I heard the bubble diagnosis again the other day. A friend told me they needed more time outside the “Circle bubble.” I did not pursue the thought too much so I am still wondering, “Did they feel like Pauly Shore in Biodome?“ They seemed to be taking an anthropologist’s view of the church and decided they needed some breathing room from the subject tribe.
Whether they were just inspecting us or not, I think they mostly make sense. If your congregation becomes a bubble and you are relationally stuck in it, something needs to change. Worse, if the rules of your religious social system are strangling your relationships with people outside of it, that could be toxic to you and to it. It could be “koinonitis.”
The leading cause of death among organic, relationship-based churches is koinonitis. The word is a spin-off from the Greek word koinonia, which means “fellowship,” or life in common. Fortunately, koinonitis has become a popular topic among us for the last few months. If we don’t see it lurking around every bush, it should do us some good to think about it.