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.
Phil 1:3-5
And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except you only.
Phil 4:15
I left you in the previous Gem with these two verses from his letter to the Philippians. Notice the appearance of the word ‘partnership’ in both verses. You know now the word partnership comes from the translation process of the Greek word [koinōnia]. (See Gem 1908). We usually use the word fellowship to translate the word koinōnia, The joining together of our lives in terms of mutually sharing. The more we do it the deeper our relationship and connectedness goes. It amuses me at times the way Christians use the word ‘fellowship’. There are occasions when we might have a rather trite, shallow interaction at church after the service and we talk about the fellowship we shared. No for us to truly have fellowship the interaction needs to be “deep and meaningful”; not shallow and trivial. Do you see the depth in the verses I have given you above? Let’s add to those verses the opening passage of Paul’s letter to the Romans.
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of His Son, how without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, beseeching if by any means now at length I shall be blessed by the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, for the establishing of you; and this is to be comforted together among you, through the faith in one another, both yours and mine. But I do not wish you to be ignorant, brothers, that often I purposed to come to you, and was kept back until the present, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among the other nations.
Romans 1:8-13
Read what I wrote in Gem 138 – Prayin’ for Ya. This comes from a letter Paul wrote to a group of people in a church he had never visited. Paul had not yet interacted with these people face to face. How can he express such deep personal feelings for people he has never met before? It is easy when he has written to them and had connection with them through letters before. We have Paul’s letter to the Romans but I am convinced we don’t have the record of all Paul’s communication with the church in Rome. How can I say that without knowing the details? Because I understand how the process works.
When we left our church in Matamata to work in Sulawesi we would write back home to everyone and tell them in graphic detail the nature of our lives in this strange and yet enchanting new world. People would then write to us expressing how much they felt a part of what we were doing in our new environment. We took the time to bring people into our world through letter writing. You and I both know that letter writing is both a medium and an art form which enables us to communicate with both those people who are close to us and other people whom we have only through the medium of letter writing. We called them pen pals. Now we refer to them as contacts, or social media links – via Facebook, What’s App or Linked in. Most young people these days will never have written a letter, but will have sent many texts, messages or tweets. There is a big difference between the two, simply the length of the messages. These days we communicate in short clipped messages whereas in the past the messages / letters tended to be longer and more filled with information and personal feelings.
When we first started in our work overseas we sent out newsletters as well as gang letters. Back then we started with Sharp PC 5000. I little computer with a small amount of memory. One letter was stored on a bubble memory plug in which allow me to store a letter of a number of pages on the bubble. I could store a few letters amounting to 250 K on that bubble. Then we moved to a Toshiba 1100 and it was amazing what I could store on that computer. Anytime I wrote in detail about our new life to close friends back in Matamata or the rest of NZ or around the world, I could include the stories of what we had been doing or the fascinating encounters we had, duplicating them for anyone who wanted to know. The gang letters were printed out on fan fold paper which was concatenated, joined by perforated dots which enabled them to be torn off in sheets or kept together in a continuous string of pages. For a laugh I kept them in fan fold form and print out long letters of several joined pages. People would comment about getting looong letters from Ian and Tania. My best mate, Mike, (my friend at midnight) decided he was going to write a letter to me, longer than Ian’s to him. So he typed on adding machine paper a letter indeed longer than mine.
All that to set the scene for what developed. Because I could store the stories on computer, I could cut and paste them into different letters. So I could top and tail a letter with the personal stuff and then add relevant stories of interest which suited the specific context of a letter to an individual. Many in the church would write to us being encouraged to write to their missionaries overseas. People who we didn’t know would write to us as well as those who near and dear. They would get details of our life generally through the stories, but would also receive honest, personal input. Strangers we had not met in person yet would receive both general interest anecdotes and personal feelings and interaction. Many new people in church back home who were actually strangers to us, very quickly became friends and confidants. They seemed to be emboldened with what we would share about ourselves to the point where they would share things of a similar nature. Often people would write and say, “I can’t believe the kinds of things that I share with you two simply becauseI am have come to know you so well and feel I can share anything with you and it will stay just between us.”
I understand very well how Paul’s relationship with churches and with individuals developed such a warmth of feeling that it bonded him to those who were part of the churches he planted. I have taken what I have learned in the process and taught others in our organisation and members of other missions how to develop their friendships and connectedness in personable ways. What strikes me in all of this is the way Paul keeps the warmth of feeling for the Philippians and doesn’t make the relationship between him and the saints in Philippi about the money and funding. That is what it is all about. Our FELLOWSHIP and not funding. Paul makes it clear in the letter to the Philippians it is not about the money they sent to support him in the work. In a sense, the money is irrelevant; what is important is our relationships.
Read between the lines in Paul’s letters to both the Philippians and the Romans and the nature of his connection with them. As I wrote in the Gem I mentioned above (Gem 138), the comment Paul makes to the saints in Rome is one of the strongest in the whole Bible.
For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you in my prayers.
Romans 1:9
That is not an I’ll-be-prayin’-for-ya comment. That is a sincere oath before God that Paul prayed from the Roman Christians unceasingly. Paul both held them up in prayer before God the Father as well as holding them in his heart daily. His expression of fondness and longing for the Roman Christians whom he had never met is somewhat akin to our feelings for the Matamata saints whom we got to know really closely via letters from overseas. The difference between those close friends who were dear to us when we left Matamata and those whom we grew to love dearly and yet had not known before we left was not as great as one would think it would be. The difference between Paul’s relationship with the Philippians with whom he had shared much over three months was not much different between them and the relationship he had with the Roman Christians whom he had never met. It would also be possible for us to contrast the relationship Paul had with the Ephesian Christians with whom he stayed for over 2 years and what he wrote to them in the letter to the Ephesians. Interestingly, the letter to the Ephesian saints is not as warm and friendly as either the Philippian letter or the Roman letter. Paul could express his feelings and love for all three who were clearly on a par in terms of the love Paul had for them but the nature of the letters he wrote to them were very different.
Take some time to ponder the differences between Paul’s relationship with the saints in Philippi, Rome and Ephesus and the nature of the respective letters he has written to them on the basis of the time he has spent with each set of people. It is quite revealing. I will return to these thoughts in the next Gem.
I am afraid to tell you who I am because if I tell you who I am, you might not like who I am and that is all I have.
John Powell
Who I am really am is on the inside of me, but most judge me from what they see on the outside. To really get to know me you need to go beneath the surface.
Ian Vail
Everyone on earth is looking for warmth in human relationships because we are warm blooded creature and seek for warmth in our relationships.
Ian Vail
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.
Sidney Mohede
A recipe for having friends: Be one. Be warm and friendly.
Anonymous
It is my understanding that, in the New Testament, koinonia very often, if not always, was associated with giving financially as God led the donor. Is this right?
For a more complete run down of the meaning of the Greek word koinōnia have a read of Gem 1908 Allan. The most frequent ways the word is translated is “fellowship” but it does have other meanings.