Dan was the most gregarious person whom he knew. Or maybe he just had a bigger personality than others. Whatever was the case, Dan thrived on company. He was never happier than when surrounded by people whom he could regale and from whose energy he could draw. Dan knew that was the reason why he was so involved in church. He had gone through a couple periods in his life when he’d not been active in church, and they’d been the worst times of his life. To ensure that he had constant fellowship, Dan organized the weekly men’s scripture study, summer kayak outings, and golf league. He also gladly joined every committee, task force, and board to which the church recruited him, and showed up for nearly every church event. Dan’s extended family was church.
Society
God made humankind for society, for frequent fellowship. Stand back and watch members gather for a church service, and you’ll see, hear, and feel their happy society. You’ll see handshakes, hugs, high fives, and back slaps. You’ll hear laughter above the hubbub of happy conversation. And you’ll feel a course of energy through your veins, marrow, and soul. You’ll also feel the pull to go and greet the many members whom you know, to see how they’re doing and share your latest own doings. To be healthy, we need to care about others and to have others care about us. To live and love is to know and be known. The loss of society in isolation is the death of the soul. Even the introvert needs to stand silently aside in the midst of society. And church, conceived as a divine body, is the ultimate society. Church is the fellowship not of commerce, contract, and transaction but of the heart and eternal soul. Help your church foster the fellowship. The body must live.
Assessment
Assessing your church’s fellowship can help you support and promote it. Observe members gather outside the sanctuary before and after a worship service. Watch them move around, congregate, and converse. Listen to the greetings and conversations for the topics, celebrations, and concerns. Survey the membership for interests and preferences. Interview longtime and new members to learn what they like and don’t like, what makes them come to church or stay away, and when they feel most connected and disconnected with the body. Examine event attendance to learn what cohorts come to what events and what cohorts stay away. And study events closely to learn what attracts and repels, and what fosters and frustrates fellowship. Then use your best insights to subtly guide activities toward greater fellowship. Assess and adjust for a year, and you should notice the difference. Foster fellowship for a decade, and you may see your church transformed.
Planning
As spontaneous as fellowship seems, churches can plan for fellowship. Fellowship naturally happens around church activities and events. And spontaneous fellowship can be the best sort, better than when forced. Yet churches can design and arrange their facilities, hire and employ staff members, and plan and implement events with fellowship in mind. Leave fellowship alone, and it still might happen on its own. But pay attention to and promote fellowship, and it should blossom under your church’s thoughtful care. Form a hospitality committee and give it a fellowship charge. Employ a part-time inreach coordinator to connect new members, and assess and promote fellowship measures. Create an account for fellowship in the annual church budget, and see that the inreach coordinator spends the funds well. Research and pursue fellowship initiatives that have been successful at other churches like your own. Do what’s natural and fitting. Don’t make fellowship a forced smile and handshake at the church door, and nothing more. Don’t announce fellowship initiatives and claim you’re a hospitable body when you’re actually not. But still be intentional. Intention counts. Quietly take the small actions that make members feel welcome, known, and at home in the body.
Elements
If you look closely, fellowship has elements to it. Both freshness and its opposite familiarity can be important fellowship elements. Walking into a new church and meeting new people, or even walking into your own church but seeing new people, can be exciting, satisfying, and invigorating. Fresh encounters can invite fresh fellowship. But walking into a new church among strangers can also be silently stressful, for some even frightening. Familiar encounters, meeting and greeting the same well-known and trusted figures, encourages fellowship. The best church gatherings offer a mix of both fresh and familiar. That’s in part why Christmas Eve and Easter services are so invigorating because of the mix of old and new people. Fellowship should also have elements of both lightness and seriousness, both play and gravitas. Members should at times be free to laugh and joke. They should also at times get to experience the weight and depth of glory. Fellowship should also have elements of both comfort and challenge, both protection and godly provocation, both safety and a holy danger. Help your church offer the body a full range of essential elements. Make your church’s fellowship a feast, not rations.
Meals
Breaking bread together makes for fellowship. Sharing a meal with others instantly humanizes relationships. Fellowship need not be all talk. Nor should fellowship be all action. Preparing, serving, and sharing meals fosters an organic form of fellowship, feeding both body and soul, both literal and figurative bread. Your church can plan regular events centered around meals, both for the whole church and for different cohorts and audiences within the body. Meal-centered events can take a great deal of planning and carry significant costs, both of which suggest their fellowship value. Churches also have simpler ways of incorporating food into events. Sideboards of cookies, packaged snack bars, and refreshments at scripture studies are one example. A break in Sunday School lessons for a snack and coffee and donuts between Sunday morning services are other examples. Churches can serve snacks and refreshments at virtually any event, including weddings and memorials. Help your church incorporate breaking bread into events. Budget and plan for meals and refreshments.
