Knowing One Another.

How long have you been a member of your fellowship?  How well do you feel you really know the other members?

One of the things my wife and myself felt in our last fellowship was that relationships were very shallow.  We mentioned this to one individual who said that the cell group he was part of had been meeting together for years, but they didn't really know each other very well.

One of the things the senior pastor most liked to talk about was the concept of the church being a family.  But the question has to be:  How can we truly be like a family if we are all living our individual lives and we don't really know each other?

If you read the early chapters of Acts you find that the disciples  met together regularly, and you get the feeling that their relationships were very close and supportive.  Just like a family, in fact.  We don't always seem to manage to do as well nowadays.

Another thing that they ate together.  Did you know that the Lord's Supper (or Holy Communion, or Eucharist, etc) was originally a full meal, and not just a token piece of bread and sip of wine or juice?  Scholars tell us that this was true, and that they shared a meal together on the evening of the first day of the week - probably a bring and share meal.  What is more natural for a family than to share a meal together?  So why do we accept the token bread and wine, when it is not what Jesus intended, and not what the early church did?  It was a suppper, not a nibble!

I believe that we have to regain the sense of family in the Body of Christ, and one of the main things we can do in support of that is to eat together.