I’m reading through my Bible, Genesis through Revelations. This isn’t the first time I’ve done it, and I doubt it will be my last. This time, however, I’m reading through the Bible with a group.

My ”sisterhood of strangers” is an online book club. We are a group of people who have built community on shared interests. We have learned to live life together even though we are distant. I don’t know any of the people in the group in real life. But they send is pictures of our newborn ”nieces and nephews”. We talk through our struggles. There are accountability partners, and prayer groups. We share our wins and losses, and sometimes we read books.😆

As someone who struggles with building community in real life, this group fascinates me. People are so open. It’s not all praise reports and prayer requests. They post things in the group they haven’t shared with the people closest to them. We wrestle with tough questions and we don’t all agree. But we are all respectful, and even loving… and I’ve been in church meetings that were neither of those things.

In nearly every church I’ve been to, there is a fellowship hall, but most of the time, all we do in there is eat. (I have also seen at least one fight in the fellowship hall, but that’s neither here, nor there.) My point is that our churches might be good at feeding people, but we lack in actual fellowship. Our churches could learn a lot from these social networks about building community. I think that’s a sad statement, because I believe it should be the other way around.

What does fellowship look like in your church? What does it look like on your job? How can we do a better job of being in community with one another?

Today, I am thankful for the people who are walking with me through life. I pray that I am as much a blessing to them, as they are to me. That’s what fellowship really is.