Forming a Community of the Spirit: Hospitality, Fellowship, and Nurture, Part 1

This chapter is an excerpt from Steven M. Fettke, God’s Empowered People: A Pentecostal Theology of the Laity (Wipf & Stock 2011). Read Part 2 in the Spring 2012 issue of Pneuma Review.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:7–8).

“Community … cannot grow out of loneliness, but comes when the person who begins to recognize his or her belovedness greets the belovedness of the other. The God alive in me greets the God resident in you. When people can cease having to be for us everything, we can accept the fact they may still have a gift for us. They are partial reflections of the great love of God, but reflections nevertheless … We see him or her as a limited expression of an unlimited love.

To live and serve and worship with others thereby brings us to a place where we come together and remind each other by our mutual interdependence that we are not God, that we cannot meet our own needs, and that we cannot completely fulfill each other’s needs. There is something wonderfully humbling and freeing about this. For we find a place where people give one another grace. That we are not God does not mean that we cannot mediate (if in a limited way) the unlimited love of God. Community is the place of joy and celebration where we are willing to say, ‘Yes, we have begun to overcome in Christ.’ Such is the victory of the Cross.

Gratitude springs from an insight, a recognition that something good has come from another person, that it is freely given to me, and meant as a favor. And at the moment this recognition dawns on me, gratitude spontaneously arises in my heart.”¹

An Invitation to Loving Hospitality

So many believers have organized their lives in such a way that the busy activities of modern life have prevented them from fully engaging their faith in ways that involve a faithful community. Often, a “fast food” approach to the faith has meant that believers quickly complete as many “vital” activities as possible during their busy week so that they might fit in all of them. Usually, this means that so many important things—family meals, times for reflection and prayer, meaningful time for building a strong faith community—get shortchanged in the midst of frantic and hectic schedules. If there are to be faith communities constructed around the offer of loving hospitality and acceptance of all people regardless of their social, economic, racial, or mental background, or their status, or abilities, then that effort takes careful and concerted effort. It will require significant amounts of time, time that modern Western believers might not be willing to give.

Hectic schedules have made so many modern believers exhausted and burned out from all they think they have to do just in the normal routines of their lives, not to mention the busy activities often planned by and through their local church. This has often led in turn to ministry burnout. It is also true that creating a loving and hospitable faith community can involve tedious yet necessary tasks: someone has to open the church on Sunday morning and start the air conditioning or heat; someone has to make sure repairs to the church building are made; someone has to deal with the confused and rebellious teens in middle school; someone has to attend to the elderly, the infirm, the troubled. A loving, nurturing community does not spring up to full possibility, maturity, and genuine welcome to all without people engaging in some hard, sometimes tedious, but always essential work. Most would rather leave the hard work to others, and some tasks seem so mundane and useless that one can get discouraged and want to give up.

A young monk once spent months at a monastery helping to weave a tapestry. One day, he rose from his bench in disgust: “I can’t do this any longer,” he exclaimed. “My directions make no sense. I have been working with a bright-yellow thread, and suddenly I’m to knot and cut it short for no reason. What a waste.”

“My son,” said an older monk, “you are not seeing the tapestry correctly. You are sitting at the back, working on only one spot.” He led the younger monk to the front of the tapestry, hanging stretched in the large workroom, and the novice gasped. He had been weaving a beautiful picture—the three kings paying homage to the Christ child—his yellow thread was part of the gleaming halo around the baby’s head. What had seemed wasteful and senseless was actually magnificent.

Creating community, any kind of community, is fraught with pitfalls—human pride, human indifference, “busyness,” work and family overload, and resistance to the completion of the tedious and mundane. Any community-creating has to be intentional, arising from fervent prayer and trust that the Spirit will make possible for diverse people a community of truth, love, and learning despite human selfishness and personal agendas for success or happiness. Thus, any effort on the part of believers to create a loving community of hospitality will have to include a focused intentionality and energy on the part of all.² Otherwise, believers will just meet to be meeting, going through the motions and not really meaning it. Such an atmosphere of indifference and fiction would not be worth the time expended.

Some might argue that they already experience in their community an atmosphere of loving hospitality. Definitions of loving hospitality can be as broad and general as there are people. A woman gushed about how good the fellowship was in her community. The only trouble with that comment was that most people in the community who were acquainted with her knew her to speak only to her close friends and rarely, if ever, have much to do with others in the community. Yet she was completely sincere in her belief that the fellowship in the community was “great.” It was clear that she was a very private person who preferred her fellowship only with those she chose; she did not comprehend that many had felt slighted by her failure to connect with them. She did not understand community or fellowship at all.

