Finding Faith ... in kickball

EDITOR'S NOTE: Since becoming the clergy leader at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn., in November 2017, I've written a monthly column for our church newsletter. This column originally published in the August 2019 FLC Newsletter.

The City of Wolverton Community Kickball event held in June 2019.

There is a Greek term: “koinonia.”

It means community or fellowship, and in particular I’m applying it to the New Testament sense of community, the way in which the Apostle Paul instructed the first people of the church to live in community with each other.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this Greek term in the past week or so since attending my first City of Wolverton Summer Kickball Event on June 13. My family and I were able to participate, and I saw neighbors breaking bread with each other, sharing fellowship and lifting up the town’s children in play. And, as I said in the sermon the following Sunday, you could very palpably feel the Holy Spirit present there at the ball field that night.

And then the following Sunday -- which was Holy Trinity Sunday -- I preached about how the Creator, Son and Holy Spirit all reside in one another. As Christians, we are very familiar with this doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the three distinct entities of the Godhead -- God, Son and the Holy Spirit -- also being one in the same. Essentially, we understand God as the Trinity because God’s defining characteristic is loving relationship. So the separate ideas of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are less important than the eternal interwoven-ness of relationship.

Both of these examples -- the Wolverton kickball event and the Holy Trinity -- describe the essence of koinonia, or community. … And that is why the term has been on my mind this past week.

It makes me think about the role that koinonia plays here at Faith Lutheran Church. I think the term describes that palpable feeling of the Spirit being present every Sunday when we come together to celebrate in worship and in fellowship. I think it describes the friendly buzz that exists between neighbors before service starts, all catching up on the week’s events since they were last together. And I think koinonia also describes the happy joy of our downstairs Fellowship Hall after service when all have come together for a cup of coffee and the exchanging of news and sharing of stories.

Finally, I’ve been thinking: What if we could share this palpable sense of the Spirit that we feel here inside the walls of Faith Lutheran with those who reside in the community, but who aren’t sharing Sunday service with us? What would that look like? How would we bring that feeling of koinonia to the others in the community?

As a church that lies nearly geographically in the heart of the community of Wolverton, I wonder what it would look like if we actively sought to foster koinonia with the rest of the residents of the community, friends and neighbors whom we aren’t seeing on Sunday in our doors? We often talk about taking our fellowship outside our walls, but I’m wondering how we go about setting our minds to do so.

I think koinonia -- or community -- is one of the most important things we have to offer those around us. I’m convinced that in this age of discordance, distrust and individualism, that a good dose of community would go a long way toward curing our society’s ills. After all, if you’ve sat across a picnic table with someone and shared a hot dog and beans with them, it’s a lot harder to distrust them or worry about what ulterior motives they possess. And I mean that whether it’s taking place right here in Wolverton, or elsewhere across this big country.

As noted in the book “The Second Mountain” by author David Brooks that I just finished reading, the societal cultural backlash to the age of World War II was a seeking of individualism. For the next 50 years, and maybe more, following the war, people pushed against the collective restraints that were required of our society, the extreme effort that was needed to win a world war. And so the next couple of generations pushed for more individual freedom, the opportunity to determine their own courses in life, above the needs of the collective good.

Now, don’t get me wrong, as with every societal turn, there are good and bad outcomes. And there certainly was a lot of good that came from the changing norms that came out of the counterculture of America’s middle and late 20th century. But in the process we also came to depend less on our neighbors, our communities, and the byproduct of that was an unraveling of the koinonia that kept us from falling apart during a couple of world wars and Korea earlier in the century.

And so now I wonder what it would mean for us as a church, as people of Christ, to help our larger community come to know the importance of koinonia -- of fellowship -- again. I’m convinced that is the greatest gift we can offer those who are not worshiping with us on Sundays. We can give them the gift of community, of fellowship, the kind exemplified by our very own Holy Trinity, and help sew this nation back together again.

This is an important focus of mine, and will be integral to my internship here at Faith Lutheran Church over the next two years. I would like us to explore what it means to offer our broader community around us koinonia, or fellowship. And let’s just see what kinds of crops that effort sows. Because after all, we already know the special things taking place here at Faith every Sunday. So let’s help our friends and neighbors around us see what’s happening as well!