How Not To Start A New Church

In Jesus’ day there was a very common prayer uttered daily by many or perhaps even most Jewish men.  The Apostle Paul as a Pharisee would certainly have been aware of the prayer and most likely prayed it himself.  It went something like this:  "Blessed art thou, O God, for not making me a Gentile, slave, or woman."  This prayer was uttered in worship of the living God.  Jewish men were truly thankful for their standing in culture.  However, after meeting Jesus on the Damascus road, everything changed for Paul.  The gospel convinced him that nothing within him made him worthy of God’s favor or salvation.  He came to understand that God had saved him by grace alone apart from anything that he had done and that God was working in his life to conform him into the image of Christ.  On his second missionary journey, Paul and his team went to Philippi.  Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia along a major trade route, the Via Ignatia.  Acts 16 tells us the story of the beginning of the Church.  Paul’s first convert was a business woman from Thyatira.  His next convert was a demon oppressed slave girl.  Next, He led a Roman jailer to Christ.  That’s right, the Philippian church charter membership consisted of a gentile, a slave and a woman.  After only several days in Philippi, Paul was forced to leave the city and this fledgling church.  A few years later he wrote the book of Philippians to encourage the church to unite together around the gospel and find joy in every circumstance because of God’s great grace that had saved them.   Over the next several weeks we will be studying this great letter.  The key to understanding the book comes from Philippians 1:21—“To Me to live is Christ”.   When this is true we will experience great joy in any and every circumstance.