By David ReayMonday 4 Apr 2016LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read 1 Corinthians 1:26-28
26-28 Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? (THE MESSAGE)
It is sad to hear of church leaders who have developed adversarial relationships with their congregations. They are the ones who constantly complain about their shortcomings. They are also the ones who try to whip them up to support their latest projects or passion. They are the ones who daydream of some idealised church and whose daydreams are bound to fail because of a severe lack of ideal leaders.
Paul reminds us that the people of God are, in themselves, nothing to write home about. They are ordinary human beings with the usual human failings. They don’t always turn up, they arrive late, they have some funny ideas about the Bible, they tune in and out of sermons, they sometimes don’t sing very enthusiastically, they talk too much or pray too little.
And yet, those same people may be heroically struggling to care for an aged parent, bearing patient witness to Jesus in their workplace, be faithfully keeping difficult commitments, be putting up with their own physical discomfort or the psychological breakdown of those they love. Within each congregation there is a universe of both pleasure and pain, of fruitfulness and folly.
Both leaders of churches and members of churches need to accept that this is reality. We might wish it were otherwise, but for now this sort of church, the one loved by Jesus, is the only church we have.
Blessings
David Reay