Fellowship as a Faith Community

It is the same with the body of Christ. We need to get the body strong. When we get the body of Christ strong and nourished and uplifted, then we've got a healthy body that can move forward, that can function, and that can be the solution in the world.

Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.

“So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.”

Acts 2:46 (NKJV)

We build relationships, which leads to transparency, which leads to being able to minister into those needs, which leads to accountability, and that is how home fellowships actually provide the solution.

Hi, everyone. It's really a privilege for me today to chat to you about something very practical. People ask, "What is fellowship all about?" And I'd love to share with you, because a lot of what relates to fellowship is what is truly in my heart, and I would love to share that with as many people as possible.

I think it's important that when I talk about fellowship, fellowship is, in essence, a faith community. I want to talk about principles: why we are on this earth, what we have been sent for, what we are here to do, and how we measure what we are doing. For me, it is certainly not about a recipe or about processes. It is principles. I will share some practical aspects, but they are guidelines.

It is just to share about what we are doing. If it helps somebody, that will be great. But by no means am I saying there is only one answer for how we execute it.

It is important that we start out saying, "What is our purpose on earth?" It might be a fairly complex topic - I have a whole series of teachings on that; you can follow the links below. But in essence, purpose is as simple as manifesting the presence of God in this earth.

That is why He created us. That is His idea for us in this earth: to manifest His presence. In the Old Testament, when God sent Moses, Moses asked, "How shall I say who sent me?" And God said, "I AM." Who He is, is enough. His presence is enough. We don't have to try to fabricate things. We don't have to try to come up with new things. Our goal is to manifest God in this earth, or more specifically, to manifest Christ, which is the church.

It's the body of Christ, and Christ Himself as the head of that body - that is church. So our purpose is to be the body, to allow the manifest presence of Christ in this earth. So when I talk about fellowship specifically, what we want to do is create an environment that gives the best possible opportunity for somebody to manifest Christ - or, for that matter, to provide an environment where every single person has the best possible opportunity to manifest Christ.

So everything that we do should flow from that and should achieve that. Let me be very clear: whatever we do in the Kingdom of God is measurable. It's not that we just do what we want, where we want, when we want, and think maybe there are results, maybe there aren't. There has to be results - concrete results. There has to be fruit.

It amazes me when Jesus spoke about the harvest being ready, what He was actually referring to. We often think He was just speaking about an opportunity for evangelism - whenever we talk about the harvest, we tend to say evangelism, we need to go out, we need to get people born again. But Jesus was talking about much more than that when He spoke about the harvest being ready, and that's very important, because it goes to the foundation of what it is we do and the solution we offer.

“But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few."”

Matthew 9:36-37 (NKJV)

Have you thought about that scripture? Did you see what Jesus saw? Jesus saw brokenness. He saw desperation. He saw marriages falling apart. He saw disobedient children. He saw people looking for answers and unable to find them. He saw that brokenness. And when He saw that brokenness, Jesus said, "The harvest is plentiful. The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few."

If we look around us today, I want to say to you the harvest is plentiful. You don't have to look far. There is brokenness all around us - crime, desperation, marriages falling apart, kids on drugs, affairs, whatever you name it. When we look around us, Jesus is saying still today, "The harvest is ready. The harvest is plentiful."

But if we saw how Jesus actually explained the problem, the situation, we should also know that Jesus had an expectation: if the harvest is plentiful and the labourers are few, the labourers are meant to provide a solution. And that I can see in fellowship - when we pray for God to send us people, God sends us the kind of people He saw and spoke about.

God sends us people who are broken, who are desperate, people who struggle with depression, people whose marriages are falling apart, who are having affairs, who are on drugs, who are alcoholics, who are struggling just in life in general, with financial difficulties. God will send you those people. And the question is, if we want to say that what we have been sent to do is measurable, then this is where we start.

I want to ask: is God sending you broken people? And is what you're currently doing allowing God to restore their lives? Because we have to be honest with each other and realistic - God is the only solution. He is the healer, the restorer, the comforter. But what does that mean for us in practical terms? It means we have to create an environment that can manifest the presence of God, so that people can come into His presence, be touched by His presence, and because of that presence, get to a place where their lives are restored - their marriages restored, their children restored, no longer depressed, freed from pornography and whatever else is trying to destroy their lives.

