In the first chapter of the Letter to Philippians, in a manner characteristic of his writing elsewhere, the Apostle Paul expresses his incredible gratitude for the Church in Philippi and their partnership in the Gospel:

I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

Paul’s is a ministry saturated with gratitude. He counsels his readers to give thanks to God in all things. Thankfulness, according to his teaching, is a constant feature of the Christian life. Yet, notably, he never says thanks to anyone but God.

That might seem like a distinction without much of a difference, but Paul pastored in a world erected on a scaffolding of patronage and sustained by the reliability of reciprocity.

As Peter Leithart argues in his book, Gratitude: An Intellectual History, Imperial Rome was unique among ancient societies.

In no other society did the unequal relationships between benefactors and their beneficiaries, patrons and their clients, play such a prominent role…Most social relationships in Rome outside of family relations were molded by gifts, reception, and return gifts. (Page 41)  

In Paul’s context, the right expression of gratitude was the glue that held everything together. To fail to reciprocate materially, let alone failing to acknowledge one’s benefactor as the source of one’s benefit, was a threat to the entire system that made Rome work.

This is why, despite their conversion, Leithart imagines the very Roman Philippians grumbling: “we go to all the trouble, and this is the thanks we get—a thanks that is no thanks, a thanks that bypasses us to go to God?” (Page 73)

But Paul, inspired by Jesus, charted another way.

He told the Church in Rome to owe no one anything except love (Romans 13:8). He thanked God for every benefit he received, including those mediated through human agents. And he thanked God, too, for the benefits they received because he saw himself as having a share in their good and they in his.

The world he inhabited was bound up in knots of patronage, but Paul invited them to something better than his gratitude. He invited them into a community of mutual love and freedom, gathered around Jesus.

In doing so, he also named the ways that God was active in and through their lives. He named and gave thanks for the ways that they were participating in something much larger than themselves and their own individual projects.

As leaders, it’s our job to narrate the lives of our siblings in Christ into the larger story of God’s work in the world—the Story that gives meaning to all of our stories.

And we do this most explicitly when we give thanks for all the ways that we see God working through all the gifts that are brought and shared.

This is the heart of our work. But it’s so easy for us to forget.

In The Church and the Crisis of Decline, Andrew Root writes these true words about the challenges facing pastor in modernity:

The pastor is often tempted, and somehow invisibly formed, to take God less seriously than her people do…The pastor feels the temptation to run the congregation as a small business, even a little self-conscious of all the enchantment and dogma. But her people…yearn to know that God has a purpose for their lives. They yearn to know that God can still speak. (Page 31)

They yearn to know that God can still speak. As you get ready for the stewardship season, how are you identifying the gifts all around you in the lives of your people? And how are you remembering to name those gifts as God’s work and words in our midst?

How are you helping your people see God’s hand and hear God’s voice?

What story are you telling about God when you give thanks?