Programme
FREED FOR OTHERS
Winter Sermon Series in 1 Corinthians
Michael Green describes the Church at Cor-inth as “a love affair with problems.” Mind you, the fact that there was a congregation at all in Corinth was in itself a testimony to God‟s power to transform individual lives. But as Mi-chael Green‟s description suggests the young fledgling congregation at Corinth was facing its challenges – challenges which any growing Church of today will wrestle with.
Over the next number of months we will be digging into 1 Corinthians on Sunday morn-ings and within our Small Group Bible Studies during the week. And as All Saints' looks seri-ously at planting a new congregation, taking time to read through 1 Corinthians will be ex-cellent preparation for this adventure of faith.
Paul established a congregation at Corinth some twenty years after the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Michael Green de-scribes it as “dynamic and chaotic” congrega-tion which Paul loved with “passion and exas-peration.”
You can read an extended version of its birth in Acts 18. It was a tough city to plant a Chris-tian Church in. It was frantic with business, culturally mixed with Greek and Roman influ-ences and a few Jewish ex-pats. Religiously it was no different from many other major cities in the Roman world – the worship of Aphro-dite and Astarte, Isis and Osiris made cult prostitution the order of the day. And it was to this city dedicated to personal pleasure, fasci-nated by rhetoric, and greedy for power that the Apostle Paul came and preached the message of the Cross.
On hearing the message of the Gospel some were immediately impacted and a church was born and Paul remained for a total of eighteen months. It was on a second visit to Corinth some time later that he wrote the Letter to the Romans.
As we work through 1 Corinthians together on Sunday mornings and in our Small Groups, we'll tackle with Paul issues that are still very much alive today. These will include issues around leadership – what does it mean to be a leader, the role of women in leadership and what it means to be an Apostle. We will ad-dress issues around what it means to be a Christian and a member of a local Christian Church – sex, marriage, singleness, giving, suffering, and death. We will also look at problems related to the Church – baptism, Communion, exercising our spiritual gifts, unity, and love.
Please pray for myself and John as we preach and teach through this amazing letter and pray that God‟s word will impact and shape us all over the coming months.