Others might argue that lively worship services are all that is necessary for creating community. If people worship together, the reasoning goes, the Spirit will strip away differences and draw people to Christ and to each other. This implied kind of “worship experience” often means very loud, raucous music led by a worship band for an extended period of time. This is followed by a long sermon or Bible teaching, often interspersed with videos or illustrated with power point slides. A few church leaders—the professional ministerial staff and talented voluntary worship band—dominate the entire worship time, providing no time or opportunities for diverse people to talk to each other, pray with each other, laugh or weep with each other. This is further complicated by so many who are already stressed and busy and just don’t want to be bothered with anything more than lively worship and a good sermon and a quick exit from the church parking lot.

Yet another complication in community-building is the Western notion of individualism and individual rights, especially the “right to privacy.” A strength of this cultural attitude has been the production of great accomplishments by gifted individuals; this cultural emphasis creates an atmosphere in which anyone who has the right amount of ambition can achieve great things with minimal governmental or cultural interference. A weakness of this cultural attitude has been the creation of selfish, self-serving people who can be contemptuous of those who are different or considered less motivated than they. If people insist on their “right to privacy” as some kind of mysterious “divine right” of their faith over their commitment to Christ and His body, community-creating can be hampered if not destroyed. A believing community cannot be a place of loving hospitality if believers prefer privacy and are driven by ambition. In spite of this common insistence upon personal rights and privacy, loneliness seems to prevail in Western society.³ Practicing loving hospitality may very well mean giving up significant “privacy” as we “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way … fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).

Settings traditionally available for community-building to occur have become rare. The Sunday school in many churches has almost disappeared. Bible studies in homes or home fellowship groups have disbanded. Specialty groups—youth, the elderly, men, women—still exist, but often are organized in the same way that church worship services are organized (structured to the extent that all but eliminates open interaction between congregants). It is hard to create community when the same kinds of things are being done in different settings. Each church can recognize that clear definitions of community and fellowship are needed, as well as settings where true community, true fellowship can occur. These settings can be as diverse as the local churches where they might occur.

Regardless of the setting or opportunity for community-creating and fellowship-forming, the process can begin with loving hospitality. Letty M. Russell has given a good definition of hospitality: “The practice of God’s welcome embodied in our actions as we reach across differences to participate with God in bringing justice and healing to our world in crisis.”⁴ Using the Tower of Babel and Day of Pentecost stories, she calls for people of faith to practice openness and kindness to all, regardless of differences. “When reading the story of Babel in conjunction with Acts 2, we see that unity comes, not through building a tower of domination or uniformity, but through communication.”⁵ It is in Christ, she argues, that “unity is the impossible possibility” so that “each of us will cease to live apart from one another and become a part of God’s beautifully diverse creation.”⁶

Russell attempts to do what she calls “re-frame” a theology of justice “in terms of social structures of justice and of partnership across barriers of difference.”⁷ Using the biblical stories of cities of refuge, she recommends the creation of “safe space” wherein the well being of all of creation is given great attention. To illustrate her ideas, she gives an extended interpretation of the story of Ruth, which she hopes “might be viewed as a metaphor of God’s New Creation where all are partners with each other and God through our acts of hospitality.”⁸ Russell also uses the prophet Amos to insist on the practice of justice in the expression of hospitality (cf. Amos 5:24). “God’s welcome is then an act of both love and justice through the offer of unbounded hospitality.”⁹ As people practice “mutual welcome,” they might be surprised by the divine presence “unawares.”¹⁰

Many believers might argue that a hearty welcome is provided all visitors to the local church, and these believers might sincerely believe they are doing all they can to provide loving hospitality. However, sometimes the views of visitors might be different from the perceptions of the regular attendees. Is there only a cursory welcome provided? Is it clear to the visitors that only certain kinds of people are truly welcome while others are just formally recognized? Is there expressed a kind of paternalism in the welcome offered (i.e., is the hospitality offered only from a dominant position)? If genuine hospitality exists in a community its effects will be evident. Henri Nouwen describes some of these effects:

Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights.¹¹

Like Russell, Yong also emphasizes God’s expression or extension of hospitality to all through those who belong to God’s kingdom, but Yong also emphasizes Jesus as an exemplary recipient of hospitality, from his birth in an offered stable to his burial in an offered tomb. Yong uses the phrase “free space” and says this is created by hospitality and describes it this way:

Christians must discern the Spirit’s presence and “perform” appropriate practices in concert with the hospitable God. They must embody Christ’s incarnational vulnerability and open up theological and relational “free space” not only to serve as hosts for the gospel but also risk being guests of others.¹²

In extending loving hospitality, believers might create a “free space” (Yong) or “safe space” (Russell) in their local faith communities where believers can both extend and receive expressions of hospitality among those who attend as God’s representatives, and thus in the process, begin to create a community of truth, justice, and love. This will require humility and vulnerability toward those who are welcomed into the community. Do we have the humility to welcome “strangers” with the possibility that we might be “entertaining angels” (Heb 13:2)? Do we recognize Christ in those who are different, hurting, or strange (Matt 25:31ff.)? It cannot be emphasized too much to say that both the expression and reception of loving hospitality is the only way true community can even begin to be possible.

