1 Corinthians 3:1-23
you can download the pdf file here
Stormin’ Formin’ and Normin’… (1-9)
In 1965 a psychologist called Bruce Truckman published some research on how teams develop. He had found that when you assemble a team to perform a certain task each team went through four stages. Over the years it has proven a useful guide for teamwork in all walks of life – the here are Truckman’s observations.
The first phase is forming –when the team starts out people are very focused and the leaders are pretty directive. The task is clear and forms a rallying point for the troops.
The next is storming – the team get more confident and are feeling engaged with the job, but the task is proving more difficult than they imagined. As there are problems to be solved there are differences of opinion about how to move ahead. Strong differences can emerge between team members, discussions can be heated while others do not participate in dialogue but retire to a corner to complain to their friends. In this stormy atmosphere the task can be forgotten – what matters to people is that they get their own way. According to Truckman, some teams never get beyond this stage.
Mature people help push their team beyond storming to norming – relationships deepen, differences are negotiated away; problems do get solved! The team begin to enjoy working together; the task assumes a new importance and the team are better able to address it.
The next phase is performing – this is a highly developed team with a clear focus and experienced people driving it along. Everyone is comfortable with, even cheerful about, their differences: they are confident and used to solving problems. The task is foremost in everyone’s mind and each member of the team are clear about their own part in achieving it.
Question: what stage were the Corinthian church at?
Question: what stage is your church at?
This letter was written to a young church in a busy cosmopolitan city in Greece. Paul had planted it some years before (how many?), then Apolos had arrived to teach and consolidate the work. It is also likely that Cephas had arrived and played some part in the church’s development [1] . Read the whole letter and you realise that the church had become a bit of a battle ground; Paul had to address issues that were threatening to destroy the church and compromise their witness. There is a lot to learn from this letter, but here’s one of the key lessons: disagreements, different points of view, personality clashes and difficulties are to be expected in a young growing church – these things are normal.
The big question Paul addresses in I and II Corinthians is this; “Are you going to be mature enough to get through the storming stage and into the norming stage?” (see verses 1-4) The Corinthian Christians were suffering from a kind of collective immaturity. It is a question you could profitably ask many churches today – including this one!
Today we are at the beginning of our fifth year as a team – partners together in the gospel in Sunderland. We have been through the norming phase and we are in the storming phase – are we going to have the collective maturity to start norming and performing? That is what this talk is about.
First let’s remember that we are a young church and we go through the same stages as everyone else. We have been learning a lot about God’s grace this year – his overwhelming generosity and kindness to us. Well let’s put that into practice by being generous and kind towards one another. Bethany City Church is a work in progress… we are a long way from our final form!
Second, let’s remember our vision, it is pretty simple: Learning to live and love like Jesus and getting the people of Sunderland into heaven. That is it, that is our vision – everything else slipstreams in behind that – this is the goal that unites us.
Third, what does that mean for you? Two weeks ago we talked about partnership – the New Testament’s insistence that we partner with other Christians in our locality: this enriches our own spiritual life and engages us in useful participation with others. This leads to a simple question, “Are you in, or are you out?” You need to answer that question!
Actually, it is two questions:
First, when it comes to commitment to Sunderland, are you in or are you out?
When England won the contract to host the 2018 world cup the Guardian was pretty negative about holding matches in Sunderland – they were very rude about this north eastern backwater. Sunderland SAFC find it hard to lure top footballers here – because their wives don’t think our shops are posh enough. Last month the think tank, Policy Exchange published a report on the economics of regeneration saying that People in Sunderland should leave the city and move to the south east because the city is un-revivable. I was staying in a hotel in Barcelona last weekend and a guy said to me, “What is a guy from Sunderland doing in a place like this?”
Sunderland – do you have a heart for this city? Are you in or are you out?
Second, do you have a heart for Bethany City Church (a community, not an institution). We have set ourselves the goal of learning to live and love like Jesus and to get the people of this city into heaven. Are you in or are you out?
That is our vision… but we have to do it right.