So it's measurable, it's tangible, to look at whether the results are there. I can thank God that He has guided us in how we function in fellowship, so that we can manifest His presence and allow people into that light. God is light; in Him is no darkness. So we are building His body in this earth, and if we can manifest that presence, that light, that solution, then people can come into it and be restored and healed.

Then we can look around us: what does it look like? God has sent us to be the solution. Can you see people who were broken who have been restored by God? People who were falling apart who have been uplifted by God? So it is very measurable, it is tangible, and that is what we are meant to do. Our responsibility is to create an environment where God can manifest Himself, and He will be the healer, the restorer, the comforter, and the One providing the solutions.

So again, for us in fellowship, that is how we measure ourselves: are we able to give every single person the best possible chance to manifest Christ? Or, if I can put it more directly, to be Christ. We were not sent just to get people born again. We were sent to get people to become disciples, to look like Jesus, to function like Jesus, to manifest His solution in this earth to a broken world, and to change this world. We were not sent to judge. We were sent to love, to reconcile with Him, and to provide that solution to this world.

If I can talk about myself personally, just in terms of perspective - I grew up in a religious environment, but for me it was very much tradition. It was something that had very little life in it. I never saw the working of the Holy Spirit and the gifts, and so forth.

My life changed radically a few years ago, and I moved into a different environment - let's call it a more charismatic environment - where I started seeing the manifest presence of God, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and a lot more of what it should be like: healings, restoration, miracle upon miracle. It was really a great environment to function in. I grew in that environment, even to the point where I pastored a church for a few years, and we saw great things happening.

It was an active church. We went out, we did evangelism, many people became born again, we saw miracles. But there was always this component of me being the pastor: I would stand in front, and everybody would look towards me for the solution. It was as if I was just that one step more important than everybody else, as if I had certain solutions and access to God that other people didn't have - like Moses who had to go up the mountain, and the people would say, "Moses, you speak to God, you come back and tell us what God says." It was as if you become the middle man between God and people.

So yes, it was great, but it was certainly not the ultimate. God led me to move into something different, and there were very specific things He put on my heart. One of them is critical to the essence of what we are all about: our purpose is to manifest Him in this earth.

Ephesians 4 explains to us that we are to come to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So there is definitely a building process of establishing Christ in this earth, unto His fullness - and that takes something.

To be able to do that, it says He provided gifts to the body: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and the teachers. But it says He provided those gifts for the equipping - or the proper translation there is the perfecting - of the saints, for the work of the ministry.

It's important to realise that what is generally referred to as the fivefold ministry - those gifts, those offices - were never meant to be more important than anybody else. They were meant to be gifts to the body, with the goal of activating every single member in the Body of Christ. It is very clear if you read that scripture in Ephesians 4. Let's have a look.

“Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”

Ephesians 4:13 (NKJV)

So that's where we are heading. That's what we are working towards: the ultimate ability to manifest God in this earth. When we have manifested the fullness of Christ in this earth, then Jesus will come - that is what the Word explains to us. He is coming back for a bride without spot, without blemish. He is coming back for such a bride.

But it explains to us how we actually achieve that. Verse 16 says:

“From whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”

Ephesians 4:16 (NKJV)

I want to stand still on that for a moment. For us to do what we have been sent to do - to establish Him in this earth, to build the Body of Christ to its fullness - there is no way to do it without activating every single member in the Body of Christ. It says we can only do it through every joint supplying and every part doing its share. So it is significant to understand that we can only do it by activating every single Christian.

It's not good enough if 50% of Christians are activated. It's not good enough if it's 90% activated. It needs to be 100% - every Christian needs to be activated and active in the Body of Christ, bringing what God has given them to give us.