In his short story, “The Three Hermits,” Leo Tolstoy tells about a bishop on a pilgrimage on a ship with other pilgrims.¹³ At one of the ports where they docked on their journey, the bishop overheard some sailors describing three hermits who lived on a deserted island nearby and who were trying to live for God. When the bishop heard this he insisted that the sailors take him there so the bishop could meet them and teach them a little about the faith. When he arrived on the island, the hermits warmly greeted the bishop. They told him of their simple lives of faith and service to each other and recited their simple prayer for the bishop.

The bishop insisted on teaching them more about the faith and also required them to learn the Lord’s Prayer. All day he tried reciting it to them and having them say it back. It was a difficult chore, for all three hermits were uneducated men. Finally, at the end of the day, the bishop thought they had learned to pray and had learned the rudiments of the faith. The sailors then took him back to his ship.

Late that night sailors on the ship in which the bishop and pilgrims were traveling awoke the bishop to tell him of a strange light approaching the ship. The bishop and the pilgrims gathered to watch the light. As it approached it became clear that the light was illuminating the three hermits walking on the water toward the boat. All on the ship were astounded. When they arrived, they shouted to the bishop to teach them again the Lord’s Prayer for they had forgotten it after he had left. Here is what the bishop said: “Your own prayer will reach the Lord, men of God. It is not for me to teach you. Pray for us sinners.” And the bishop bowed low before the old men; and they turned and went back across the sea.¹⁴

Spirit-Enabled Fellowship

Gordon Atkinson described his first experience of a Quaker meeting in which worship consisted of sixty minutes of silence, interrupted only by different ones who would rise to speak briefly. He first experienced anxiety when someone would speak, but noticed the Quakers gave each person their attention until he or she was finished; then they would return to thoughtful meditation. He decided at the second meeting he attended that he could relax and participate in the silence and sense of community.

When someone speaks at a Quaker meeting, that person has no power to change the meeting or the rules or the nature of the community. If the gathered people sense the presence of the Spirit in the speaker’s words, there are tried and ancient methods for testing that. But no one feels threatened. Everyone is free to put his or her energy into hearing the person. Quakers are accustomed to seeking the wisdom of God in the words of a brother or sister.¹⁵

Such thoughtful and careful attention to each other as all have a chance to speak or participate is at the very heart of Spirit-enabled fellowship.

Testimony time has traditionally been a distinctive of Pentecostal worship. People have been given a chance in worship to share prayer requests, answered prayers, deep hurts and longings, concern for loved ones. During this time in worship the operation of the spiritual gifts would sometimes occur and many would be blessed. All might feel a particular closeness after the experience. Mark J. Cartledge calls testimony “… the integrating center of Pentecostal and charismatic epistemology.”¹⁶

It is through finding a connection with both the biblical story and personal stories of faith that members of a believing community become connected with one another. Hearing members relate their experiences with the biblical stories and their own encounters with God can help others in the community to find their own connections with both the Bible and the Spirit. Knowing the stories creates a bond of fellowship with God and with others enabled by the Spirit. Even mainline churches seem to be recognizing the value of testimony.¹⁷

In his commentary on 1 and 2 Samuel, Walter Brueggemann notes the power of speech in the stories in the Samuel narratives:

People talk to one another, and their talking matters. The playful possibility of speech is at work in the public process of Israel. People listen and are changed by such speech, and God is drawn deeply into the conversation. That is how Israel discerns what has happened in its memory and in its life.¹⁸

Pentecostal people can learn to talk to each other, to discern the Spirit’s voice in each other’s stories. They can also learn to appreciate the power of the story to make a difference in their lives.

