Biblical Fellowship the Acts style

Acts 2:42 (KJV) And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.

Recently in another thread a well meaning poster said something that at first I agreed with, and then after I thought about it, saw it to be unbiblical. The statement was that doctrine came before fellowship as if its possible to have doctrine and not fellowship or vice versa, however it is impossible to have true fellowship without doctrine, otherwise the fellowship will be like the fellowship of the world.

I know that these days doctrine is a bad word, and taking a look around the church I am saddened by the level of anti-intellectualism. People not wanting to dive into theology by reading books, people discouraging others from posting materials by sound Bible teachers, and all because those teachers teach the Bible and they feel ashamed and their sin has been exposed by the word of God.

The church has become a social club and a place where people would rather visit their friends, play games, and get their ears tickled, rather than get true doctrine. Let me explain why Doctrine & Fellowship cannot be separated from one another. First.

The church is a body of believers. A body is a unit and all the parts need one another.

1 Corinthians 12:12, " For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ."

They had all things in common. They saw themselves as a body with a common bond.

Acts 4:32, says "they were of the same heart and soul.

True fellowship only comes with doctrine and churches must live out what they preach. I have been in churches where the Bible was studied in depth, books were encouraged (not discouraged as what happens often on this board) and people just loved the Bible. Those that loved the Bible in turn loved reading books, loved doing Bible studies, loved coming to church, loved hearing good preaching, and loved witnessing. This one church I remember they regularly sought to engage the cults (as the area was filled with various cult groups), loved making disciples, and such. It was a rural area so street evangelism and open air preaching was not possible, so they found other ways to witness.

Here are many verses on fellowship (ESV)

http://www.openbible.info/topics/fellowship

So I challenge you to examine your view of fellowship. Perhaps you do not understand the word and what it means.

 

Then I misunderstood because real fellowship cannot take place without doctrine or else its worldly fellowship. Churches that deny miracles and the essentials of the faith generally are in the liberal denominations such as the Methodists, Anglicans, and the like.

In my post I was primarily referring to those churches where the preaching was excellent, but the people were cold, non friendly, cliquish, and the like and there are plenty of those. Of churches with fellowship I was referring to the seeker based churches where the people can be very friendly and nice, but the preaching is very elementary.