It is significant for you as a Christian to realise: no matter how you feel about yourself right now - you might feel inferior, you might feel you have nothing to offer - I can tell you, you are precious. You are precious. God loves you. You are precious and significant, and He has made you with gifts inside of you that the Body of Christ needs. And if you don't bring those gifts to the Body of Christ and become activated, there will always be a gap in the Body of Christ that you were meant to fill. So there is a place for you, and it is significant.

I want to touch on something that moves this into a more specific area. When we talk about the equipping of the saints, the perfecting of the saints, we tend to think of it in general terms - the equipping of the saints for ministry. But that is not what it's saying. It's not saying the equipping of saints for ministry. It is saying the equipping of saints for the ministry - very specific: the ministry. You will see from the original Greek word what that means.

That word ministry means the following - to be a servant. To be a servant. Remember, we are coming to the essence now of what this is all about. The fivefold ministry - the apostle, the evangelist, the pastor, the teacher, the prophet - has been given to us to equip us, every single one of us, to perfect us for the ministry.

Now we come to the core of it. All of this has just been to prepare us and equip us to actually do the work. And what is the actual work? Here it is - this is what it's all about. It's not about the evangelist. It's not about the pastor. It's not about the apostle. It was never meant to be. It is about the ministry - being able to do and live the ministry.

And what is it? Here it says: to be a servant, to serve others, to provide relief, to take care, to provide Christian affection, to prepare and to serve. It even goes to the extent of saying that word means to waiter - to prepare and serve food, to run errands.

Now we are coming to something that explains to us that we are meant to live in such a way that we serve each other to such an extent that through serving each other, we manifest His presence. Isn't that amazing? It's not this big theological, mysterious thing about manifesting the presence of God. In serving each other, we manifest His presence, and in that manifest presence, God will provide the solution that is needed for His body.

That is the core of what we are about: to serve each other, to take care of each other. That's why it says the whole body, every part taking care of each other, and in that every part being taken care of, the body ultimately grows. That's why it says it edifies itself in love. There is no alternative way to manifest God, no alternative way to manifest His presence and grow His body, other than through love.

But love is very practical. It's real, it's tangible. It's not just praying for somebody and saying, "Go and be blessed." We need to respond, we need to act based on what people's needs are. So that starts to show us something about a lifestyle, actually. Now we're getting to the point that starts to become a bit uncomfortable, if I can put it that way. When we talk about fellowship, I've already said to you: fellowship is a faith community.

A faith community is a group of believers. We have the same beliefs. We are born again. We are one in Christ, and we actually help each other. We live together. I like to refer to it as doing life together. It's not playing church. It's not coming together one hour a week, calling it church, and going home thinking we can tick the box and everything is sorted. No. It's 24/7, 365. We do life together so that we can serve each other through love, to be able to establish and edify the body of Christ unto perfection, unto maturity in this earth.

We have examples of that from the Acts era. Unfortunately, a lot of things got lost in church, in structured, organised church and in religion. When church became a building, a structure and an organisation, a lot of things got lost in terms of what it should actually be. So if we go back to the Acts church and see what it looked like, we can see there is some sort of model.

Remember what I said in the beginning: I don't want to say there's only one way of doing it. There is a goal, and that is to manifest His presence. I just think that if we go back to the model we see in the Acts church, it's a model that makes it a lot easier for us to achieve that ultimate goal – to live such a lifestyle that we take care of each other, put the body first and put each other first, so that we are able to manifest His presence.

Make no mistake, we have become accustomed to a Westernised lifestyle that actually makes it very difficult for us to live the kind of life that is expected of a Christian. That's just the reality. Let's have a look in Acts 2 from verse 41.

“Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.”

Acts 2:44-45 (NKJV)

Again, I'm not trying to say there's only one way to do it, one recipe. But for us to manifest God, there is a lifestyle required – a lifestyle of serving one another, loving one another and manifesting His love – and this lifestyle we can see in Acts. That should give us a guideline in fellowship, and that is the guideline we use to say, "Let's go back to that."

“So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

Acts 2:46-47 (NKJV)

I'll look at some of those things in detail again, but the essence we need to see here is that it was a lifestyle. It was not playing church, not an hour a week. It was the way they lived. They lived together, functioned together and took care of each other, and they built each other up. As I said in the beginning, people arrive broken, but God heals them, restores them and uplifts them, and in that He builds the body stronger and stronger every day. We need to create an environment where God can function through us.