The Bible is a collection of stories—testimonies—about God’s saving deeds. It is God’s intention that “God’s name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (Exod 9:16) by God’s people through testimony. God’s name is best proclaimed in telling the stories of God’s saving deeds in human history (Ps 78:1–8ff.). The ultimate divine saving deed is that of Jesus Christ as expressed in the gospel story. It is in that story—THE story—that believers can find a reference point for their little lives—THE story becomes MY story. Here is how Jurgen Moltmann put it:

The proclamation of the gospel always belongs within a community, for every language lives in a community or creates one … The fellowship which corresponds to the gospel in its original interpretation is the messianic community … It is a “story-telling fellowship,” which continually wins its own freedom from the stories and myths of the society in which it lives, from the present realization of this story of Christ.¹⁹

Many works have been published proving that humans learn in the form of stories. In one such work, the writer makes the point that people understand life events only as they are able to attach those events to a story. He claims that it is the only way people make sense of their world.²⁰ Since a well-told story is powerful and influential, biblical writers used stories to persuade God’s people to be faithful and to obey God. Stories of God’s saving deeds in times of distress for the faith community became important for the faithful person to hear. Hearing these stories made it possible for individual believers to place their lives in God’s hands.²¹

I like to think of our hearing the biblical story as a kind of “intersection” of believers’ stories with the story. By making the biblical story the reference point for my little story I discover where I fit in God’s story. My behavior, character, and destiny are altered. By making the biblical story the filter for my little life’s story I remain accountable and responsible. Like a foundation for the building that is my life, the biblical story keeps me truly “grounded” and safe when the winds of the world, the flesh, and the devil blow my way. The more distance created from the biblical story, the more likely believers will succumb to those winds and face ultimate collapse. The tighter believers remain connected to the biblical story—their foundation—the greater will be their confidence and security that is found only in an obedient relationship with the Creator as expressed by the biblical story.

Regardless of the profession to which believers are called, knowing the biblical story is important. Business people will work for a company or a corporation that has a story. Pastors called to minister at a church learn that each local church has a story. Teachers in the public schools learn that every child has a story and that a story comes out of that community where their students live. Psychologists will hear others’ stories, many of which they will be asked to interpret. Whatever laypeople are called to do and wherever they go they will be asked to hear stories and often interpret them, sometimes for others, always for themselves.

It is in the hearing and interpreting of stories that believers can find the intersection points with the biblical story. Thus, hearing the biblical story can be exciting and rewarding; it need not be boring and exhausting. Not only can laypeople hear and analyze the biblical story, they can also learn to tell their story better in relation to the story. And, with others in mind, lay believers can begin to think creatively about how they can help others intersect with the biblical story. I want to try to find ways my life’s story intersects with the biblical story. And what a difference it makes!

Having discovered great truths within the biblical story, laypeople can then tell the story, and, by telling the story, communicate those truths. When Jesus wanted to speak of the risky, scandalous, and longsuffering love of God for God’s people, he told a story about two sons, one who asked for his inheritance so he could do as he pleased and another son who had no pity or mercy for the other, caring only for himself. For centuries believers have called this story the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11ff.), and it communicates great theological truths in story form.

When God wanted to call Israel back to God from their idolatry, God sent the prophet Hosea to the nation. Through his painful experience with his wife, Hosea was able to communicate both his story and the story of God’s saving mercy and love to an idolatrous people. Imbedded within the story of Hosea and Gomer is a bigger story of God’s longsuffering love for God’s people. When God wanted to tell the people God was willing to reshape them according to the divine plan, God sent Jeremiah to the potter’s house (Jer 18:1–12). There, Jeremiah understood the story within the story. God was like the potter Jeremiah saw, who was willing to work with marred pieces (people) to reshape them into vessels useful and worthy to God. The story told the people of God’s concern for them and of God’s sovereign control over the clay (the people).

We can see in these stories certain transactions occurring that draw people into the story-world created by the biblical narrator. The story-world created invites the hearer/reader to live in a world where all sorts of transactions are possible. The story is presented in such a way that though times, places, traditions, and even events may change, the story-world is not finally bound by these changes. The story contains inexplicable, divinely enabled elements that make possible future transactions for people willing to enter this world and hear and see with the ears and eyes of faith. This makes it possible for people of faith to live obediently according to the transactions of the narrative. Jeremiah spoke of a “Potter-God” who was willing to reshape sinful people. Is the Potter-God still willing to reshape sinful people and make them obedient children of God? The answer is a resounding, “Yes!” The task will be to discover how believers can retell those stories in a form that is understandable to those in our cultures.

