True Christian fellowship—what the Greek New Testament calls koinonia—is the Spirit’s gift to the Church. Yet this fellowship is critically lacking in the institutional church today. And this lack goes to the very heart of the impotence, rigidity, and so-called irrelevance of much of the modern church.
The Church is especially under attack today for its rigid institutionalism, its “morphological fundamentalism.” Critics call for more relevant structures for the Church and for a new ecclesiology. I would like to suggest that the New Testament concept of “the koinonia of the Holy Spirit” offers a possible starting point in this quest for more intimate, less institutionalized structures for the Church’s life—a starting point that is at once biblical and contemporary.
A Fellowship Crisis
The Church today is suffering a fellowship crisis. It is simply not experiencing nor demonstrating that “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14) that marked the New Testament church. In a world of big, impersonal institutions, the Church often presents itself to modern man as just another big, impersonal institution. The Church is highly organized at a time when its members are caring less about organization and more about community. One seldom finds within the institutionalized church today that winsome intimacy among people where masks are dropped, honesty prevails, and there is that sense of communication and community beyond the human—where there is actually the fellowship of and in the Holy Spirit.
The considerable popularity of Keith Miller’s The Taste of New Wine (Word, 1965) is largely due, I believe, to his identification of this lack in the Church. He strikes a responsive chord with thousands of sincere Christian laymen when he observes,
Our churches are filled with people who outwardly look contented and at peace but inwardly are crying out for someone to love them … just as they are—confused, frustrated, often frightened, guilty, and often unable to communicate even within their own families. But the other people in the church look so happy and contented that one seldom has the courage to admit his own deep needs before such a self-sufficient group as the average church meeting appears to be (p. 22).
This unintentioned duplicity is an almost inevitable result of current institutional patterns of church organization. It is a description of the Church without koinonia.
Koinonia is, of course, but one aspect of the Church’s total being. The New Testament church was characterized by proclamation, service, and fellowship. All three are essential if the Church is to be faithful. The Church must preach and teach, and it must serve—following the example of Christ.
But koinonia is essential both for effective proclamation and for relevant serving. Koinonia is the Church abiding in the Vine, so that it can bear much fruit. It is the Body becoming “joined and knit together,” upbuilding itself in love, so that the individual gifts of the Spirit may be manifest in the world (Eph. 4:16, RSV). Often both the Church’s preaching and its service have suffered simply for lack of true koinonia.
But what is, specifically, “the koinonia of the Holy Spirit”? And what does it tell us about church structure in our day?
In Second Corinthians 13:14 Paul prays that “the fellowship (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit” may be with the Corinthian believers. And in Philippians 2:1 Paul speaks of the “fellowship (koinonia) in the Spirit.”
Two dimensions are implied in these passages: the vertical dimension of the believer’s fellowship with God, and the horizontal dimension, his koinonia with other believers through the Holy Spirit. It is critical that these two aspects be held together and understood together. The New Testament idea of koinonia is not fully understood until we grasp the significance of the horizontal and vertical dimensions together.
At first we may see here only the vertical dimension of fellowship with God through the Holy Spirit. But the horizontal dimension is also very much present, and perhaps even primary, here: the fellowship among Christians that is the gift of the Spirit. As James Reid has written about “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14), “this does not mean fellowship with the Spirit. It is a fellowship with God which he shares through the indwelling Spirit with those who are members of the body of Christ. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is the true description of the church” (The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 10, p. 425, italics added).
Much has been written about the meaning and implications of the word koinonia. Usually the discussion has emphasized the horizontal dimension, the fellowship of Christians with each other. But it is the vertical dimension that supplies the basic content of the whole idea of koinonia. Koinonia in the Church must start with “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,” or else it lacks its New Testament dynamic. Hendrik Kraemer has well said in his Theology of the Laity that “the fellowship (koinonia) with and in Jesus Christ and the Spirit is the creative ground and sustainer of the fellowship (koinonia) of the believers with each other” (p. 107). The spiritual communion and fellowship in the Church that truly is koinonia is something given by the Spirit. It is more than a function of our humanity, it partakes of the supernatural.
Two things, then, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit emphatically is not:
1. It is not that superficial social fellowship which the very word “fellowship” often denotes in our churches today. Such “fellowship” is generally no more supernatural than the weekly Kiwanis or Rotary Club meeting. Most of what passes for fellowship in the Church—whatever its value—is something distinctly less than koinonia. It is, at best, a friendly fraternizing—appealing, but easily duplicated outside the Church. Biblical koinonia, however, is unique to the Church of Jesus Christ.
Typical church “fellowship” seldom reaches the level of koinonia because koinonia is neither understood, nor expected, nor sought. Consequently there are few or no suitable structures for koinonia in the Church. The Church today has become accustomed to a pleasant, superficial sociality that is at best a cheap substitute for koinonia.
