From populous city and desolate wilderness has gone up the universal cry of lonely hearts for fellowship. We have sought for it in amusement places; we have pursued it through the halls of learning. We have organized it into clubs, lodges, fraternities, and “fellowships.” We have given it thousands of banquets – interracial, international, intereverything. Committees, leagues, and councils have spaded the social order in quest of it. And at times we have gone wistfully and hopefully to church, feeling that we would catch a glimpse there of this elusive pearl of great price.
As a matter of fact, nowhere in the New Testament does the word “fellowship” appear in the sense of pleasant social contacts. It is a translation of the Greek word koinonia, which Thayer’s Lexicon defines as “fellowship, association, community, communion, joint participation.” Of these definitions, the most accurate is “community,” or better, “a commune.” The adjective, koine, means “common” and the verb, koinoneo, means “to hold in common.”
Now this need not be an occasion of stumbling for us. Upon every hand there is abundant illustration that this is a natural expression of intense love. A man will gladly or willingly vow: “With all my goods I thee endow.” When my three-year-old son crawls up in my lap and says, “Put down your book, daddy,” I must confess I am no longer a rugged individualist, mumbling something about private property. I say with the Loving Father of the elder brother, “Son … all that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31). A man will say the same thing to a brother whom he truly loves. And if love will cause a man to lay down his life for a friend, will it not lead him to cheerfully lay down his goods?
-Clarence Jordan (1912-1969) founded Koinonia Farm, a pacifist interracial Christian community in Georgia, in 1942. He is the author of the Cotton Patch Gospel, a translation of the New Testament into the vernacular of the American South. He was a farmer, preacher, and bible scholar.
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