What might help to make hearing the biblical story so powerful is hearing the stories of others in which they describe how they wrestled with important life issues and with their faith. Through hearing these stories, believers become connected to each other in ways that are impossible except by this method. Testimony time in Pentecostal worship is only the beginning, albeit an important beginning. It is in testimony time that believers learn more about each other. Conversations of depth and meaning can continue long after worship time is over when believers learn more about the stories of brothers and sisters. Using examples from the Psalter in which psalmists describe their experiences with Torah and with God, Scott Ellington asserts that this process of testimony “is essential because it legitimates the community’s stories and allows for their re-appropriation.”²² He described it this way:

Truth-as-testimony offers a promising way in which to understand the Bible’s truth-claims. Testimony involves selective remembering and includes the beliefs of the one testifying, along with references to the events that are believed to be true. Furthermore, it is at times possible to evaluate testimony about God through the continuing process of bringing together that testimony and fresh experiences of God’s presence and absence. The common thread that allows the bringing together of the worldview(s) of the biblical writers and the worldview(s) of Pentecostals is a commonly held belief that God remains an active agent (indeed the primary active agent) in the biblical stories.²³

What may seem strange to some is this connection of testimony and fellowship. It is important to understand just how vital it is for believers to intertwine their lives in the faith community. The best way to do that is to hear each other’s stories. As believers become familiar with their brothers and sisters in Christ, they learn about each other’s hurts, concerns, joys, and anxieties. They learn about their loved ones, their work, their neighborhoods. In brief, they become connected through the telling of their stories. Miroslav Volf has made the point well about relationships within the believing community. He has noted that new believers do not attain full maturity in Christ when they come to faith in Jesus Christ. It is through fellowship with others that believers can grow to maturity. Volf observes,

Just as a person cannot arise, develop, and live apart from her relationships with others, neither can a Christian exist as a Christian before entering into relation with other Christians; she is first constituted as a Christian through these relations.²⁴

It is through testimony, conversation, education, nurture, and worship that believers are brought to maturity and maintained in their faith as God’s grace works by means of God’s spirit in and through the community. C. Ellis Nelson put it well when he said that a Christian faith matures,

… when life experiences are interpreted in the light of the Christian tradition in order to understand and do the will of God amid ongoing events in which that person is involved. Because a congregation is part of the Body of Christ, it is the place where individuals receive guidance, as they work out the meaning of their experiences, and (find) support as they attempt to follow the leading of God’s Spirit.²⁵

As a young, zealous convert to Christ at age eighteen, I was anxious to share my faith with others in my small hometown in western Oklahoma. I measured spirituality by vocal, energetic expressions of the gospel. I was convinced that others weren’t in what I deemed at the time to be spiritual groups and that the groups they were in were “less spiritual” than my group. It was not long before I learned a hard lesson from one of those so-called “less spiritual” people. A humble man who owned a drugstore in my small hometown was known for his kindness and regular church attendance, but not much else. Imagine my surprise when, in one of my forays into personal evangelism in the community, I discovered that for months the druggist had gone to a very poor man’s home to give pain shots twice a day to a destitute man with terminal cancer whom the poor man had taken in. He gave these shots despite the fact that he had a business to run and a family to care for. And he did so without fanfare or recognition.

The druggist’s witness showed me that a true witness provides more than just a tract and a gospel sermon; a true witness also is there to offer comfort and loving assistance to those who are hurting and needy. The destitute man did not need a gospel tract or a sermon; he needed a humble servant who would demonstrate true concern by giving him every day the medicine he needed in order to live. I was telling the poor man and his friend how to be a follower of Jesus Christ; the pharmacist was showing him how to be a follower of Christ. That “sermon” by the pharmacist was better than any I would preach!

Fellowship of the Spirit (koinonia) was a key characteristic of the Early Church after the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:42). As a part of this Spirit-enabled fellowship, believers shared their worldly goods with each other, met regularly, and had meals together (Acts 2:44–46). These are all important activities for creating strong connections, relationships of meaning and depth. Perhaps koinonia might be better translated “to share in” or “to be involved in partnership with one another”26 through various kinds of community activities. These fellowship activities also resulted in others joining their community as new believers (Acts 2:47). Spirit-enabled fellowship resulted in a kind of successful community evangelism. Volf noted the evangelistic dynamic of fellowship:

The church is the fellowship of siblings who are friends, and the fellowship of friends who are siblings. Of course, these two metaphors describe the relationships within the interior ecclesial sphere and suggest that the church is an intimate group. Other metaphors must complement these to make it clear that the church is an “open” fellowship of friends and siblings who are called to summon enemies and strangers to become friends and children of God and to accept them as friends and siblings. Only such open fellowship is commensurate with the ultimate vision of the church as the eschatological gathering of the entire people of God from all tribes and nations.²⁷

It is important to remember 1 Corinthians and the various difficulties in the Corinthian church that Paul addressed. The believers could hardly experience Spirit-enabled fellowship with one another when they had broken into factions: I follow Paul; I follow Apollos; I follow Peter; I follow Christ (1 Cor 1:10–12). They could hardly share Spirit-enabled fellowship when some still ate food offered to idols (1 Cor 10:14–22) and others were preoccupied with charismatic gifts without love (1 Cor 14:18–20). Instead of loving and supporting one another through Spirit-enabled fellowship, wealthy believers had shut out fellow believers who were marginalized by that society because of their poverty. In fact, in all of the problems Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians, divisions created in the community have resulted in hardship and dissension rather than peace and a sense of community. Paul rightfully claimed that such an atmosphere is not in keeping with the work of the spirit of God.

