester, and while I heard the same story last semester, I kinda just blew it off, saying “These things take time…” and other platitudes hoping that the situation would correct itself.

This time, my son expressed some self doubt, asking me, “Is it something that I am doing wrong?”, so I took it perhaps a little more seriously. This is somewhat like the conversation we had:

Tell me about a time when you experienced “fellowship” in the past. Was that in your high school youth group?
Yes.
Was it the whole time you were in the group?
No. It was after I started expressing more commitment to my faith, in my Junior year.
Were you involved in serving or helping?
Yes. I was on the worship team, doing “tech”, and in SLT (student leadership training).
So you experienced the deepest fellowship when you were expressing commitment to your faith by serving alongside other believers?
Hmmm.
Are you serving alongside other believers now?
Not really, it is hard to get plugged in, my schedule always seems to interfere.
You are part of Intervarsity, right? Are there ways you can serve in that group, that don’t require lots of time commitment or on flexible schedules?
I don’t know. I suppose. I have wanted to get into the leadership team, and on the worship team, but the schedule doesn’t seem to be working out.
Have you thought about just finding other ways to “help out”?
Hmmm…..

In our conversation, I asked what he thought fellowship was, and what it was for; why God gave that deep connectedness to members of his body? Continue reading “Why We Often Lack Fellowship”

Mission Vs. Discipleship

Talking about Mission vs. Discipleship and I have been noodling some dumb ideas for a couple weeks. A couple weeks ago when I was mowing the lawn for the last time this year, an analogy presented itself, and so I thought I would share that as a way of expressing how mission and discipleship work in the Body of Christ.

My analogy is that of an orchestra or other musical group. Mission is like the performance. We share our love for the music, and the composer with others who are not in our ensemble. Our mission is to help as many as possible take up an instrument. Continue reading “Mission Vs. Discipleship”

Missional? What is it?

This week I suggested that a friend put the word missional on their resume. The response: what do you mean missional? Followed by: well, they (meaning the recipient of the resume) won’t have a clue either. This got me thinking, I have read a bit of missional stuff, lately, and most of it written by some really smart folks who sometimes seem to want to prove how smart they are. That means they didn’t put the cookies on the bottom shelf.

So I was thinking, Missional, what is it? It reminds me of the bit from the movie Airplane!, “This woman has to go to a hospital! A hospital, what is it? It’s a large building with lots of patients, but that’s not important now.”

We want our church to be missional. Missional, what is it? It’s an aspect of the character of God, but that’s not important now. Continue reading “Missional? What is it?”