Our 6-Month 1st Corinthians Journey | Why We're Doing It & Why It Matters For You!
Perhaps like you, I have been troubled by the state of Christianity in America for some time. Having walked with hundreds of college students and 20-somethings in my previous ministry context who were healing, soul-searching, and understandably processing massive questions in the aftermath of damaging fundamentalism, charismania, and strange unorthodox theologies that shaped their previous faith communities, I found myself shocked by how little what other people were telling me characterized their church experiences resembled what I understood, had personally experienced, and believed Christianity to be.
In 2016, the American-Evangelicalism-backed ascendancy of President Trump—most especially the apparent willingness, even eagerness on the part of many committed Christians to give the 45th president a complete pass on issues of egregious and public immorality—began to highlight the ways in which many Americans’ faith was more partisan than it was Christian (Please note this is not meant to be a criticism of the Republican political platform. It is specifically a critique of how many Christian leaders excused the specific and flagrant immorality of Trump personally). The years of the Trump presidency further highlighted what people of color in our country have long seen and understood: that all too-often white Christians and our churches ignore or are unaware of the extent of personal and systemic racism and its impact in our country, preferring a more generalized allegiance to “the Gospel” in a way that has little traction in public places other than personal self-improvement, increasing religious knowledge, or training in pious performance.
Then in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed an American church that seemed to have little to offer of practical help to the hurting around us. We often struggled to adapt to a suddenly-changed context and tore ourselves apart fighting over masks and social distancing protocols with unfortunate regularity.
I say all of this as a Christian and a pastor who loves the church and desires that all people might come to a saving knowledge of faith in Jesus and desire to be counted among the church’s membership. I, like Mike Cosper and the staff of Christianity Today responding to critiques of the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, believe its essential for us as Christians to share stories of our brokenness, to publicly confess our sins and failings, and then to make a faith-filled Christ-dependent plan to repent and change the ways we’ve lived. Such a posture allows us to fight our own hypocrisy. It also signals our understanding to a watching world that people have often been hurt when we have been unfaithful, even when the damage we caused was unintentional. All of this, helps remind us and show that world that we as Christians understand that we and our churches are not perfect places, only accessible to sanctified saints, but that we are truly, as St. Augustine once told the Donatists, “a mixed bag of saints and sinners” amidst whom God is somehow and surprisingly still at work.
And this is not just true of the church today, this has always been the story of the people of God.
As N.T. Wright reflects, “People sometimes talk as if first-generation Christianity enjoyed a pure, untroubled, honeymoon period, after which things became more difficult; but there’s no evidence for this in the New Testament. Right from the start, Paul found himself not only announcing the gospel of Jesus, but struggling to hold together in a single family those who had obeyed its summons.”
Talk of the kind Wright critiques can shame churches today. If Christianity USED to be perfect than what’s wrong with US for being so messed up? Joining this false-church-golden-age mentality to American consumerism can create a church shopper mentality that seeks a “perfect” church because the one I currently go to is so messed up. It can also hold out to the watching world and to those believers we are called to disciple, a false expectation that church is SUPPOSED to be a perfect place, and thus the imperfections and abuses of the church are not only a mark of CHRISTIAN failings, they are ALSO a mark of GOD’S ABSENSE.
All of this is why we will take 6 months to patiently journey through Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in 2022 at The Mission Cincinnati.
In this letter we see the Apostle writing to a VERY messed up church, calling followers of Jesus back to a very faithful and loving God who STILL desires to use them—immense brokenness and all—to be agents of healing in the world. A God who remains present with them and wants to involve them in the unfolding story He is writing. A story that leads from our broken present to His globally restored future when Jesus will come back and make all things new.
1 Corinthians is a letter that acknowledges the church is NOT a perfect place. It makes space for imperfect believers in the Story of God. It also brings the counsel of God and the application of the Gospel to bear on a wide variety of issues that are very relevant to all of us today. As Kenneth Bailey writes, for these reasons, 1st Corinthians is widely regarded as “Paul’s most contemporary letter.” He actually addresses it, not just to the Corinthians, but to the whole church: which includes Christians across the world in Ancient Rome 2,000 years ago, and us today.
Over the months of this journey, studying this letter will help us be both more honest about our own failings, will prompt deeper self-examination and reflection, and will also spark within us greater hope: that no matter how far gone we feel, God can still use us! No matter how broken the world seems, God is STILL at work to redeem, heal, and repair—in ALL spaces: both sacred & secular, in households and on the street, and in every societal vocation! And as we gain confidence in this belief in God’s continued presence and activity, we can more prayerfully repent and turn our lives more and more to obedience to Jesus—likely never reaching perfection this side of heaven—but more and more conforming our lives to the likeness of Christ so that when people see His followers in the world, they will see US.
We’d love to invite you to join us on this journey as we engage the letter of 1st Corinthians on Sundays from now until Pentecost. Bring your scars, brokenness, and all. Expect to encounter a Jesus who loves you in all of us, and who wants to work in and through your life to heal, renew, and repair all things!
See you Sundays at 9:30 AM at 3220 Central Parkway, Cincinnati OH!