Fellowship and Giving

This is not a plea for you to send cash to our church. You will not even find any information on how you can send money on any of the pages in this section!

We hope to challenge and improve your relationship with God and His people as we investigate Fellowship and the Art Of Giving.

This article is mainly based on Acts 2:v42-47

What sort of things was the early church doing? One aspect is their fellowship v42. The word "fellowship" comes from the Greek word KOINONIA, which comes from a group of words that describes what fellowship is really about. In v44 it talks about they had all things in common, which comes from the Greek word KOINOS. Another Greek word that comes from the family of words that describe fellowship is the word KOINONIKOS meaning generosity. Fellowship is about having things in common and showing a spirit of generosity towards those within the fellowship.

What influenced their thinking in the first place was the example of Jesus. He had already shown them in his dealings with others how to address the needs of the people. Here this urban church would have been overwhelmed with the needs of its newly formed congregation. At the start of the day of Pentecost they had 120 members, now at the end of the day they had over 3,000. How were they going to cope?

Probably they have learnt from Jesus the art of trusting God to provide their needs by first giving the little what they had to him. The situation the early church was in was like that of feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes (Mark 6 v30-44) and yet from these small provisions, God provided and the account says that "everyone ate and was satisfied".

This was probably one of the principles that the apostles were teaching the early church. As they gave, what they had, even though they knew it was not enough to meet the needs of all the people, they still gave because they knew that God was working a miracle here. They did not say the problem is too big we have not got enough resources, we cannot do it, they gave and gave in faith knowing God was working a miracle.

If we look at Acts 4v32 a similar reading to Acts 2 we come across this phrase "no-one claimed that any of his possessions was his own." Although in fact and in law they continued to own their goods, yet in heart and mind and actions they cultivated an attitude so radical that they thought of their possessions as being available to help the needs of their sisters and brothers. This was an attitude generated in the early church by the teaching of the apostles as they had learnt from Jesus.

In Acts 5 we have the story of Ananias and Sapphira, a married couple who sold a piece of property but pretended to give the full amount to the church when keeping some back for themselves. Now this account is not about greed or materialism but about deceit. The Apostle Peter speaks to them and in doing so he clearly shows the attitude of the early church towards giving. He says "Didn't the property belong to you before you sold it? And after you sold it, was not the money at your disposal to do with it as you wished?"

In the Old Testament they had strong traditions on giving, 10% of their personal income to a central "pot" which was used to help the needy. Today some use this as a guideline for Christian giving, but if we have the attitude "I give my 10%, I have done my bit" then we have missed the point! If we have tried to work out if this 10% is before tax and stoppages or after tax then again we have missed the point. The teaching of Jesus and the apostles was one of fellowship, expressed in meeting the needs of one another in a spirit of generosity.

What does the Bible say about money and specially about giving? Firstly it is not wrong to be rich or to have savings. Material possessions and wealth, however, are suggested to give us security and yet even those who have these things are still anxious about them (see 1 Timothy 6 v17). In Ecclesiastes 5v10 it says if we love money and wealth, we will never be satisfied with what we have.

We should see possessions and savings as gifts from God and learn to trust Him (see Matthew 6 v32 God knows our needs), in doing so, this will give us a cheerful disposition to bear their removal as equally as their abundance (Philippians 4 v12-13). We will learn what it means to be content with what we have, if it is plenty or little.

If we say that we have fellowship with one another, and don't act in a spirit of generosity then we are missing the point. Don't bring fellowship down to its lowest denominator and say it is about meeting together because it is not, it is much more than that. The hallmark of this new community, is a spirit of generosity, where your concerns become my concerns, where your needs become my opportunity to serve, and visa versa, where we have all things in common. This is fellowship and this is what the apostles were teaching.