Ephesians And Philippians

As one looks at the nature of his letters, one finds that the letters to the Churches in Corinth and Galatia attempt to address conflict and false teaching; Philippians, Ephesians and Colossians are written as letters of encouragemen;, and the letters written to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon serve as mutual encouragement and requests for prayer. “Paul’s overriding concern is the edification of the community, and much of his energy is spent restoring unity to the church” (Rosner, 2003, p.217). His understanding of what it means to be a community of believer’s flows from the centrality of the cross and the Gospel itself. The communities connection to the Gospel may be seen as Paul addresses the body of believers as, “brothers” (Galatians 5:13, Romans 10:1, 2 Thessalonians 2:1), partners (Philippians 1:3), fellow “witnesses” (I Thessalonians 2:10), and as “co-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). One immediately gets the sense that Paul is communicating that they are united by grace and in the gifts that God has given. “Paul […] emphasizes a communal understanding of righteousness; it is not only a matter of being right with God but also
(1993) to demonstrate that an essential element of leadership rests in the leaders ability to motivate followers to “transcend their own self interests for the good of the team, organization or community (as cited by Northouse, 2013, p.201). In Paul’s case, he demonstrated their unity in Christ as children of God (Galatians 3:26), as means to dissuade division among the community, while also encouraging them to help each other and without comparing oneself to their neighbor (Galatians 6:2). Fullan (2011) supported the importance of leadership engagement of community when he cited the work of McLaughlin and Talbert (2001) who observed that the a buildings a sense of community is “reinforcing rather than oppositional” (as cited by Fullan, 2011,