You can build a church with great programs, great music, great sermons, and great facilities. But if it is not built on love, it amounts to nothing. This past Sunday, Guest Pastor Mike Woods brought a message from 1 Corinthians 13 that was honest, warm, and full of hard-won wisdom from more than fifty years in ministry.
The Two Questions Every Minister Should Be Asked
Pastor Mike opened with a story from his seminary days. A professor named Haddon Robinson was teaching a class on ordaining councils, the formal process a church uses to examine a candidate for ministry. He walked through the typical questions. What do you believe about the church? About Jesus? About the Holy Spirit? What about speaking in tongues? Are you premillennial, amillennial, or postmillennial?
By the time the council gets to eschatology, Pastor Mike joked, the candidate is so frazzled he just wants to walk out. Then Robinson said there are two other questions that ought to be asked of every candidate for ministry.
The first: do you love people?
The second, and the more important one: how do they know?
That second question is the one that stuck. It is easy to say you love people. It is another thing entirely for the people around you to actually experience it. Pastor Mike spent the rest of the message unpacking what love looks like according to 1 Corinthians 13, the chapter the Apostle Paul wrote to a church that had plenty of gifts but needed to learn how to use them in love.
Without Love, Everything Is Nothing
Paul opens the chapter with a striking set of if-then statements. If I speak in the tongues of men and angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 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. If I give away everything I have and even give up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing.
Pastor Mike let those words sit. All faith. Not a little faith. All faith. The kind of faith that moves mountains. Without love, it still amounts to nothing. That is how central love is to everything the church does and everything the church is.
What Love Actually Looks Like
Paul uses fifteen phrases to describe love in 1 Corinthians 13. Pastor Mike walked through several of them with the kind of honesty that only comes from decades of pastoral experience.
Love is patient. Pastor Mike was candid. After more than fifty years of preaching the gospel, he said what he ought to say is that he is sorry for how impatient he has been at times. Love is patient. Not occasionally patient when it is convenient. Patient as a defining characteristic.
Love is kind. He spoke to those who have lost a spouse and said that for many of them, the thought crosses your mind more than once. If I could just have them back for a little while, I would be more patient. I would be more kind. That opportunity is still in front of those of us who still have people to love. Not just with family. With each other, in the church.
Love does not envy or boast. When God gives someone a gift, whether it is a public role like pastor or worship leader or a quieter role like greeting people at the door, love does not parade that gift around. The gift is not about you.
Love is not arrogant. Pastor Mike shared the temptation that comes with any public ministry role. People say kind things. They express gratitude. You have to stay on guard constantly, because arrogance creeps in quietly. Love has no room for it.
Love is not rude. Who would have thought Paul would include etiquette in a passage about love? But Pastor Mike told a story that landed. A seminary professor was taken out to lunch by a pastor and a small group. A waitress accidentally spilled water on the professor’s sleeve. He dressed her down harshly, embarrassing her in front of everyone. When she walked back over, the pastor looked at the professor and said, I dare you to witness to her now. He could not. He had squandered his right to speak for Christ in that moment because of how he treated her. Love is not rude. Rudeness closes doors that the gospel needs to walk through.
Love does not insist on its own way. This one is harder to swallow. Love considers others above yourself. It looks not only at your own interests but at the interests of others. In a church, that means your preferences, your opinions, and your comfort do not always get to come first.
Love is not irritable or resentful. Pastor Mike let this one rest where it needed to rest. The people around you need to be treated with patience and grace even when they make mistakes, even when they disappoint you, even when they spill water on your sleeve.
You Are the Church
Pastor Mike circled back to what Pastor Chip has been preaching through the I Will Build My Church series. Jesus said upon Peter’s confession, “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”
You are the church. Not a building. Not a denomination. Not an office in Nashville. You. The church is built on the confession of who Jesus is. But if it is going to be built well, if it is going to last, it has to be built on love.
He closed with the simple letter a little boy once sent to Billy Graham. Dear Billy Graham, I love God. I love Jesus. Love, Johnny. P.S. I love people too.
Do you love people? Not just the people who are easy to love or the people who are like you. Do you love people? If so, how do you know? More importantly, how do they know?
There’s a Seat for You
Whether you are someone who has been in church your whole life or you are just beginning to explore what it means to follow Jesus, you belong here. We are a church that believes the most important thing we can build on is love.
Plan Your Visit and come see what God is doing here. Or take your next step and Get Connected with our church family. We would love to have you with us.