Our Greatest Tool for Reaching the West Again

It’s easy to be discouraged today. The West—especially North America—has largely abandoned any pretense of a morality or cultural identity rooted in Christian values and ethics. Ideas about gender, sexuality, the value of life, death, and everything else under the sun have become so distorted that it’s difficult to know what to do.

Many Christians have been raising the alarm for decades. The Gnostic Empire was preparing to strike back. And all have offered different solutions to the problem. But more often than not, these solutions ultimately boil down to more evangelism—to share the gospel with greater passion, consistency, and intentionality.

We do need to share the gospel without question. Evangelism is essential to our calling as Christians. After all, we are ambassadors for Christ (1 Corinthians 5:20), which means we have a message to proclaim. And what message is more important than the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)?

We need to keep sharing the gospel, but we also need to point to the evidence of its truthfulness. How can we prove it? In one sense, it’s impossible to satisfy a person’s questions or doubts about the truthfulness of the gospel message (at least until they experience it). But we can point to one thing in particular as proof: our fellowship with one another.

And this just might be our greatest tool for reaching the West again.

What is Fellowship?

We often define fellowship as a synonym for community. But is more than that. Christian fellowship is not a collection of individuals who gather together based on shared affinity or interests. Christian fellowship is rooted in the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is an overflow of God’s internal relationship as we are brought into relationship with him and one another through the gospel itself.¹ We are united in will and purpose with one another because of the love of the triune God that we have experienced by faith (Philippians 2:2).

This unity is the primary evidence of the truth of the gospel. After all, Jesus said this would be how we would be known as his disciples. (John 13:35). Our unique love for one another, based in God’s love for us, is our defining characteristic. We can do all kinds of amazing things, but if we do not have love for one another, we are “sounding brass or a clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1 NKJV).

Christian fellowship is significant—it is essential. It requires us to be deeply invested in one another’s lives. To bear one another’s burdens. To rejoice together and mourn together. It requires active engagement rather than passive familiarity. And where fellowship flourishes, it changes everything.

Fellowship and its Fruit

The fruit of this fellowship is evident both in the pages of the New Testament and throughout history. The early church demonstrated this relational commitment as they shared all that they had with one another, to the degree that there was no need known among them (Acts 4:34).

In the centuries that followed, Christians had a profoundly good moral, social, and spiritual influence in “daily life and manners…in the elevation of Womanhood…and in the gradual abolition of Slavery, and in the ransoming of Captives, and in acts of mercy and love to the sick and dying in Hospitals, and in times of Plagues, Pestilences, and Famines.” The early church’s was a witness that “won for it a thousand hearts.”²

All of this was rooted in their love with one another. The early Christians’ love for one another was attractive. Their fellowship was compelling in a way that nothing else could be. Even the most resistant to Christianity saw that it was special as their love extended beyond themselves into the world around them.

Our Greatest Tool For Reaching the West

And this is still true today. Fellowship is the church’s most compelling apologetic. It is what the world needs to see as we proclaim the gospel message—especially as we are plagued by an epidemic of loneliness.³

We have become increasingly isolated from one another at every level. Our society is atomized in a way never before possible. We have lost the concept of the monoculture—one built upon shared experiences and cultural artifacts. We experience the world in isolation, listening to music, watch movies, read, and even exist in public spaces largely in isolation. Social media is no alternative, either. It is the atomizer, with individuals cloistering together into comfortable and unchallenged groupthink, and fed more of the same by algorithms.

This means that most effective means of reaching the West again is not simply more evangelism. It isn’t going to be through well-reasoned defenses of the faith (though we need those too).

If we want to reach the West again, we need to embrace our fellowship with one another—our communion with one another that reflects our union with Christ and his with the Father. This love for one another that extends out and invites others in. That is attractive like nothing else can be.

But it is also not a quick fix. It’s not a program we can implement. It is a cultural shift—a change of mindset and desire. It will take time and patience as we seek to live as Christ together intended. Many Christians need to experience it for themselves, maybe for the first time. But it is possible—and when we experience it for ourselves, it’s something we can’t help but invite others into.

Photo by Hannah Smith on Unsplash

1. Peter Toon, “Fellowship,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 255. ↩︎
2. Christopher Wordsworth, A Church History to the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325 (Rivingtons, 1881), 465. ↩︎
3. Vivek H. Murthy, “Opinion | Surgeon General: We Have Become a Lonely Nation. It’s Time to Fix That.,” The New York Times, April 30, 2023, sec. Opinion, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/opinion/loneliness-epidemic-america.html ↩︎