An odd idea is floating around about fellowship requirements.
From the article, here’s the bottom line:
Better yet, through the koinonia concept, each church that wishes to be part of this fellowship of churches, instead of signing a document, (which has already put off many leaders in today’s over-litigated society), should simply chip in a token sum, say, US$ 1 or 2 per disciple, to “register†as a member of this fellowship.
As an aside, someone needs to tell Steve Chin that there is no place to sign. 🙂
Making DToday into a subscription site is not wrong. Really, it’s not. I don’t believe that it would be successful because of the small audience, but there’s nothing morally wrong with doing so. I’m not railing on DToday here. What is objectionable is the so-called need to determine who is “us” and who is “Them”. In other words, this proposal is still calling for someone at a high level to take a tally of who is a member and who is not a member. Instead of a creed, now the line in the sand is a financial contribution.
Somewhere between hierarchical command-and-control and “every man for himself†there’s a happy medium. Therefore, we ask the Steering Committee to propose a fellowship fee to be collected from the churches who wishes to be part of this global koinonia community
As an aside, the first sentence is a false dichotomy. It’s a prevalent thought in the new ICoC (Cooperating Churches) as well as the new ICoC (Community Churches). There is no golden mean. There are other models out there that lie outside these two ideas. We should investigate them. As it is, we are steadily building ourselves into a denomination. I guess it is what the ICoC (CoOperating Churches) really want. Have at it.
More to the point, isn’t fellowship enough of a test for fellowship? ICoC(Community Churches) may not have signed the unity proposal, but they contribute to missions, send people overseas, help the poor, go to all the conferences, etc. etc. etc. What else is needed? Why does a person need to prove that they are Christian by something other than their actions? Why this insistence on an artificial filter? Again, isn’t it enough to be a Christian?
No, apparently not. The response will most likely be that many claim Christianity without actually being Christian. As such, there needs to be a mechanism to be able to weed out false Christians from real Christians. This is a false need, but I no longer believe that many in either ICoC can overcome this thought-stopper. For whatever reason, we just have to be able to put people and churches in nice, neat categories so that we know how to act around them.
Grow up, please.