The Church as a Fellowship of Believers

Everett Wilson has been a minister of the Evangelical Covenant Church since graduation from North Park Theological Seminary in 1962. After forty-six years as a pastor of five Covenant churches(Saskatoon being one of those churches), he and Donna retired to their home state of Nebraska. In addition to serving in a variety of Covenant Churches, he also wrote a little brochure entitled ‘Covenant Distinctives’ which was an attempt to identify how the Covenant is perhaps different from some of the other evangelical groups.( Evangelical but not exclusive... Biblical but not doctrinaire... Traditional but not rigid... Congregational but not independent)

Around 200 years before Donald Frisk taught systematic theology at North Park Theological Seminary (1945-1975) John Wesley did a pretty good job of describing him. 

      A man of a truly catholic spirit has not now his religion to seek. He is fixed as the sun in his judgment concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine. It is true, he is always ready to hear and weigh whatsoever can be offered against his principles; but as this does not show any wavering in his own mind, so neither does it occasion any. He does not halt between two opinions, nor vainly endeavor to blend them into one. (Sermon 39, Collected Sermons)
      Frisk thought for himself and taught his students, me among them, to think for ourselves; but we had to be alert for his persistent—but always courteous—question: “What do you mean by that?” If he asked it in class he would not let us off the hook by answering it for us. If we did not know what we meant, we should not have said it. He asked the question not to intimidate or ridicule, which was not in him to do, but to teach.
      He taught me pretty well, so now I am asking Frisk’s question as I ponder the fourth Affirmation: “we affirm the church as a fellowship of believers.” What do we mean by that?
      “Church,” “Fellowship,” and “Believers” have so many connotative meanings that the affirmation may mean something of eternal consequence or something too trivial to discuss, or several options in between--some heretical. Heresy is wonderfully inventive.
      I have been asked to summarize the affirmation, but since the affirmation is itself a summary I will let my introductory comments stand in place of a summary. Then I am to address the following questions:

1. What does this affirmation mean? 

2. Why is fellowship vital for the life of a believer? 

3. How does this affirmation affect the life of Covenanters in the pews?

4. How does this affirmation affect the life of the Covenant church as a larger community.

1. To grasp the meaning of the church as a fellowship of believers we must aim very high. No secular definition of any of the three key words applies to them as they are used in this affirmation.
In this usage, Fellowship has nothing to do with coffee, Church has nothing to do with boards, committees, or majority votes, and Believers has nothing to do with opinions.
      Rather, fellowship is the same as participation; specifically, participation in the Holy Spirit. The Greek word, koinonia, is translated as either “participation,” “fellowship,” or “communion.” So in the Lord’s Supper the broken bread is a participation in the body of Christ.
      Believers, therefore, are not defined by their common opinions but by their common relationship with God through the Spirit and Word. It is not formed by the Spirit alone as ecstatic experience, or by the Word alone as rational construct; the church is an incarnate word, the body of Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The Church as anything less or other than this is no church at all. Paul’s Trinitarian benediction at the end of 2 Corinthians—the grace of the Redeemer, the love of the Father, and the Participation of the Spirit—describes the impenetrable integrity of the church at all times and in all places. It is created by the Father, redeemed by the Son, and born anew by the Holy Spirit. It is a world away from a group of disaffected believers who think they can make a church by writing up some articles of incorporation or a list of affirmations.
      But these affirmations did not spring from the invention of a denominational committee. The Committee rather discerned them from the Covenant’s commitment to the Word and its participation in the Spirit. If my memory is correct—and there are not many still in this world to dispute it—the committee was appointed to express a consensus, not a creed; a description, not a prescription; an IS, not a SHOULD. If we succumb to treating the Affirmations as a creed, as some seem to be itching to do (and maybe getting away with it here and there) the Covenant will end its history as a life movement and become a religious bureaucracy. It has happened before.
      2. Fellowship is necessary to the life of the believer. It cannot be otherwise. The church is the household of God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15), not the human achievement of like-minded people. Fellowship is a fact of the church’s existence, like breathing in and out is a fact of yours. In other words, it is a matter of life and death. Because we are fleshly, organic creatures, we require interaction; it is not an option except in exceptional cases, which are required by definition to be few.
      3. If Covenanters have the will to do the will of God, this affirmation will be a constant reminder to bring their behavior in line with it—to rejoice in their common identity with other Christians, to rely upon it and be relied upon in return. If they do not have this will, they will disrupt the peace and purity of the church. Stanley Jones used to say that the will of God is the way the universe is run. You get hurt if you don’t go along. The church is a local expression of the same principle. It goes bad, however, when members confuse a “don’t rock the boat” mindset with the will of God, and treat those who want to do the will of God as troublemakers.
      4. The church is the fellowship of those who are born from above. Any limitation on Christian fellowship that is more limiting than this runs counter to the vision of the founding fathers, even though they were limited by language barriers in our early years. Peter Matson, our first missionary, was distressed by the slowness of the Covenant in the United States to break out of the Swedish Ghetto.
      But we did. Some of it came in a rush. The church was in its 99th year before it had a non-Swede (me!) as moderator of the Annual Meeting. It was my privilege to moderate the Centennial Meeting the next year also. Then the dam broke! I was succeeded by the first woman, and she was succeeded by the first Chinese-American.

The Covenant has always had a world vision.