Needed: More Fellowship

This is in response to a comment left on another post by Sindi, which I have felt times myself. I have met more new friends online in the past couple of months than I have physically.

Sometimes I wonder why this is so. There are many reasons given. We live too far away from others we go to church with, people are working all the time and are too busy are two of them.

People are spread too far apart in our church: Sometimes Christians are bound too much to tradition. They stay in the same church even though they live an hours drive away. That's fine when we all gather together on Sunday, but during the week, if we need encouragement of any kind, it's hard to find someone to talk to.

I recall when I first got saved in 1980. We were going to a Southern Baptist church. It was the one my wife grew up in, founded by one who come from Georgia and some of the first members were folks who come from the south to the Cleveland area by lure of good jobs in the auto factories. The pastor had stressed belonging to a "local, New Testament church". My wife, being bound by tradition and not wanting to hurt her parents, felt that it was wrong for me to want to change churches when we moved to Rittman, which was about 20 miles away from that church. After we went elsewhere for about a year, we returned there and stayed for the next twelve years. But by that time, all those that my wife had grown up with had moved out of state.

I stressed to the pastor when we had left that we were urged to go to a "local, New Testament church" but this church, and the other members were long distance by phone.

But that's the problem by and large. Most people in the church don't live in the community that the church is in. It's very difficult for the church to serve that community. The very visible church on Sunday becomes the invisible church during the week. We can't reach the lost by osmosis, and we also can't fellowship by ESP.

I'm enjoying the encouragement that I'm getting from fellow bloggers and messages we all pass back and forth in the comments section. But I really feel for those who don't get the physical pat on the back when they do well, or the hug they need when they are hurting.

We need fellowship during the week over a cup of coffee and piece of pie. If the lost can see believers loving one another and serving one another then maybe they will see what they need through us.