Transcript:

Hello, this is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective.

Someone has well said: “Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch”.

By culture we mean those shared values, truths, and ways of operating that define a group of people. Culture is something “organic”, not merely organizational. Like the “culture” in a petri dish, it has a life of its own. It’s alive! It is not only a matter of structures, strategies, etc.—as important as those are—but the “feel” or “vibe” that exudes from it.

CRC is a culture. We belong to Christ and are nourished by His life dwelling in us and flowing through us.

But cultures are made up of individual members—giving and taking in this shared life. We are not only influenced by the culture of the church, but also contributing to it. Every thought, word, and deed that is done—or left undone—matters! In a culture, how every individual member operates plays a part in making the whole. This forces the question: If everyone in the church thought, felt, spoke, and operated the way you do (or don’t do), what would the resulting culture be?

1 Corinthians 12 uses the metaphor of the human body, with of each individual member playing its peculiar part. But each member is not operating for itself, but for the “common good” of the body (1 Corinthians 12:7).

How are you operating?

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

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. 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.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 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. 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. 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? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

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.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 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, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

~1 Corinthians 12:4-27 (ESV)