This kind of lifestyle led to an environment where God could be manifested, and in that environment God could heal the broken-hearted and restore those who are desperate. It is very practical. It says they had all things in common, that they divided among everyone as anyone had need. Other verses say there was none of them that lacked.

This is talking about the body of Christ, the church, and there is something that gradually starts showing us here: when you become a Christian, there is a responsibility, and I'll show you from the Word. Our responsibility is firstly to take care of the body – not just to do good in general. Yes, there is that component too, but the Word will always say to us, "Take care of the brethren first, take care of the body of Christ first," because it is an organism that we are building, and it needs to be strengthened.

If your body, as a human being, is sick and you're struggling, lying in bed unable to get up, you are not going to be able to go out and do work and be effective. You first need to take care of your body, nourish yourself, strengthen yourself, get healthy. Then, when you are healthy and strong, you go out and do work and effect change in your environment.

It's the same with the body of Christ. We need to get the body strong. When the body of Christ is strong, nourished and uplifted, we've got a healthy body that can move forward, function and be the solution in the world. That is why God says, first take care of the body, first take care of everyone in the body. That comes back to this lifestyle of having things in common, taking care of each other, making time for each other. Through that, we strengthen the body and create an environment where the lifestyle itself becomes the solution – an environment where people can receive solutions for life.

They can receive solutions for eternal life and solutions for physical life, because that solution is inside the environment which that lifestyle manifests. I can testify of that. In fellowship, we have seen people arrive broken, but the way God manifests Himself has restored them, healed them, strengthened them and uplifted them. People whose marriages were falling apart, who were struggling with pornography, in depression, having affairs – the Lord has been able to heal them, restore them, uplift them and strengthen them, and now they are powerful disciples for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They are powerful disciples living a lifestyle that has become attractive to people. People look at them and say, "There's something different about you. What has happened?" And that attracts people who want to know more about what we do as Christians and the lifestyle we live. If you noticed in Acts, after that whole lifestyle was explained, it ends off saying, "And the Lord added to the church daily."

If we live that lifestyle that provides the solution, I can assure you people are going to come. I see it in fellowship all the time, and I see it in my own life. I continue to pray to God and say, "Father, send me the people. Send me the people that need You. Send me the people that are looking for answers, send me the people like Jesus saw." When Jesus looked at them, He said the harvest is ready, but the labourers are few.

When you pray for God to send you people, He's going to send you people – but they will be those who are broken, those who need restoration and upliftment, because He wants you to live a lifestyle that will manifest His presence and be the solution for them. So I say to you that our responsibility is to first take care of the body. Let me show it to you from the Word.

“Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

Galatians 6:10 (NKJV)

There is definitely a responsibility to minister and help the whole world – let us do good to all. But then it continues: especially to those who are of the household of faith. I enjoy The Message translation of this verse. Let me read it to you.

“Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.”

Galatians 6:10 (The Message) (NKJV)

In the community of faith – can you see that? That's why we use the general term "faith community": a group of believers that live together and form a community, and Fellowship is a faith community. I'll get to some of the practicalities of that just now.

“By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?”

1 John 3:16-17 (NKJV)

It is very specific here: we need to lay down our lives for the brethren. So it's important that we, as Christians, come to the realisation that we firstly have a responsibility towards the body of Christ, to take care of it. Because if we build that body strong, it can go out as a force unto dominion into the earth and provide the solution to millions of people.

“If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.”

1 John 4:20-21 (NKJV)

We need to understand that it is very practical, and I'm going to start getting practical now, in terms of a few things that we stand for and a few things we do within fellowship as a faith community.

I think I've given you enough background now to know that this is not a recipe that I say is the only solution. I want you to see some examples of what we do. When the Lord guided me a few years ago to start fellowship as a faith community, there were a few things He specifically said to me. I've touched on some of them in Ephesians 4: our responsibility is to activate every single member, to activate every single joint.

