Potluck

The Christian experience is a corporate co-existence. Liken it to a potluck dinner and what comes to your mind? Those invited bring a dish to share, and (most) times a balanced menu falls into place.

No believer in Jesus Christ is an island to himself. Jesus Christ stressed the importance of community during His ministry on earth by calling the twelve disciples who ministered alongside one another and learned at His feet. Christ commanded His disciples to love one another as the hallmark of Christian discipleship. Everything Jesus taught His disciples had implications for community. The disciples were trained and commanded to witness to people in their neighborhood and beyond. Evangelism is a key aspect of the church life, and can best be done within the context of togetherness.

Let us examine some instances where the disciples carried out the task of evangelism. First, Jesus sent out the twelve two-by-two; he later sent out seventy evangelists in pairs. They were charged to engage with their audiences in a loving way; in other words, they were instructed to build healthy relationships wherever they are received. Group evangelism, at least in going in pairs, became the pattern in the Acts of the Apostles.

On the day of Pentecost, they were together in one place. Peter and John healed the man at the beautiful gate, Paul and Barnabas took the gospel to the Gentile world. We see many gospel partnerships in the New Testament. The Church was designed by God to be a family where things get done by group effort as opposed to solo effort.

Today, the church needs to invest in fostering unity among believers, building bridges and creatively forging the right gospel partnerships that will rapidly advance the cause of Christ. These partnerships among Christians should occur both along and across denominational lines. The challenge is to identify the non-negotiables of the Christian beliefs and unite around those values rather than emphasize the doctrines that drive a wedge between us. Unity of believers is what Jesus prayed for in John 17. A united loving Christian community is a threat to the kingdom of darkness. Working together in love gets the job done.

Some threats to Christian unity include: selfishness, pride, strife and a number of deeds of the flesh as found in Galatians 5:19–26. These divide the body of Christ and inhibit the Corporate experience.

We do need to be intentional in enhancing unity in the corporate experience. The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the church in Ephesus, implores the brethren, “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” (Ephesians 4:1b-3). Enjoining them in Galatians he says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22–23). Again Paul says, “He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; (Ephesians 4:11- 12).

For an ultimate Corporate experience a believer should know their God-given gifts and use same for the growth of the body of Christ. In the same vain, we should be accommodating of others and their gifts — a situation where fellow believers monopolize and deliberately exclude others from service should be discouraged.

Some benefits of corporate spiritual formation in the Church are multiplication of believers (ActsActs 2 and 4), Spirit-led worship (the Church at Antioch in Acts 13) and effective mission administration (the council at Jerusalem in Acts 15).

Very apt is the words of a folk song we sang as young Girls’ Auxiliary kids way back in Africa:

The more we are together, together, together
The more we are together, the stronger (happier) we shall be.

When we do faith together — studying the Word together, instructing one another, praying with and for one another, sharing love, kindness, winning souls together for God’s Kingdom, the Church grows and Heaven rejoices.