Confusion of Tongues
W. Carl Ketcherside
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It is not enough to use the words of the Spirit but we must employ them in the same way as did the divine Agent. We must not only "speak where the Bible speaks" but we must "speak as the Bible speaks." It will gain us little if we condemn the modernist who denies the meaning of the scriptural terms while at the same time we define them in such a manner as to lose their significance. One can forfeit the truth by carelessness as surely as he can defeat it by conspiracy.
The word "profane" has as one of its meanings, "to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use." "To debase" means to reduce from a higher to a lower state or grade, as in dignity, quality, purity, value, etc. It is possible that we have fallen into indiscreet and improper use of the sacred word "fellowship" and have profaned it. If so, we need to correct our vocabulary and lessen "the confusion of tongues" which keeps us scattered abroad and separated from each other. We have repeatedly pointed out that the Holy Spirit does not equate fellowship in Christ Jesus with absolute conformity in opinion, knowledge, or interpretation. To do so would be to render fellowship impossible among finite and fallible individuals.
It is just as necessary that we realize that much of what is called "fellowship" in these days is not fellowship at all. It has become all too common for brethren to announce that "After the service we will retire to the lounge in the educational building for a period of fellowship." Those who remain and retire will find that "fellowship" consists of getting a cup of coffee and a doughnut or cupcake and standing around informally chatting about this or that light topic as a relief from the "heavy" sermon previously delivered. This brings up a question. Those brethren who bitterly oppose my suggestion that all sincere immersed believers are in the fellowship, will invite the whole audience to share in the "period of fellowship" after the service. Does this mean that when the unimmersed remain at their invitation and share in the coffee and doughnuts at their insistence, that they "fellowship" them, as they use the term? Or, do they keep their fingers crossed when they pass the coffee to "an outsider."
"Fellowship" as the Spirit uses the term is not something you turn on and off periodically. If the brethren were not enjoying fellowship during the service, what they do after the service will not be fellowship either. It will be coffee and doughnuts they partake of and not fellowship! So widespread has this misconception become that a lot of folk have forgotten that fellowship is a state of the heart and not of the stomach. Paul was as much in the fellowship when he suf-
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A feeling of sadness comes over me when I visit brethren who pay lipservice to restoration and then want to show me through "the sanctuary" and "the fellowship hall." They are wrong on both counts. Instead of restoring the ancient order they have borrowed the first expression from the Roman Catholic Church and the second from the Protestant sectarian world. The only sanctuary God has on this earth today is the consecrated heart of a believer. Here is where the Holy Spirit dwells and not in temples made with men's hands. Wherever a Christian is there is the temple of God. It was well for the poets of Judaism to say, "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go up to the house of our God,'" but now we are the house of God. We do not go to the house of God, it is the house of God that does the going!
Christianity has no sacred places, no sacred days, no sacred rituals. Men can no more erect a "fellowship hall" than they can create "a sanctuary" from bricks and mortar. If we are in Christ Jesus we are in the fellowship regardless of where we may be. Paul was in the fellowship with the saints when he was in the Roman prison and they were in the fellowship with him. Mind you, I am not objecting to the erection of meetinghouses in which the saints may gather about the table of the Lord, nor am I opposing the gathering of the same saints around a table spread with the physical comforts of life. I only say that to confuse the great and majestic concept of "the fellowship of the Spirit" with such occasions and to feel that it is limited and confined to such times is to profane the word.
I seriously question the usage by the saints of such expressions as "a fellowship meeting," "men's fellowship," "women's fellowship," "youth fellowship," etc. The koinonia into which we are called of God cannot be divided, parceled out, or segregated in such a manner. None of these are scriptural expressions nor do I believe there are scriptural terms for the ideas they represent or convey. The fellowship is a creation of the Spirit and there is but one Spirit. There is not a men's Spirit, a woman's Spirit, and a youth's Spirit. When I meet with the brothers in a special meeting I am as much in the fellowship with the sisters and young people who are not there as with the men who are. There is only one fellowship because there is only one body. There are no separate "brotherhoods" in our Lord.
Every meeting of the disciples is a fellowship meeting just as every such meeting is a communion service. When brethren meet to sing, pray and study together on Wednesday night they have a communion service as certainly as when they gather about the Lord's table on the Lord's Day. The breaking of the bread is not the communion of the saints. It is just one phase of it. Whatever we do in union of heart and purpose is part of our communion with each other, because it is done within the framework of brotherhood. When we fragmentize and departmentalize our lives and Christian experience and designate that which is done "after the regular service" as fellowship-- equating it with coffeemakers, "Coke" machines, or chocolate covered cupcakes--we profane the word "fellowship" and postpone the recovery of the spirit of the early saints of God.
Have we become inoculated with the spirit of this age until a call to genuine restoration is an offence? Do we really want to restore the word of truth to a place of authority in our lives, or will we heed it only in those areas where it does not cut across our thinking and practice? It will be exceedingly difficult to restore a true sense of fellowship until brethren know what it is that needs to be restored. May we all be humbled to the extent that we shall answer the call of God with the words, "Speak Lord, thy servant heareth."