It's not about me as a pastor standing in front, being the only solution. So we gradually moved away from that concept of the pastor being everything and the only solution, to start understanding it is about every part being activated. Practically, that meant the Lord guided me into establishing what we call home fellowships – smaller groups of people who gather at a house on Sundays, roughly about twelve people.

It is amazing – the first week we started that, when we moved from the traditional church structure of me standing in front giving a sermon into home fellowships, immediately everything the Lord said would happen started happening, even from the first day. It's all about activating every single member.

At a home fellowship, people come together on a Sunday – maybe a few families, or a few young people. It doesn't matter; every home fellowship's dynamics are different. But the principle is this: when people come together, here is typically what they want to see achieved through it.

The Lord said to me that every person must have a voice, and that is why you need smaller groups. If you just go to a church meeting on a Sunday with a thousand people, and then go home, you still go home largely unnoticed, without the opportunity to be the voice God created you to be. In a home fellowship with roughly twelve people, every person has a voice – to share the word the Lord put in their heart, or to voice the challenges they are going through.

There are a few things home fellowships achieve. Firstly, when the Lord said to us to start home fellowships, He showed me specifically that the number one thing to be achieved is to build relationships. We would think the number one thing is to preach the Word of God. But the reality is: how many sermons have you listened to, how many teachings have you listened to, and how has that changed your life? How is it practically, right now today, enabling and activating you to manifest love and manifest His presence?

Yes, the Word of God is critical, we all know that – it is by the Word, through the Word, we know that. But as with the gifts Christ gave us – the apostle, the evangelist, the prophet, the pastors, the teachers – those gifts were given for a reason: for the equipping or perfecting of the saints for the ministry. It was never meant to focus on the apostle or the pastor; the focus was meant to be on the ministry, which in essence is our ability to manifest love.

I can tell you it's very difficult to manifest love towards the body continuously if you don't start building relationships. God Himself is all about relationships – He's the Father, He has a Son, He calls us His sons or His children. So it is about relationships. At a home fellowship, our first and foremost responsibility is to build relationships.

Number one, we build relationships. From relationships flows naturally, number two, people become transparent. It doesn't help that we get together, call ourselves Christians, call it church, but everybody goes home again with the same problems they came with, and nobody's providing solutions – there's no sense in that. But if we don't build the relationship, it doesn't flow to transparency.

When people become transparent, number three, it creates an opportunity for us to minister into their needs and requirements, whether physical, financial, emotional, relational or spiritual. Whenever things are brought into the light, there is an opportunity to destroy them, to bring light, life and love into that situation.

Once we have ministered into that situation, number four, that leads to accountability. It doesn't help – I've seen it over many years – to try and help people who do not want to be helped, who do not make themselves accountable and take up their own responsibility to effect change in their lives. They have to accept their own responsibility. So the only way we can activate every member, every part in the body of Christ, is if every person accepts their own responsibility – which means they have to be accountable.

It's not a problem that we make mistakes, that we fail. It's not about judgment or condemnation, and it's not about trying to tell you that you're going to get it right one hundred percent of the time. But the question is: if you fall, do you bring it into the light so that you can be helped and can move forward?

When people accept responsibility through accountability, we help them to establish, practically speaking, accountability groups. An accountability group is simply this: you take two people the Lord puts on your heart who are spiritually mature, and you create a group – a WhatsApp group or some communication group – with those people. When you've decided there are things you want to change or achieve in your life, you make yourself accountable to that group and say, for example, "I want to commit to praying fifteen minutes a day."

Then that person tries to pray fifteen minutes every day, and if they don't get it right, they share on the group: "I'm struggling today, I'm not getting it right." Then one of the people on the group can help them – pray with them over the phone, or even physically go to them and assist. That is the idea with an accountability group: to help you achieve what you want or need to achieve.

So, coming back to home fellowships: we build relationships, which leads to transparency, which leads to being able to minister into those needs, which leads to accountability. That is how home fellowships provide the solution. As some of the people have said, there is no hiding place – but we don't put people on the spot, we don't make people feel uncomfortable; you participate as you are comfortable to participate. Yet there is an environment and an opportunity for people to use it. We have seen from the first day we started home fellowships how people speak who have never spoken before, how people receive solutions, how people pray for each other, and how people go home having received answers and solutions.

