Recently I was talking with a friend, who is also a cross-cultural worker here in Sweden. He told me of a visit to a pastor friend who is going through a really tough time. In a church where his leadership is regularly opposed and contested, in a denomination that is not always faithful to the gospel, in a rural area where people gossip about him, isolated from brothers and without spiritual fathers. Brutal. And sadly, in Sweden, not at all uncommon. My friend just sat with this pastor and prayed and wept.

When talking about healthy church culture I’ve often held up Acts 2:42 as the go to verse for what we should be aiming at. I doubt I’m alone in doing that. The picture of a church devoted to the fellowship. A church that genuinely loved one another. It can be easy to assume that the early church was always like that. We should resist that temptation.

Paul, in writing to the Philippians, writes that he is hoping to send Timothy to them. This church has elders and deacons, but Paul wants to send them one of his key workers, one of his best to be with them and help them. I’m not sure we’ve worked out our funding models or developed a mobility that would replicate that kind of arrangement and partnership. I suspect it would require receiving churches to find new levels of hospitality and generosity, and sending churches to find the same. That aside, Paul comments and commends Timothy because he ‘takes a genuine interest in your welfare.’

You would think that apostolic workers genuinely caring about the welfare of the church would be both a necessary feature and a low-bar to clear. And yet. Too often today, I hear stories of church contexts where it is clear that those in denominational authority often care very little for an individual church or their leaders. There’s no-one like Timothy. But Paul also said, he had ‘no-one else like him.’ Instead Paul observes or bemoans, that ‘everyone else looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.’

This Swedish pastor was surrounded by people, in every context, looking to their own interests and it was wearing him down. There are a lot of churches whether institutionally or functionally are independent and sometimes as a consequence they are isolated. There is no one who genuinely has an interest in the welfare of the church and its leaders. When someone comes along who then does take a genuine interest, it can be profound. A gospel balm to the wounds of lonely pastoral ministry.

This is the culture that should exist within churches as well as the context in which churches should exist. The shepherds of the church, the elders and deacons should take a genuine interest in the welfare of the individuals who compose the body, not just in the health metrics of the unit as a whole. No one should be thrown under the bus.

Churches should also exist in an environment or ecology of care and support. Genuine relationships, fathers in the faith who take a genuine interest in the welfare of a body and who are willing to send servants as both an expression of their love and care and to help the church develop the maturity in faith that we all are called to. This is what I would call, apostolic culture. A framework of love and mission. Partnership that catches up into the the wide horizons of mission but with love, friendship and support along the way. The Philippians needed Paul and Timothy. So do we.