A Fellowship of Differents–Final Post

Today I finish up reading through Scot McKnight’s new book A Fellowship of Differents: Showing The World God’s Design for Life Together. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is trying to figure out what the essence of the church is and what is its mission. I think many of us have lost our way as we try to build churches that are comfortable for us, homogenous, and “meet our needs.” I often wonder if the desire for consumer oriented, business-model churches like this have produced the severely declining moral influence of the church in the West and the lack of emphasis on God’s mandate to disciple and bless the world. I have been going through the book two or three chapters at a time every Sunday, posting some quotes on my Facebook page and a summary here on my blog. I welcome comments on my Facebook page. Quotes from the book are in blue.

In the last two chapters McKnight concludes his vision of what a flourishing church looks like. He then closes with an appendix on the life and writings of Paul. We need to have the heart of Paul which McKnight sums up as

Paul’s entire gospel: Jesus is the center of it all, and in Jesus Christ, in the body of Christ, God’s people are one: both Jews and Gentiles are one in Christ. 244

In the chapter entitled Teacher with the Big Fancy Hat (a reference to Henrietta Mears the author of very influential Sunday school curriculum) McKnight’s point is that the church must connection flourishing, not with power and influence, but with suffering. We need to experience suffering, both persecution and the natural suffering living in this world brings, “through the eyes of faith,” living as “Jesus Christ lived out his life in weakness.” As we experience suffering as Jesus did, we gain endurance, character, hope and joy. As we participate in the suffering of others, and they in ours, we learn to be other-oriented and love others. The church cannot be what it is supposed to be without suffering.

…a flourishing Christian experiences suffering through the eyes of faith. Instead of looking at how Paul explained suffering as “lessons about suffering,” I suggest we see his explanations as expressions of a flourishing Christian in the midst of suffering. 221

I want to suggest that working for this kind of fellowship entails suffering, some of it emotional and some of it physical. That, too, is what the church is about. Flourishing in this new community is what God wants for us, and when we let that work of God shape us, we will discover something that transcends what anyone could expect. 228

In the next chapter, On a Walk with Kris, McKnight closes his book with the key result/characteristic of this kind of church: joy. Paul “wants the whole fellowship to be intoxicated with a God-shaped joy.” We tend to look for “happiness” which is about avoiding suffering and having more than others. He suggest we “forget happiness and go for joy.” Joy comes in the midst of suffering because it allows us to participate in the gospel and share the ministry of the Spirit in our life with others. Joy comes as we experience life together in the Spirit with God’s people, the church. “Joy is about sharing our lives, from the ordinary and routine to the sublime and special. Joy marks the gospel-shaped flourishing Christian.”

So suffering and joy are not incompatible. Getting rid of suffering is what happiness studies are all about, but the Christian sense of joy counters all that. For Paul, those who experience suffering in a gospel-shaped way are those who know the meaning of joy. 231

Paul’s theory of joy is exercising the gift God has given you, experiencing the gospel in suffering if such occurs, knowing that God is still at work, and sharing that joy with others in the fellowship of the church. What is joy? Joy is the inner satisfaction that comes from understanding our location in life in light of who God is and where God will eventually bring us — his kingdom. 232

Joy for the apostle Paul was not about his station in life or realizing his dreams or resting sure in his financial situation. Joy for him was about participating in the fellowship of differents because he was part of God’s plan for the world. Joy, to put it directly, is a church-shaped disposition. Only folks in the church can experience what Paul means by joy…  234

The appendix, The Graces of Paul’s Life, is a brief, basic study of the life and writings of Paul. We can only understand Paul in terms of his life changing experience with Jesus on the Road to Damascus. Building this “church of differents” for Jesus became Paul’s life mission. We need to see Paul’s writings, not as a systematic theology or autobiography,  or an abstract church manual, but as a series of letters in which Paul responds to real 1st century issues in the churches to whom he ministered and people he loved. His mission was that the gospel of Jesus would produce, through the power of the Spirit, churches that reflected God’s kingdom of a united, restored humanity (which also was the creation, and OT covenant vision). This is what we are supposed to be doing as well.

Paul did not change religions on the road to Damascus, but he was converted from being a Christ-opposing Pharisee to a Christ-honoring Pharisee…What is most notable about Paul’s conversion outside Damascus was that he was graced with a new, special mission in life: to gospel Gentiles in the Roman world. 239

Paul had a strategy, not an easy one to accomplish, but it was gospel-centered: they were to die to self and to live unto others, and they were to do this by loving one another, by living a life of constrained freedom, and by living a holy life. This would lead to what happens when God’s good hand of grace takes over — unity in the fellowship of the Spirit. 243