Recreation
Churches can be heady places. Faith life can become a life of the mind, all doctrine and principle. But life in Christ is life in relationship and life in the body, too. And few things stir greater and healthier embodied relationships than well-planned and executed recreation. Churches wisely use recreation to attract and involve not just children and youth but also adults in events and activities. Children’s Sunday School can incorporate joyful songs and dance, and active crafts and games, into Bible lessons. Children’s ministries can purchase or rent bounce houses to set up indoors or in the parking lot for boisterous play. Youth ministries can offer sports and recreations like cornhole tosses indoors, four-square games in the parking lot, or even beach volleyball on an outing, around scripture studies and group discussion. Adult ministries can plan hikes and canoe trips, organize golf leagues and softball teams, and offer pickup basketball games. Service announcements, websites, and social media can promote these and other recreations, while displays and marquees feature photographs and video of the fun. Help your church offer recreation to foster fellowship.
Facilities
Your church’s facility can also promote fellowship. Churches commonly have large open spaces outside their sanctuary for worshipers to gather, greet, and socialize before and after services. Churches add gymnasiums and ballfields for sports and recreation. They also maintain multi-purpose rooms for youth games and active play, and may add special playlands for young children. Churches also commonly have kitchens to prepare meals and adjacent event rooms and hospitality areas in which to serve meals and refreshments. They also build coffee bars and cafes, and place coffee makers and snacks on sideboards in classrooms and conference rooms. Water-bottle fillers, drinking fountains, and restrooms can make church more conducive to lingering. Outdoor patios, gardens, and walkways can add to the attraction, encouraging members and guests to linger and converse. Look around your church facility to see if it offers welcoming, stimulating, and comfortable spaces. Help your church design and arrange those spaces to promote greater fellowship. The space in which your membership gathers influences how the membership relates. Make it a welcoming space.
Furnishings
The furnishings in your church also influence the quantity and quality of your church’s fellowship. Churches have the opportunity to present either austere and forbidding spaces or, on the other hand, spaces that invite, capture, and comfort. Every space within a church need not look like your grandmother’s living room. Some spaces within a church should promote reflection and awe, even solitude. A prayer room can be isolated and spare in furnishings. Even a sanctuary can appropriately induce silence and strike awe. But a church that wants to foster fellowship should appoint other spaces in ways that invite members and guests to relax in relative comfort. Soft seating in small groupings over rich area rugs can break up a large and featureless gathering space, inviting individuals to join others in comfort and conversation. A few high-top tables in a large gathering space can draw individuals together, to put down their bags and drink bottles or coffee mugs while having a pleasant chat, on the way into or out of the sanctuary around a service. A sofa or two can encourage a couple to sit together or a mentor to draw aside a young adult for a guiding chat. Help your church examine and improve its furnishings to foster greater fellowship.
Displays
The images that your church displays in its public spaces can also influence fellowship. Examine your church’s events and activities for the most-stimulating examples of fellowship, such as greeting times during the service, game times in Sunday School, youth recreation at the beach, or a whole-church picnic. Photograph and record video of those events. Then enlarge the photographs for display in frames around the church’s large spaces and in the hallways, classrooms, and conference rooms, and for prominent website and social media display. Play the video in a loop on a large marquee screen in the main gathering space and on the church website. These images of joyful recreation and society together will encourage the whole body in fellowship, subtly reminding everyone of good times together. Document and display your church’s fellowship to set the tone, culture, and expectation. Celebrate the body and life of the church when its members come together.
Artwork
Artwork displays around your church can be another way of encouraging members and guests to linger, look, learn, and discuss. Paintings, weavings, sculpture, and other artistic designs and displays capture and hold the attention. They also spur conversation. If your church’s gathering space outside the sanctuary seems tired and worn, display some new artwork, purchased or on loan from members or local artists, on easels, pedestals, moveable partitions, and walls around the space. Hang banners, quilts, and weavings overhead. You’ll instantly sense the new energy that the displays bring to the next Sunday morning gathering. Members may or may not pause to look at the displayed art. They may or may not stand around the artwork together to discuss it. But whatever the response, your church will have shown that it values the presence, inspiration, and fellowship of members and guests. Walk into a church, and you can see whether its leaders and staff are aware and thinking of the impressions and inspiration of the body, fostering fellowship.
Reflection
How would you rate the quantity and quality of your church’s fellowship, on a scale of one to ten? In what respect is your church effective at encouraging fellowship? In what respect could your church do better at supporting fellowship? Does your church have a staff member responsible for promoting fellowship? Does your church have a hospitality or fellowship budget? Does your church have regular fellowship events? Does your church have periodic meals for the whole church or significant church cohorts? Does your church frequently offer refreshments around services, activities, and events? Does your church have a large gathering space for fellowship events? Does your church have an adequate kitchen facility? Does your church have furniture in its public spaces that invites sitting and lingering? Does your church display images of its rich fellowship, on walls, marquees, websites, or social media?
Key Points
Society is essential to flourishing, making fellowship a core goal.
Assess the fellowship interests and needs of your membership.
Plan, staff, and budget to regularly and consistently foster fellowship.
Fellowship involves familiarity and freshness, lightness and gravitas.
Food, refreshments, and meals can promote attendance and fellowship.
Planned recreation, games, and play can stimulate greater fellowship.
A church facility should incorporate spaces for fellowship.
A church’s furnishings should invite and support fellowship.
Displaying images of rich fellowship can confirm a fellowship culture.
Artwork can inspire members to linger, examine, and discuss.