A Community of Fellowship

The first and most outstanding praxis of Hebraic Christian Global Community is the hallmark of fellowship. The most ancient of Christian communities followed the synagogal model of their ancestors by being first a Beit Knesset, a House of Meeting or Fellowship. The congregation that was established on the foundational confession that Jesus was Lord and Messiah was characterized by its sharing (Acts 2:44), the foundation of fellowship (koinonia).

Sharing in fellowship was not, however, a new “Christian” concept. It was a continuation of the Hebraic culture of welcome and hospitality. One of the evidences that one is in fellowship with God is the ongoing manifestation of fellowship with the community of faith. Without lateral relationships with fellow children of God, there is no evidence of vertical relationship with the Father (1 John 4:20).

The community of fellowship thinks in the first person plural rather than in the first person singular.  This, too, is a very Hebraic concept. Rugged individualism at the expense of community is unacceptable. Believers are not focused on their own personal welfare but on the welfare of the community.

No one is an island. All are interconnected. All connectivity, however, is lateral, based in equality. True networking exists only when all the parts of the whole are interconnected with all other parts. Lateral connectivity provides for true accountability in which all constituents understand that their actions affect all the others in their community. They are, therefore, more careful that they manifest the life of Christ in all their deeds. One’s actions, therefore, are not governed by fear of punishment from a hierarch but by respect for the honor of the community and the welfare of each of its individual constituents.

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Fellowship is manifest in two dimensions: the purely social and the spiritual. Every true community, beginning with the family, continuing to the extended family, and outward to the corporate community of believers–local, regional, national, and international–is based on the social interaction of its constituent parts. Communion through social relationships provides healthy interaction that provides a secure environment for growth and maturity, both socially and spiritually.

Spiritual fellowship expands to the community by including the Holy Spirit in its social life, elevating relationships to a realm of spiritual interaction, and allowing the Spirit to build up the community by the grace that administers each of the divine gifts for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:8-11; Romans 12:6-8; Ephesians 4:11).

Fellowship with God and with humans is foundational to Hebraic Christian Global Community because it is a community that is focused on God’s truth and on humanity’s needs. This level of communion begins with God and extends to all of the members of the body of the Messiah universally.