We have to be able to trust the Holy Spirit in an environment such as that, to be able to minister to people and to be the solution. One of the core things the Lord said to me about home fellowships, and the reason why we had to make it small groups, was that people had to learn to live love. We all know 1 Corinthians 13, and everything in the Word is all about love. It says love, love, love – love is the most important thing.

And we know that. The question is, how many people actually get it right to live love? Home fellowships have created an environment that has truly been able to activate people and allow them to live love. Because here is the uncomfortable thing about love: the kind of love we see in the Word of God is the love that Jesus showed us, and that is an uncomfortable love, because it is a self-sacrificing love.

If we truly want to live love, we need to realise that it is self-sacrificing. That is why Ephesians 4 says to us that the body edifies itself in love. It means we have to come to a place where, through love, I am able to make other people more important than myself. I am able to make the body of Christ more important than myself. And then I have to respond – I have a responsibility.

If somebody has expressed a need and I am able to help, then I should help. As we just read from the Word of God, if somebody has a need and you are able to do something about it, then you must do something about it. So it is very practical, it is very active, and that is one of the core things the Lord said we should achieve through home fellowships: that every person learns how to practically live love.

That is the ministry. That is the whole thing of Ephesians 4, about the perfecting of the saints, about coming to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. It is all about one thing: can we live love? Can we take care of the body? Can I love my brother the way I say I love God? There is a mystery embedded in that. I came to the realisation one day, through these scriptures, that it is impossible to love God other than by loving people.

We can go to our inner room and say, "God, we love You," but the ultimate way of practically expressing love towards God can only be done through people. It is the only way – the way you respond to other people, the way you love other people. You cannot love God other than through loving other people, and that is the ministry. That is why we are here.

So again, coming back to home fellowships – it creates an environment through which we can activate people to live the ministry, to live love, to manifest God's presence in a way where He can provide the solutions. Every home fellowship is filled with testimonies of that. In terms of these home fellowships, it is typically a few families or people coming together, and then we have the opportunity twice a month for all these home fellowships to come together as one faith community.

The one opportunity is a worship evening, which allows us to focus on God as the priority, to acknowledge that He is God, and to worship and praise Him as He expects from us and as is prescribed in the Word. Then another opportunity, which we refer to as a community meeting, is where the whole faith community – all the home fellowships – comes together. In that community we share a bit of the Word, we create the opportunity for people to meet each other, for the different home fellowships to interact, and we come together to strengthen and uplift each other.

We will share some word there – specifically now, the rhema word that God wants to send into the community. But it is amazing how the Lord has led us to move away from the teaching of the Word being the thing that ninety percent of our time is spent on, to actually getting to a place where living love and manifesting His presence is what we spend ninety percent of our time on.

If we want to talk about activating every member, we have to understand that the way we do things in fellowship as a faith community, based on the Acts church and how they did it, means we actually now have to take up our own responsibility. We can't activate every member if we don't take up our own responsibility. One of the responsibilities we have is to spend time with the Lord personally, individually.

Not to wait for the pastor at the front to share some great revelation so that I get all excited about new things I didn't know before. It is our own responsibility to spend time with the Lord, to spend time in the Word. We need to spend time with the Lord to build a relationship with Him, to give Him time to speak to us personally and intimately. We need to spend time with the Word of God to show us what truth and reality look like, and it should become a reality in our life.

It says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word." So we need to receive that word, we need to spend time on it, but we need to take up that responsibility personally. People have become so used to somebody standing in front and sharing the word that it is ninety-five percent of the word they get into their spirit. It was never meant to be that way. Yes, there is a place for pastors and teachers, but it was never meant to be the ultimate source providing ninety-five percent of the word that we get into our spirit.

We need to get ninety-five percent of the word into our spirit by spending time in the Word and allowing the Holy Spirit to minister to us. That is how we get to know God personally, through the Word of God, not through somebody else.

There are principles we see in the Word of God that show us, from Acts, what the faith communities actually focused on. Let's quickly have a look at that.

“Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.”

Acts 2:41-42 (NKJV)

I want you to notice what it is that they continued in. It says they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and prayers. Firstly, the apostles' doctrine. At that stage they didn't have the written New Testament, so that is how they received the Word of God, through the apostles' doctrine. For us, that means the Word of God is the first component that is important to spend time in, in a faith community, in a home fellowship.

Secondly, it says fellowship – that means a relationship, spending time together. When we get together as home fellowships, it is not a quick hour where people run in and run out. It is meant to be a lifestyle, meant to be our priority. How do we take care of each other if we don't know each other, if we don't know what's going on? So we spend a few hours together, eating together, doing life together, actually helping each other, and that means time.

So that was the second component, fellowship. Thirdly, it says the breaking of bread. That is probably two components: eating together, as I said, but also communion, to celebrate our oneness in Christ – very important. And fourthly, it says prayers. So it is the Word of God, it is fellowship, it is the breaking of bread, and it is prayers. Those are the principles they spent time on.

Many wonders and miracles were seen, and fear came upon every man. It means they lived a lifestyle of loving each other and taking care of each other, which was able to manifest the presence of God.

To some of you this might sound like a radical change, and I have to say, yes, it is, because it moves us out of our comfort zone – the comfort zone of making it the pastor's responsibility to study the Word and come and share what God wants to say to us. It moves it to my personal responsibility to fill myself with the Word of God. All of a sudden, when you come together on a Sunday, it becomes personal, it becomes intimate – but that is how it is meant to be. It is different from what people are used to.

But again, the measurement is: are the fruits there? Are the results there? Now every person gets activated. Every person starts functioning in their gifts. Every person is now able to be equipped to live life, to do the ministry, and to manifest the presence of God, so that God can add to the church and provide the solution to everyone who needs it.

It is beautiful, and it is a privilege to experience that and see what God is doing through something that was always meant to be that way, but that got lost when church became a structure, a building, a religion, and a set of rules, as opposed to being able to live life.

I want to read to you this scripture. It says to us in 1 John 3:16 – I read it to you earlier, but I want to read this to you from the Message translation.

“This is how we come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers and not just for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it and turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God's love? It disappears, and you have made it disappear.”

1 John 3:16-17 (MSG)

So, in essence, faith community, fellowship for us is doing life together. That is what it is about: allowing every single person the best opportunity to manifest Christ, to be Christ, to live life, to be activated, to be that every part and every joint that does its share and that supplies. That, in essence, is what fellowship is about.

It is maybe worthwhile mentioning that our whole principle in terms of how we deal with finances is also radically different, based on the principles we see in the Word of God. The advantage of functioning this way, through home fellowships, is that we don't need a building, we don't need infrastructure, we don't need staff. There are no overheads, there are no costs. So although we do have a bank account, every cent that goes into that account, that people willingly sow, goes back into the community.

It is used for nothing else. It is just used to take care of individuals who need help – maybe something happened and they need their rent paid, or school fees, or whatever it is – but it goes back into the community. That takes off the whole pressure and burden of salaries, overheads, infrastructure, buildings, maintenance and all of that.

I also firmly believe that this model of home fellowships gives us an exponential growth model – you grow as it is needed, and you don't have to provide infrastructure worth millions of rands that you either outgrow or don't fully use.

I also strongly believe that this way of doing life and manifesting His presence is much more difficult to persecute. It is not something the government can lay hold of, a building, or change legislation to regulate, because all you are doing is fellowshipping together, enjoying dinner or lunch together as friends who come together.

It is not something that has a building, an administration or membership that can be laid hold of and used to persecute the church.

I hope that helps to explain a bit about fellowship as a faith community, based on the principles we see in the Acts church, and I want to remind you it is not meant to be something cast in stone. It is just something helpful, that has certainly helped us and shown fruit and results in the lives of people, activating every member so that we can build the body unto perfection.

There are a lot of these components that I have different teachings on, and I will leave some links below – please go and study those topics in more detail than I am able to share in this teaching. Thank you very much, and we'll chat soon.