Early Christians often took a meal together called the Love Feast. This feast involved people bringing what they could to eat (potluck!) to be shared with the community. William Barclay pointed out that this was practiced during the main meal of the day when all were supposed to eat slowly and enjoy each other’s company.²⁸ As a part of that Love Feast, the faith community would also have partaken of the Lord’s Supper. However, instead of being a time when all are nourished by both the meal and the remembrance of Christ’s death, the Corinthian believers made their gatherings occasions when some were humiliated (1 Cor 11:21–22).

The humiliation involved the wealthier people (in whose homes such meals would have been provided since these homes were large enough to accommodate the believers) who were eating the best food and wine and leaving little or no food or drink for their poorer brethren. In first-century Greek homes there was a special dining room for honored (and presumably wealthy) guests to sit and eat. Lesser (and presumably poorer) guests would have been asked to stand in the larger room adjoining the dining room.²⁹ In other words, the wealthy Corinthian believers were observing social or status distinctions in clear violation of the spirit of the gospel—all were to share equally of the provisions of the community. How disgraceful, then, for the rich Corinthian believers to be eating and drinking to excess while their poorer brethren go without! What kind of gospel witness was that?

An interesting wordplay is found in Paul’s use of the Greek verb, synerchesthai, “to come together” (1 Cor 11:17,18, 20, 33, 34). When they “come together” they do not “come together.” It means that when they come together for worship and fellowship they are not united in their witness to the gospel. They try to maintain social status rather than try to remove all class distinctions and freely share what they have with one another. This division is damaging to everyone. The problem here is not in the way they performed the ritual of the Lord’s Supper; it is that they do not recognize the Body of Christ, the people of the faith community (1 Cor 11:29). Already, Paul hints of judgment in verse 19. Paul noted a certain difference as necessary for a distinction to be made; however, the difference Paul had in mind was not the difference between rich and poor (social status), but between those who were “approved by God” (dokimoi) and those who were not! In other words, what brought God’s judgment in the Lord’s Supper were actions that caused harm to one another. As Barclay put it, “A church is no true church if the art of sharing is forgotten.”³⁰

In essence, this description of the divisions within the Corinthian church is a kind of testimony, too. Their testimony (by their behavior) was not one of Spirit-enabled fellowship but one of division and class distinction. In such an atmosphere, poor believers’ stories were silenced. The wealthy believers were not listening.

If there is to be Spirit-enabled fellowship through testimony—interacting with the biblical story and believers’ life stories—more than a speaker is required. Also required are people who are willing to listen to what the Spirit might be saying and willing to listen to what fellow believers are trying to say—sometimes the Spirit is speaking through what fellow believers are trying to say. Brueggemann has eloquently expressed the importance of listening:

We are created for listening. It is our proper business. We are made for communion, but the communion for which we are formed is not that of mindless camaraderie. It is a communion with the One who has hoped us and made us and summoned us and who waits for us … Our life consists in coming to terms with that One. We yearn to come to terms by listening. In the Bible, obedience takes the form of listening. The obedient life is one in which Israel listens, attends to, and responds to the voice of God … Listening of any serious kind is difficult. Listening is more difficult if the substance is [God’s] command, for such listening is the end of our self-control and our self-sufficiency. We are schooled in self-control and self-sufficiency and now God’s powerful voice of command sounds, which destabilizes our favorite posture in the world. Listening is difficult for us because the modern world is organized against serious speech, against authoritative speech, against listening, against passionate discourse that binds one to another and causes one to yield to another. The notions of self-sufficiency and autonomy that govern our consciousness make listening difficult and obedience nearly impossible.³¹

It is possible for God’s powerful voice to speak clearly through the testimonies of all believers. As the Body of Christ, believers need one another in many ways, but perhaps need each other most fundamentally by their careful attention to each other. By attentive listening to the testimonies of fellow Christians, all believers just might hear the voice of the Spirit. They might hear of ways they can be helped, or they might hear of ways they can help others.

Careful attention to people who are telling their stories—testifying—creates a true bond of respect and integrity. There is great power in hearing and being heard, but that can come only in a community where all are given a chance to speak and where all testimony is taken very seriously.

