“Koinonia” is the Greek word for fellowship. The basic meaning of koinonia is participation. Believers are to be participating with one another. Paul makes this clear every time he talks about believers gathering together. See Romans 12:1-16, I Corinthians 14:23-40, Ephesians 5:15-21, Colossians 3:9-17, Hebrews 10:24-25.
Every believer has gifts and is supposed to exercise them to edify others. And every believer is supposed to be open to being edified. I believe Paul emphasizes this practice more than any other essential practice, including preaching, worship, prayer and studying scripture. This mutuality is supposed to be essential to spiritual growth. We can refer to this conception as “biblical koinonia”. The heart of biblical koinonia is mutual openness and edification for which I use the acronym “MOE”. We were never supposed to spend the majority of weekly gathering times just listening to a sermon and singing songs while neglecting mutual edification.
We can refer to spiritual theology (“spiritual theology” is the study of the biblical principles of spiritual growth) that thoroughly integrates biblical koinonia as “koinonia spirituality”. Unfortunately, “koinonia spirituality” was rarely prominent in the history of the Church. Thus, I believe it is the biggest lack in the history of Christian spirituality.
This might come as a surprise to those who have read about monasticism. It would seem that a group of celibate believers living in a monastery would have great koinonia. But actually monastic rules were usually opposed to members forming close relationships with each other. This varied some but the biggest monastic orders did not teach monks or nuns to come together in groups where each one could exercise their gifts to minister to others. One reason for this was the problem of cliques. There were several other reasons for the lack of koinonia but the point is monasticism did not create environments where all believers exercised their gifts to mutually edify one another. The emphasis on the vertical relationship with God greatly overshadowed horizontal relationships with each other.
The message for us in the scriptures mentioned above is that mutual openness and encouragement is a top priority for spiritual growth. Most home groups do not do this except perhaps briefly. Leaders should consider whether or not they are actually “doing church” biblically if they themselves and their people are not spending significant time mutually exercising spiritual gifts, opening up and sharing burdens and fears and doubts, and encouraging one another.