The Flame-thrower test (10-17)
Imagine being in charge of a large building project when the man from Building Control turns up to do an inspection. You are ready for him, you have been through this before – he wanders ‘round with his clipboard and ruler making sure that your work is up to scratch. Well this bloke does not have a clipboard, he goes to the trunk of his car and opens it, takes out a large tank and straps it to his back, the tank has a hose leading out of it and a gun thing on the end. He lights the nozzle of the gun thing and, instead of measuring your work, he turns the hose on it… he is wearing a flame-thrower!
That is how God is going to test our work (read verses 12-15) – it is pretty extreme: one day God will judge the world and he will begin with the people of God. On that day the quality of what we have built will be tested. So it is important that we set out to learn to live like Jesus and bring people into heaven that we do it right – the best job we can do. We need to pay attention to quality.
Paul mentions six different building materials (12) and it is not hard to imagine what would happen if the flamethrower were sprayed over these – only the high-value material is good enough. We need to build with these high value materials.
A well-built life (10-15)
So how do you build a church that is going to stand the rigours of this world and the fire of judgement? How do we build like craftsmen? It is all here in Paul’s advice to the storming Christians in Corinth.
First, there is one foundation: Jesus Christ (10-11). You can build a church on personalities (4), on great music, and on a passion for great architecture. What a waste of time – you must build a church on Jesus Christ. Jesus is the foundation of everything:
Question: foundation… what do we have that rests on Jesus?
- Our knowledge of God rests on him – he is God incarnate
- Our relationship with God rests on him – he died to reconcile us to him
- Our relationship with one-another rests on him – he is the glue that binds us together
- Our hope for the future rests on him – he conquered death and gives us a place in heaven
So everything we do rests on Christ – if he is not the centre we are getting it wrong. We are cowboys not craftsmen.
Second, you use the right materials. Look at the way Paul writes about building the church (6) what is in Paul’s mind here?
Paul planted: what is the seed if not the word of God? However you receive the word of God – from a preacher, through discussion or small group work, or as you read it for yourself the word is the construction material God used to build his church. Craftsmen build with God’s word.
Apolos watered the seed: it is stretching the text to say that he did anything significantly different from Paul, but the image of water is suggestive of something vitally important. Have you ever met Christians who are saturated with the word but they are not fruitful? You need both the word and the water of God’s Holy Spirit, don’t you? We are dependent on the Spirit to enable us to function spiritually:
- The Spirit enables us to comprehend the word and apply it to our lives
- He enables real change to happen within
- He empowers us to act effectively as agents of God’s kingdom
- He makes Jesus real to us and equips us to follow him
Craftsmen are word-planters, craftsmen are Holy Spirit empowered , and God makes it grow. So here is a third thing: nothing will happen unless God makes it grow. We build in faith that God will enable us to do the business and make us grow spiritually and numerically.
Question: if God makes it grow, what do craftsmen do to encourage this?
Just as you can tell the presence of radioactivity by using a Geiger-counter so you can tell the presence of faith by the prayers of God’s people. Craftsmen are praying people.
This will do for now. We build with good materials, God’s word, God’s Spirit and trusting God to make things grow. Nothing else will survive the flamethrower test!
We exist to learn to live and love like Jesus and get the people of Sunderland into heaven: are you in or are you out?
A healthy dose of foolishness (18-21)
Do you see how Paul plays with the idea of wisdom and folly in these verses? We naturally think that we are so clever – that if we only do things our way we will muddle through. But the result is a church stuck in storming mode that will not survive the flamethrower test.
We need a healthy dose of foolishness (18). What does that mean? It is a theme running through Paul’s thinking about the gospel, look and see:
1 Corinthians 2:13-14 – words given by the Spirit, what are they?
I Corinthians 2:1-5 – our ‘wisdom’ may suggest all kinds of ways we may reach this city. But we need a healthy dose of foolishness here; the key to the situation is the cross of Christ. Here it is again:
1 Corinthians 1:20-25 - Preach human wisdom and you may build the church, but their faith rests on the wrong thing – human wisdom! Preach the cross of Christ and you know God is at work when people accept its foolishness and their lives are changed in response to it!
We need a healthy dose of foolishness!
So that is our vision – this is our strategy – to use every opportunity we can create or that presents itself to preach the cross of Christ.
But before you preach this… you must be changed yourself. Like this:
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.
See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Are you in… or are you out?
[1] I am taking verse 22 as a hint that this was the case