Pr Efrem Smith: WHY CHURCH?: The Building Of A New Community

Paul frames the church not as a place built on gifted people, strong personalities, education, or religious activity, but as a beloved community built and sustained by God’s love. The church can hold both joy and pain because imperfect human beings bring conflict, grief, trauma, and mess into the same place where God brings healing, weddings, funerals, transformation, and new life. God’s love keeps the church flourishing when human strength runs out.

Paul writes to a diverse urban church in Corinth that has allowed spiritual immaturity, immorality, and division to weaken its witness. The Corinthians carry education, resources, influence, and spiritual gifts, yet Paul says none of that proves spiritual maturity. Spiritual immaturity leaves the church unable to discern God’s will from what is wicked, evil, and satanic. Division grows when people enter the church first through the lens of race, class, status, slang, politics, and personal preference instead of their identity as beloved children of God.

The church belongs first to the kingdom of God. The kingdom gives Christians a citizenship bigger than any earthly nation, empire, flag, or political story. The church becomes an embassy of God’s reign when it lives as a people of peace, reconciliation, justice, righteousness, and love, giving the world a preview of heaven. The body of Christ makes Jesus visible through its collective gifts, service, generosity, and life together.

Christ loves the church as a bridegroom who gives himself up for her. Christ turns worldly power upside down because being the head means dying, serving, cleansing, and giving life so that the beloved may become radiant. God alone can make the church holy, glorious, and without stain. Sacrificial love is not control over another person but a willingness to lay down self for another person’s flourishing.

Paul prioritizes love above tongues, prophecy, knowledge, faith, generosity, titles, charisma, and platform. Gifts without love become noise, and noisy religion can justify slavery, colonization, sexism, abuse, trafficking, and violence in Jesus’ name. Love clarifies that Christians cannot manufacture patience, kindness, humility, forgiveness, truthfulness, or perseverance through human effort alone. The Holy Spirit must refuel the love tank through prayer, fasting, Scripture, worship, accountability, healing, and honest acknowledgment of trauma.

Paul fortifies the church through a love that grows people up. Spiritual maturity gives the church strength to defend the real gospel of Jesus Christ, including justice, diversity, equality, empowerment of women, and care for the poor, refugee, undocumented, incarcerated, widow, and foreigner. God is not done with Midtown, even when the place gets messy, because the Messiah is still present and the Holy Ghost is still moving.

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Key Takeaways

• 1. Love must outrank spiritual giftedness. Paul refuses to let impressive gifts become the measure of a healthy church. Tongues, prophecy, preaching, knowledge, generosity, and leadership can all be real, yet still become empty noise when they are detached from God’s love. Love is not one ministry among many. Love is the soil every ministry must grow from. [26:05]
• 2. Kingdom citizenship exceeds national loyalty. The church belongs to God’s kingdom before it belongs to any earthly nation. Christians share family bonds with believers across borders, conflicts, cultures, and political systems because Christ is Lord over the whole earth. Nationalism shrinks Christian vision when it asks a nation to carry the glory that belongs only to God’s reign. [17:46]
• 3. Sacrificial love redefines spiritual authority. Christ’s headship over the church does not look like domination, privilege, or getting the last word. Christ leads by giving himself up so that his beloved may become radiant and whole. Authority in God’s kingdom is proven by costly care for the flourishing of others. [22:06]
• 4. The Holy Spirit refuels exhausted love. Patience, kindness, forgiveness, and perseverance cannot be sustained by personality, discipline, or good intentions alone. Unaddressed trauma can turn envy, anger, comparison, and unforgiveness into patterns that damage relationships inside the church. God refuels love through prayer, Scripture, worship, accountability, healing, and a willingness to tell the truth about the soul. [30:28]
• 5. Mature love strengthens gospel witness. Spiritual maturity protects the church from representing non-Jesus things in the name of Jesus. God’s love fortifies believers to stand for a gospel that includes justice, righteousness, diversity, compassion, and care for vulnerable people. A church becomes strong not by becoming harsh, but by becoming courageous, humble, Spirit-filled, and deeply rooted in love.
  
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Youtube Chapters

• [00:00] - Welcome
• [00:48] - Why Church and Who Are We
• [01:39] - The Church as a Place of Transformation
• [03:35] - God’s Love for the Church
• [05:29] - Reading 1 Corinthians 13
• [07:57] - Building the Beloved Community
• [09:38] - Corinth’s Immaturity, Immorality, and Division
• [14:50] - What Membership Means at Midtown
• [17:46] - The Church as God’s Kingdom Embassy
• [20:42] - The Body and Bride of Christ
• [25:46] - Love Must Be Prioritized
• [29:55] - Love Must Be Clarified
• [34:52] - Love Must Fortify the Church
• [36:41] - God Is Not Done With Midtown
• [40:11] - Prayer for the Church and Its Leaders

