so that we ourselves boast about you in the assemblies of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions which you endure.
It is at all times right and profitable that the vigor and prosperity of one church should be known in all, both for their rebuke and for their encouragement; but it was eminently so in apostolic times when churches situated amidst a heathen population must have felt isolated and forlorn (Shepherd 86-87)