In Touch With Ancient Corinth

By Betty Miller Buttram
FWIS Contributing Writer

“The church ain’t doing nothing.  It’s gone.”  I heard something like that in the past week or two; can’t quite remember when or where, but I did hear it.  I tried to surmise was that statement from a believer, someone who was losing his/her faith or a non-believer.  The church is not gone.  It has missing people. The church is always doing something for the people.  The church is composed of people who are in the body of Jesus Christ and worship in a building, be it a tent or an enclosed structure.  Wherever, the people gather in the name of Jesus Christ, they are the church. People who say the church is doing nothing are not a part of the body of the church.  They have disconnected themselves for reasons of their own. They are on the “Missing Person List.”  The church is still doing its mission despite the number of missing people who are following other callings or things which they think are better for them.  The church is waiting for them to come back into the body of Jesus Christ.  Meanwhile, things are a mess.  We need an apostle Paul for our modern Corinth of today.

In Biblical history, Ancient Corinth, Greece was a beautiful city of palms and magnificent buildings.  It was the hub of sensuality and pleasure seeking in the first century world.  It also drew the great thinkers and speakers of Greece who would gather in the public forums and talk on and on about ideas, issues, politics, philosophy, economics, metaphysics, just to name a few of the topics. Everybody had something to say about something. The Greeks had their statured Gods, and the Jewish Christians had their religion; but there were problems and temptations among the people.  The Corinthian Christian church began to reflect the spirit of the surrounding culture that nothing was forbidden, too extreme, or censored and these behaviors began to take away the spirit of Jesus Christ and the church was losing its power.  Corinth was a mess! Apostle Paul paid them a visit to help the Church deal with everything that was wrong within the Church, and everything the church needed to correct the wrongs.

Our American culture today is about the same as Ancient Corinth. It is as “messy” and divided as the Corinth society back in those biblical times.  It seems today nothing is forbidden, too extreme or censored.  We do and say whatever we want regardless of how the words might hurt.  We are fueled by the exposure to endless cable talk shows and local/national news stories full of political bluster, angry people, and somebody’s grief.  Everybody has an analysis about something or everything.  It is noisy out there and there is a need for a quiet place.   

The church is not gone.  It has missing people.

God gives out individual gifts to all His children, but the one gift that every Christian has is the presence of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit makes Jesus Christ real to us.  It makes us function with the faith, hope and love that is within the body of Christ.

The church is not gone.  It has missing people.  The Holy Spirit is waiting for their return.