Moving beyond our expectations about fellowship

Posted by Alan Knox on Feb 1, 2013 in discipleship, fellowship | 2 comments

As I mentioned in my post “An Unexpected Journey with the Church,” I’m planning to get together with a group of believers in the Charlotte area in April to discuss how expectations often hinder us from finding fellowship in Christ with one another. Over the next few days, I’m planning to write about various expectations and how those expectations can affect our ability to find fellowship and share our lives with other brothers and sisters in Christ. I’ve already written about how we don’t always find fellowship in expected locations, we don’t always build fellowship through expected activities, and we don’t always find fellowship with the expected people.

Regardless of what we expect in regards to fellowship, those expectations can hinder our ability to actually find and build fellowship. We can become disappointed when our expectations do not play out – even good expectations. And, we can miss opportunities for fellowship because we don’t expect to find fellowship in certain locations, through certain activities, or with certain people.

It really does work both ways. Both “positive” and “negative” expectations can hinder our ability to truly find fellowship.

But, we have to be honest with ourselves. We all have expectations. Even if we recognize the dangers related to these kinds of expectations (and other kinds of expectations), we will still have expectations.

Suggesting that we simply stop having expectations is not only impossible, but not always beneficial. Expectations can be good in many situations.

So, what do we do about it? How do we live with our expectations while not allowing those expectations to hinder our ability to find fellowship?

As we continue thinking about expectations, I’d like to ask a few questions:

1) What expectations do you have related to finding fellowship in Christ?

2) Do you take any steps to make sure that those expectations do not work to hinder fellowship? If so, what steps?

3) How can we help others find fellowship outside of their expectations?

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Series on Expectations and Fellowship

1. Introduction – “An Unexpected Journey with the Church”
2. Expectations concerning location
3. Expectations concerning activities
4. Expectations concerning people
5. Concluding (and continuing) thoughts