In the faith community it is also possible to have “voices” that are unable to speak. Those whose disabilities or social awkwardness might prevent their voices from being heard in testimony may be encouraged to find other ways to testify. Some may express themselves through drama, music, or just their personality; others “testify” by their kind and caring attitude, thus conveying their intrinsic value to the Body of Christ. Those who cannot speak may require other believers to be their voice so that their “testimony” is also included in the community’s story.

My son is afflicted on the severe side of the autism spectrum. He is nonverbal and profoundly mentally handicapped. However, when he was twenty, his teacher in his special education class wrote a note to us one day that read:

I wanted you to know how wonderful your son is. Today I had some bad news and I was crying. I went into the bathroom to wipe my tears and Phillip came to the door and said, “You okay?” He was the only one to take notice and I truly appreciate that!

Who will verbalize such testimonies in church? Here is a nonverbal person who somehow found just enough of a voice to express his concern to a hurting person. It is both a miracle that he spoke spontaneously and appropriately and that his simple speech was directed to assisting someone in need. How many stories or testimonies like this from nonverbal people remain untold?

At this point in this narrative, it is certain that most believers would give enthusiastic assent to what has been written: a faith community can provide a place of hospitality for all, encourage the formation of a listening community, and hear the biblical stories and the testimonies of the gathered saints, even those who are inarticulate and require help from the believing community. If only this did not sound so idealistic, as though it were an egalitarian dream. What about all the messiness, fleshliness, and foolishness found in even the best of faith communities?

Those who have participated in Pentecostal church services in which testimony was encouraged will, no doubt, recall painful moments when people decided to use the time for lengthy speeches of complaint, or rambling accounts of who-knows-what, or the same old line about gratitude for salvation, sanctification, and Spirit-baptism. Many would cringe when certain ones would stand to testify, certain that they were about to unleash something strange or lengthy with little connection to the work or voice of the Spirit.

The result of this kind of frustrating experience with testimony time has been its gradual disappearance from the Pentecostal church. This seemed to have started with attempts by professional ministers to control the content of testimonies. In 1989, Margaret Poloma reported,

In many large churches testimonials have become professionalized. Selecting persons to give testimonies may eliminate the potential problems of the practice but at the expense of charismatic spontaneity. When eliciting a testimony from someone in the congregation, some pastors use the “question-answer” format of television talk shows, for it gives the pastor control over what is shared.³²

Certainly, it takes courage by church leaders to make sure there is order in all parts of church worship (or in whatever setting) according to the apostle’s instruction in 1 Corinthians 14:26–33. However, the deletion of testimony time or the strict control of it by professional ministers actually robs the faith community of the powerful work of the Spirit in creating Spirit-enabled fellowship as well as ways the voice of the Spirit might be heard.

In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the message by church leaders to the congregation might be that lay voices in testimony are not welcomed and will not be heard. An unspoken yet very clear message might be conveyed that only the pastoral staff and the worship team are allowed to express themselves publicly in church meetings. As a result, laypeople learn that silence is valued and that listening is a one-way street—the pastoral staff and worship team may speak, the laypeople must listen.

It is in community worship or settings in which all voices can be heard—Sunday school class, home Bible studies, prayer meetings—that Pentecostal people have claimed, “the Spirit is in control.” If that is the case, more people than the pastoral staff and worship team would have an opportunity to speak, share a hymn, or give a word “for the strengthening of the church” (1 Cor 14:26). This means that careful and active listening must be practiced by church leaders, both to give the “amen” to that which is confirmed as coming from the Spirit, and to give proper, gentle discipline to those who are “out of order” in that they are not speaking by the Spirit.

In my own early days of Pentecostal experience, I understood that worship was led by the pastor and church leaders, but there were at least two times during worship services when lay voices must be heard because these voices just might be speaking by the Spirit: (1) during testimony time and (2) during times at the end of the service when people gathered around the altar benches to pray. The only “control” exercised by the pastor might have been to encourage a person who had spoken too long to get to the point, or to stop someone from interrupting someone else.

In addressing the issue of the messiness and potential strangeness of testimonies during testimony time in worship, it is important to stress the work of discipleship. Disciples are ones who can learn from their mentors in all aspects of the faith, including how to testify. They learn how to listen to God as well as how to express what they think the Spirit is asking them to say or do. They can also learn to alter their explanatory style, (i.e., learn how to say what they feel compelled to say in words or song or prophecy appropriate to the setting).³³ Where else might they learn the appropriate language to express their story?

This is not to suggest that helping believers find the language to express their story means telling them what to say or trying to control what they say. It is good for believers to find the language by which they might testify to God’s presence or absence, to their joys and sorrows; however, there will always remain an element of messiness, of untidiness. Believers can and will make mistakes in telling their stories, but a loving, nurturing community will be able to bear these mistakes as long as those testifying are trying to be authentic and faithful to God and their brothers and sisters.

