Purpose Driven LIfe

[kayre]

Summary: God intends for us to “experience life together.” It’s impossible to really do so in a large group, so every Christian should be in a church-based small group. In real fellowship people experience authenticity, mutuality, sympathy, mercy.

My thoughts: *grumble* the chapter begins by transforming “How good it is for brothers to live together in unity” to “How wonderful it is... for God’s people to live together in harmony.” He says “The Bible calls thi shared experience “fellowship” but gives no references. This is probably because, thought there are 4 or 5 that he could use to make his point, about 85 of the 97 references I just found for ‘fellowship’ have to do with fellowship offerings in the OT sacrificial system; bet he didn’t want to go there! Several other very questionable paraphrases.

Do I really need to say that I think it’s quite possible to experience authenticity (whatever that is), mutuality, sympathy, mercy, and genuine fellowship in non-church groups, non-Christian groups, and sometimes even in larger groups? In fact, most Christians I know would learn a lot by really immersing themselves in the lives of some non-Christians. I know such people, including some of my readers here, have greatly enriched not just my personal life but my spiritual life as well.

Warren continues to dip deeper into what I think of as modern psychological terms, and is unable to support them with his usual brief quotes from Paul. The irony is that he could easily support most of these ideas by digging into the Gospels, especially the parables and the sermon on the mount-- but he seems unwilling to pause long enough to look at any text longer than 2 sentences.