2. On the other hand, koinonia is not simply some mystical communion that exists without reference to the structure of the Church. We may talk in abstract terms about “the fellowship of the Church,” as though it were something that automatically, and almost by definition, binds believers together. But the abstract concept is hollow apart from the actual gathering together of believers at a particular point in time and space. We cannot escape this, not on this earth. Christ himself emphasized this necessity of being together (Matt. 18:20). One can have fellowship with God when one is alone, and in any place. But one cannot alone have fellowship with another believer who is not present. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is not some ethereal power that spiritually binds believers together while they are physically separated. Rather, it is that deep spiritual community in Christ which believers experience when they gather together as the Church of Christ.
More specifically, then, we can describe the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” in the following ways:
1. The koinonia of the Holy Spirit is that fellowship among believers which the Holy Spirit gives. It is precisely that experience of a deeper communion, of a supernatural intercommunication, which perhaps every believer occasionally has felt in the presence of other believers. Its basis is the oneness that Christians share in Christ. A shared faith, a shared salvation, and a shared divine nature are the roots of koinonia.
2. It is the fellowship of Christ with his disciples. Christ spent three years living and working in intimate fellowship with twelve men. As Robert Coleman observes, “he actually spent more time with His disciples than with anybody else in the world put together. He ate with them, slept with them, and talked with them for the most part of His entire active ministry” (The Master Plan of Evangelism, p. 43). These men not only learned from Christ; they shared a level of community that was the prototype of the koinonia of the early Church. It is interesting that in the midst of Christ’s important discourse during the Last Supper, three disciples felt free to interrupt with comments or questions (John 14:5, 8, 22). Together they were experiencing the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
3. It is the fellowship of the early Church, as recorded in the Book of Acts. The first Christians knew an unusual unity, oneness of purpose, common love, and mutual concern—in other words, koinonia. This was more than either the immediate joy of conversion or the knowledge of shared beliefs. It was an atmosphere, a spiritual environment, that grew among the first believers as they prayed, learned, and worshiped together in their own homes (Acts 2:42–46; 5:42).
4. It is the earthly counterpart and foretaste of the eternal fellowship of heaven. The joy of heaven is the freedom of eternal communion with God and fellow believers, without earthly limitations. As the earthly model of this heavenly reality, koinonia in the Church shares the same spiritual nature as life in heaven. But it suffers the necessary limitations of the flesh and of space and time. Thus koinonia in the Church is neither continuous nor universal. Rather, it is interrupted, partial, local—and necessarily so. It is limited and affected by physical factors, but its essential reality is not of this world.
5. It is analogous to the unity, fellowship, and communion between Christ and the Father. A parallel exists between the communion of the Trinity and the koinonia of believers among themselves and with God. Christ’s prayer in John 17 is especially suggestive here. Christ asks that his disciples “may be one, as we are one.” More generally, he prays for all future Christians that “they all be one: as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, so also may they be in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me” (John 17:11, 21, NEB). Koinonia is the fulfillment of this prayer in the Church, and thus a manifestation in space and time of the communion of the Holy Trinity. It is a supernatural sharing between the Persons of the Godhead and the Church on earth, inseparably involving both the vertical and horizontal dimensions. Christ wanted his followers to be one in their koinonia—one not only with God but also with one another.
Such koinonia is the gift of the Holy Spirit. But is the Church then powerless to create or nurture this fellowship? Or may church structures provide the conditions for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit?
Daniel J. Fleming in a little book entitled Living as Comrades makes the following valid point in this regard: “The fashioning and preservation of this koinonia … is the peculiar work of the Holy Spirit. But … we can help or hinder that consummation by the degree to which we consciously endeavor to enter into community with fellow human beings” (p. 19). And this applies to the Church as well as to individual believers.
The Bible is largely silent as to the structure of the Church. The New Testament contains no Mt. Sinai revelations as to the “pattern of the tabernacle.” We are free to create those structures most conducive to the mission and need of the Church in our time. And the very idea of “the koinonia of the Holy Spirit” may have something very significant to say about such structures.
Implications For Church Structure
At Pentecost the Holy Spirit gave the infant Church, among other things, the gift of koinonia. The creation of genuine fellowship is an integral part of the work of the Holy Spirit. In this sense the Holy Spirit’s work in the individual believer cannot be separated from what he is doing within the Church—not as so many individual believers but precisely as a community of faith.
Failure to see this vital connection between the individual and group aspects of the Spirit’s working weakens our understanding both of the individual believer and of the Church. It is, first, to view the believer’s spiritual development in too much of an individualized, separated sense, as though Christians grow best in isolation. And secondly, it misses an element of basic significance for the structure and ministry of the Church: The Church provides the context for spiritual growth by sharing together a fellowship that is at once the gift of the Spirit and the environment in which he may operate.
Thus a natural connection exists, I suggest, between “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” and church structure. The nature of this koinonia in fact contains several possible implications for church structure.
1. First of all, as has already been noted, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is a function of the Church gathered, not of the Church dispersed. The obvious implication for church structure: The Church must make sufficient provision to be gathered together if it is to experience koinonia. Koinonia requires being together in one place at one time under the direction of the Holy Spirit. We can talk about the fellowship of the Holy Spirit as being solely a spiritual reality, ignoring the space-time limitations, but this is meaningless. The fact is that the fellowship of the Holy Spirit—New Testament koinonia in the Church—requires, as an absolute necessity, physical proximity. Believers do not experience the fellowship of the Holy Spirit if they do not meet together in an atmosphere conducive to the Spirit’s working.
2. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit naturally suggests communication. Communion without communication would be a contradiction in terms. Thus a second implication for church structure: The Church must gather together in a way that permits and encourages communication among the members.
The fact immediately raises questions about traditional structures of worship in the institutional church. Whatever its value, the traditional church worship service is not well designed for intercommunication, for fellowship. It is designed, both by liturgy and by architecture, for only a one-way kind of communication, pulpit to pew. Indeed, communication between two worshipers during the church service is considered rude and disruptive of the spirit of worship. The traditional church service is not the proper structure for experiencing the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And we may say by extension that no church meeting is conducive to koinonia if it is based on a one-way, leader-to-group kind of communication—whether it be prayer meeting, Sunday-school class, or Bible-study hour. Koinonia appears and begins to grow only in structures that allow and encourage communication.
And since koinonia involves the vertical dimension as well as the horizontal, this communication also implies communion with God—in other words, prayer as a part of koinonia.
3. A third implication for church structure involves the element of freedom. Paul gives us the principle, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17, RSV). The Holy Spirit is the liberator, the freer. The freedom of the Spirit and the koinonia of the Spirit go together. Where there is koinonia there is also freedom and openness: an atmosphere that permits “speaking the truth in love.” True koinonia can be experienced only where there is the freedom of the Spirit.
The implication for structure here: The church must provide structures that are sufficiently informal and intimate to permit the freedom of the Spirit. There must be a sense of the unexpected and the unprogrammed when believers come together; the excitement of the unpredictable; a freedom from set patterns and forms. Frequently one finds in an informal and rather loosely structured gathering of believers a greater openness to God’s moving and thus a greater likelihood that the koinonia of the Holy Spirit will be experienced.
This is not, of course, to argue against the proper use of form and liturgy. Believers need those times of solemn corporate worship in which the High and Holy God is honored with dignity and reverence. But in the midst of the dignity and reverence, many a lonely believer inwardly cries out for the warm, healing touch of koinonia. Believers need to know by experience that the Most High God is also the Most Nigh God. If traditional corporate worship is not regularly supplemented with informal opportunities for koinonia, believers easily drift into a practical deism while the Church becomes the guardian of a powerless form of godliness. On the other hand, form and liturgy take on new meaning for Christians who are living and growing in koinonia.
Robert Raines makes essentially the same point in his book New Life in the Church (Harper & Row, 1961):
The church must foster and sustain the conditions in which koinonia can be known. This cannot be done for most people simply through morning worship. Worship is indispensable as the weekly meeting of the Christian community. But it is effective only as the total sharing of all the people of the friendship in Christ they have known between Sundays [p. 71].
4. Finally, the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” suggests a learning situation. Jesus said that when the Holy Spirit came he would “teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). He would testify of Christ and guide the believers into new truth (John 15:26; 16:13). The Holy Spirit came to teach.
Since it is the same Spirit of God who inbreathes and speaks through the Holy Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21), and since these Scriptures themselves testify of Christ (John 5:39), it follows that the koinonia of the Holy Spirit is naturally related to Bible study. We in fact find the two thus connected in the early Church, which devoted itself “to the apostles’ teaching and koinonia (Acts 2:42).
The implication for church structure here: Church structure must include sufficient opportunity for Bible study in the context of koinonia. When Christians meet jointly with the objective task of Bible study before them and under the direction of the Holy Spirit, they experience koinonia that has life-changing results. They find that the way to learn of Christ is in the context of a community of believers taught by the Holy Spirit.
The idea of the koinonia of the Holy Spirit, then, suggests that the Church should provide structures (1) in which believers gather together, (2) where intercommunication is encouraged, (3) in an informal atmosphere that allows the freedom of the Spirit, and (4) in which direct Bible study is central.
Most contemporary church patterns and structures clearly do not meet these criteria. But there is one structure that does: some form of the small group. It is my conviction that the koinonia of the Holy Spirit is most likely to be experienced when Christians meet together informally in small-group fellowships.
The small group can meet the above criteria. It brings believers together at one point in time and space. Its smallness and informality allow a high degree of communion and communication. It does not require formal structuring; it can maintain order without stifling the intimacy and openness conducive to the freedom of the Spirit. And finally, it offers an ideal context for in-depth Bible study.
The early Church experienced the koinonia of the Holy Spirit. We know also that the early Christians met together in small groups in homes. Is this merely a coincidence? Or does the very idea of the koinonia of the Holy Spirit not suggest the need for some kind of small-group fellowships as basic structure within the Church?
George Webber in his discussion of small groups in The Congregation in Mission notes, “No relationship of love can develop unless there are structures in which it can grow.” Koinonia in the Holy Spirit grows when there are structures to nurture it. And where there is koinonia, there is the church that is relevant in the late twentieth century.
Howard A. Snyder is a member of the faculty of the Free Methodist theological school—the Faculdade de Teologia da Igreja Metodista Livre—in São Paulo, Brazil.