In the faith, no one springs spontaneously to full blown maturity. All will make mistakes, but in a loving community where it is understood that all make mistakes, believers can find “permission” and encouragement to correct them. The potential for messiness or strangeness of testimony in testimony time during worship is not a satisfactory excuse for deleting it from community activities. Testimony remains a key method by which Spirit-enabled fellowship functions—believers need to express how God is working in their lives; other believers need to listen attentively for the voice of the Spirit.

It is also important to note that yet another weakness of testimony is the constant pressure always to have a good ending to one’s story. Failure, lack of faith, and struggles may be told, but only in the context of eventual victory and success. If testimony represents an accurate description of believers’ faith stories, then those stories are not always ones of success and “victory.” Believers who suffer should not be chided for their unbelief or scolded into faith. Permission to lament must be granted. Condemnation of those who are hurting must itself be condemned. Instead of condemnation, other believers can offer their own “shoulder of faith” on which suffering believers, plagued by doubts, might lean for a season while they are seeking for equilibrium in their spiritual lives. Ellington has argued that “the loss of lament is related to an increasing loss of testimony in the praying community.”³⁴

If Spirit-enabled fellowship comes to fruition, it will come only as “truth-as-testimony”³⁵ (i.e., the testimony comes out as what is really going on in a person’s life rather than only “acceptable” rhetoric related to success and “good” things). Without the possibility of transparency in testimony, the truth will usually be withheld. Often, a kind of fiction exists whereby is conveyed the idea that everyone is well and happy. Sadly, many who are unhappy are not allowed to say that. Believers thus do not know each other’s full stories and cannot respond to others as the Spirit reveals. It is great to “rejoice with those who rejoice”; it is hard to “mourn with those who mourn” (Rom 12:15). Even if there are those who are suffering or are weak or failing, we can remember these words: “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up” (Rom 15:1–2).

The phrase, “to build him up,” in the passage in Romans speaks to the therapeutic value in testimony. In seminary, I learned about pastoral counseling from Dr. John W. Drakeford. He believed that laypeople could be trusted to tell their stories to other believers to help them deal with the common problems that beset humans. He certainly believed in the work of professional therapists and psychiatrists for those clinically depressed; however, the majority of people simply need a caring community of believers willing to share their life stories in coping with the frustrations and hurts of everyday life. Dr. Drakeford called his method Integrity Therapy and advocated simple requirements of those practicing it: basic honesty, sensitivity to others, and a motivating concern for others.³⁶ The principles and techniques of his method are these: laity-led, high ethical standards, a concern for those in the group, an openness to confession of sins and hurts, restitution or putting things right and trying to heal any hurts, and a desire to take the message to others.³⁷ Through the practice of one believer telling another believer how she coped with a particular issue, the other believer might be able to learn how to cope with a similar issue. The power of such interactions came in the integrity of the experience related by someone in the group. In this way, the Spirit-enabled personal testimony to assist believers in handling life’s difficulties.³⁸

In the past, God’s word has come through tablets of stone and handwriting on a wall and through the pages of Scripture. It has come through a flood and a rainbow, a burning bush and a whirling wind. Through the correction of the prophets and the curses of Shimei. His word has thundered from Sinai and whimpered from a manger. His word has come through a dream in the light and a vision in the day. Through the mouths of kings and the mouths of babes. Through the psalms of God’s anointed and the poems of pagans. Through a star in the night and through angels in the field. Through a poor widow’s offering, the picture of a good Samaritan, and the story of a prodigal son. His word was spoken through the law of Moses and afterward, more eloquently, through the life of Christ. We live by those words and on those words, not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Some of those words are spoken at the most unexpected of places that if we’re not expecting, we’ll miss. Some of those words are spoken by the unlikeliest of people whom we will most likely dismiss if we don’t receive them. And some of those words come in the most uncommon of ways that we will react against if we’re not accustomed to the unaccustomed ways that God speaks. These words are the daily bread of the soul. We have the responsibility to handle them accurately. But we have a more important responsibility to handle them reverently, for they are words from the King. However they come, through whatever messenger they come, they are His words, and we should receive them as such.³⁹

PR

Read Part 2 of this article now:
“Forming a Nurturing Community”, Part 2 from Chapter Five from Steven M. Fettke, God’s Empowered People: A Pentecostal Theology of the Laity (Wipf & Stock 2011), “Forming a Community of the Spirit: Hospitality, Fellowship, and Nurture.”
Notes
Please read the full Winter 2012 issue for the Notes.

This chapter is from Steven M. Fettke, God’s Empowered People: A Pentecostal Theology of the Laity (Wipf & Stock 2011). Used with permission.