A study on the lived experience of koinōnia in a post-apartheid, post-Armstrong congregation: A transition from power-imbalance to koinōnia

Abstract

This research is an exploration of koinōnia in practice, from an evangelical, trinitarian perspective, in a congregation of Grace Communion International (GCI), in Johannesburg, South Africa. It considers the past effects of apartheid and Armstrongism in the study. Researching within the context of evangelicalism considers the four-fold quadrilateral of Bebbington (1993) namely biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism and activism, with careful inclusion of Packer’s (1978) sixth essential, in his six-fold definition of evangelicalism, namely fellowship, folded into Bebbington’s “activism”. Koinōnia may be best considered first from a macro perspective, existing within the Triune God, that also finds its expression in the relationship between Christ and his Bride, into the micro family of believers. This research thus considers social/relational koinōnia as it exists in a Triune God, within a congregation that is situated within evangelicalism. The researcher recognizes the Church (the Bride of Christ) as a dynamic organism that is ever-evolving (Harper and Metzger 2009:16) but enters into a moment of time in search for meaning, and observes the apparent practice of koinōnia, from a post-Armstrong, post-apartheid context. Through the method of hermeneutic phenomenology (Swinton and Mowat 2016), the research explores the lived experience of the congregants regarding the phenomena of koinōnia. While chapter one is an overview of the research’s proposed activities, hopes and interests, chapter two offers a perspective of social trinity and koinōnia with added insight from the exploration of the research topic. Chapter three explores the history of Grace Communion International from Worldwide Church of God era through its name change with emphasis on its model of practicing koinōnia. Further to this, the chapter delves into an explanation of apartheid, and its influence on the Worldwide Church of God’s pre-1994 practices as well as the researcher’s impression, in dialogue with the views of multi-racial authors of peer reviewed academia, of the context into which the research is situated.