1. 1 Corinthians 13:1 — “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” [26:18]
2. 1 Corinthians 13:2 — “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” [26:18]
3. 1 Corinthians 13:3 — “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” [26:18]
4. 1 Corinthians 13:4 — “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.” [29:59]
5. 1 Corinthians 13:5 — “It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.” [30:04]
6. 1 Corinthians 13:6 — “It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” [30:04]
7. 1 Corinthians 13:7 — “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” [30:14]
8. 1 Corinthians 13:8 — “Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.” [34:52]
9. 1 Corinthians 13:9 — “For we know in part and we prophesy in part.” [34:52]
10. 1 Corinthians 13:10 — “But when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” [34:52]
11. 1 Corinthians 13:11 — “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” [35:02]
12. 1 Corinthians 13:12 — “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” [05:29]
13. 1 Corinthians 13:13 — “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” [05:29]

1. Ephesians 5:21 — “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.” [21:20]
2. Ephesians 5:22 — “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” [21:25]
3. Ephesians 5:23 — “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” [21:55]
4. Ephesians 5:24 — “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” [22:06]
5. Ephesians 5:25 — “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” [22:13]
6. Ephesians 5:26 — “that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” [22:39]
7. Ephesians 5:27 — “so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” [22:39]
8. Ephesians 5:28 — “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.” [22:57]
9. Ephesians 5:29 — “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.” [23:04]
10. Ephesians 5:30 — “because we are members of his body.” [23:04]
11. Ephesians 5:31 — “‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’” [23:04]
12. Ephesians 5:32 — “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” [23:21]
13. Ephesians 5:33 — “However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” [23:28]

1. 1 Corinthians 12:12 — “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” [20:34]
2. 1 Corinthians 12:13 — “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” [20:34]
3. 1 Corinthians 12:14 — “For the body does not consist of one member but of many.” [20:34]
4. 1 Corinthians 12:15 — “If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.” [20:34]
5. 1 Corinthians 12:16 — “And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.” [20:34]
6. 1 Corinthians 12:17 — “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?” [20:34]
7. 1 Corinthians 12:18 — “But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.” [20:34]
8. 1 Corinthians 12:19 — “If all were a single member, where would the body be?” [20:34]
9. 1 Corinthians 12:20 — “As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.” [20:34]
10. 1 Corinthians 12:21 — “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” [20:34]
11. 1 Corinthians 12:22 — “On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.” [20:34]
12. 1 Corinthians 12:23 — “and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty.” [20:34]
13. 1 Corinthians 12:24 — “which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it.” [20:34]
14. 1 Corinthians 12:25 — “that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.” [20:34]
15. 1 Corinthians 12:26 — “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” [20:34]
16. 1 Corinthians 12:27 — “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” [20:34]

1. In 1 Corinthians 13:1–3, what impressive spiritual gifts and sacrificial actions does Paul name, and what does he say they become without love? [26:18]
2. What words and actions describe love in 1 Corinthians 13:4–7? Which of these descriptions especially addresses conflict between people in a church? [29:59]
3. According to 1 Corinthians 12:12–27, what does God do to make many different people one body, and how should the body respond when one member suffers or is honored? [20:34]
4. In Ephesians 5:25–27, what did Christ do for the church, and what kind of church is he working to present to himself? [22:39]

1. Why does Paul place love above gifts such as tongues, prophecy, knowledge, faith, generosity, and leadership? What kinds of harm can happen when a church values spiritual ability more than Christlike love? [27:08]
2. Paul connects childish ways with incomplete understanding in 1 Corinthians 13:8–13. What might spiritual immaturity look like when believers face moral confusion, division, or strong cultural pressures? [35:19]
3. Ephesians 5 presents Christ’s headship as giving himself up for the church. How does this picture challenge ideas of authority that focus on control, privilege, or always getting one’s own way? [23:38]
4. The church is described as both Christ’s body and an embassy of God’s kingdom. How do those images shape the way Christians should relate to believers from different races, classes, nations, and political backgrounds? [17:46]

1. Paul says that gifts and service without love can become noise. In what area are you most tempted to seek recognition—knowledge, serving, generosity, leadership, spiritual gifts, or something else? What would it look like to root that area more deeply in love? [26:39]
2. Love is patient, kind, truthful, and not resentful. Is there a recent relationship where envy, irritability, keeping score, comparison, or unforgiveness has been taking up space in your heart? What is one honest next step toward love and truth in that relationship? [32:24]
3. No one can sustain Christlike love by willpower alone. When does your “love tank” tend to run low, and which practice could help you receive fresh strength from the Holy Spirit this week—prayer, Scripture, fasting, worship, journaling, a prayer walk, therapy, or accountability? [31:51]
4. The church can hold both joy and pain because it is made up of imperfect people. When church life becomes messy or disappointing, what helps you remain present, honest, loving, and committed rather than withdrawing or adding to division? [04:46]
5. God gives greater honor to parts of the body that may seem weaker or less visible. Who in the church or in your neighborhood might be overlooked, and how could you show them practical care, honor, or welcome this week? [20:56]
6. Christians belong first to the kingdom of God, which is bigger than every nation and political story. How might that identity change the way you speak about people from another country, political group, culture, or social class? [18:18]
7. Mature love strengthens the church to represent the real gospel through justice, righteousness, diversity, compassion, and care for vulnerable people. Which vulnerable neighbor—such as a poor person, refugee, undocumented person, incarcerated person, widow, or isolated neighbor—does God seem to be placing on your heart to care for? [35:52]