Philippians 1:3–6
“I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
As I left our worship gathering this week, I found myself reflecting on Paul’s words in Philippians 1. They remind us that community in Christ is not built on consumerism—where we attend for what we can receive—but on covenant partnership, where we give and receive for the sake of the gospel. A good portion of my doctoral work was devoted to the problem of consumerism in the North American church, because it has shaped so much of how we imagine and participate in Christian community. When church becomes another product to consume, belonging is fragile, dependent on whether our preferences are met or our needs are served. But when community is rooted in covenant partnership, it looks entirely different: it is sustained not by preference but by promise, not by convenience but by commitment, and it produces joy in the shared work of the gospel.
That is precisely what Paul celebrates when he writes, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you…because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now” (Phil. 1:3–5).
And this text has new meaning to me now that I am living from the generous financial partnership of others. The text made me celebrate the generosity of so many who give faithfully and pray continually for the work of Christ through this church and many others. That is no small thing! Paul saw the willingness to support financially and to share in prayer as evidence of maturity in faith and of the grace of God at work in the lives of believers. I see the same reality among many of you, and I give thanks to God!
But Paul’s vision of partnership goes even further—it is not only about the sharing of resources, but the sharing of lives. His gratitude is tied to real relationships and names, to people whose stories he knew and with whom he had labored side by side.
Reading Paul’s letter reminds me of how personal gospel partnership truly is. He doesn’t just write to “the church at Philippi.” He remembers Lydia by name, as well as Euodia and Syntyche. He knows their stories. He has shared meals, prayed through tears, and labored side by side with them. His commendation comes from relationship, not distance. That’s what makes this passage so powerful: Paul’s joy is not abstract, but bound to faces and names, to a community where generosity and prayer were joined to friendship and mission.
One of the unique challenges of many church settings is the structure itself. In ours, watching a sermon on a screen, apart from the names and stories of those beside us, can make gospel partnership feel distant and impersonal. Structures like that, even when well-intentioned, can unintentionally reinforce consumer habits rather than covenant relationships, no matter how badly we want them or pastors plead for them.
By contrast, when discipleship is embedded in a structure that requires partnership for the sake of mission (like missional community!) it pushes against consumerism. Mission requires us to pray, serve, and sacrifice together. It binds us to one another in ways that Sunday attendance alone never can, and it keeps the expansion of God’s kingdom at the center of our life together.
Even the best structures, though, are not enough on their own. They can create space and opportunity, but they cannot manufacture love. Paul’s vision of partnership was never merely organizational; it was deeply personal and relational. That’s why we must guard against pressing for an ideal version of community, as if the right structure could produce it automatically. Structures matter, but they are meant to serve people who are bound together by the gospel.
“Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
That’s part of why the sermon felt incomplete to me. It offered no tangible illustrations of this kind of community and no stories of how gospel partnership is being lived out among us. Paul didn’t write in Philippians abstractions alone; he wrote with names, memories, and shared experiences. The point is not to demand some idealized version of fellowship, but to receive and rejoice in what God is already doing among us.
Also, on Sunday, just before the service, in the foyer, I caught a glimpse of exactly the kind of partnership Paul describes. I saw three couples who are just beginning to form a partnership together, seeking to live intentionally as the church in their homes. Their desire is to reach the lost in their neighborhoods, and they are choosing to connect regularly not only for encouragement, but to spur one another on and to be held accountable. It was a small snapshot, but a beautiful one, of covenant partnership taking shape in real life.
And yet I often wonder why groups like this can feel so out of place in churches. Why do so many pastors get uncomfortable with people wanting to be the church in their neighborhood? On Sundays, our church is a sea of new faces alongside many who have been connected here for years. And yet those who are most committed to both the lost and to the church sometimes feel misunderstood, even unsupported, because they don’t fit the mold of what a “group” is supposed to look like. Their devotion is high, their sacrifice costly, their vision clear, and still they remain on the margins. They have great stories and great faith, and yet they’re often treated like rogue rebels. That reality should give us pause, and perhaps call us to ask what kind of structures and stories we are celebrating.
So perhaps the invitation for us is to look again:
- Where might you notice God at work already in your relationships?
- Who are the people you could join in word and deed for the sake of the gospel?
- And how might your giving, praying, and living reflect the maturity of faith Paul commends in Philippians 1?
For years at The Stone we used to say, “If you aim for community, you’ll get neither community nor mission. If you aim for mission, you’ll get community every time.” At the time it was meant to challenge consumerism and point us outward, but I’ve come to see how short-sighted it was. Mission alone doesn’t necessarily produce community, and community alone can easily drift inward.
What Paul commends here is deeper and richer: partnership in the gospel. When we fix our eyes on Christ and join our lives together for the sake of his kingdom, we begin to taste both the joy of genuine community and the fruit of faithful mission. And we can trust, with Paul, that “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
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