In some Christian circles, it’s popular to look up the advice of “experts” and “consultants” for help with church planting, worship, preaching and strategy. Yet imagine if you could overhear a conversation between a young church plant in a strategic city, and the pastor and preacher who helped found their church. How helpful would that be? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our church had the privilege of exactly this as we recently completed a sermon series through the book of 1 Corinthians called “Christ Amid Chaos”. Over six months, we heard directly how similar the church in Corinth was to ours today: gifted, but worldly. Diverse, but divided. Yet despite their (and our!) numerous issues, Paul’s words of love and affection were so helpful in calling us to follow Jesus alone (not other preachers), and to live holy lives. After first hearing an expository sermon series from this book in 2008 as a young follower of Jesus, I found it a huge privilege 15 years on to help guide our young English-speaking congregation through the gospel-saturated wisdom from this part of God’s Word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To prepare for this sermon series, I translated 1 Corinthians from the Greek NT text (with occasional peeks at the Chinese Union Version \/ \u548c\u5408\u672c for the sake of our more Chinese brothers and sisters). On the text, among the many<\/a> available<\/a> commentaries<\/a> on 1 Corinthians, I found Andrew Wilson’s “1 Corinthians for You” commentary<\/a> the most helpful and accessible for busy pastors, with Gordon Fee’s magisterial commentary helpful on the details.<\/a> Andrew Naselli’s contribution in the ESV Expository Commentary was also helpful (and supported by his diligently prepared recitation of the whole letter from memory!<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Around the area of spiritual gifts, I found Don Carson’s “Showing the Spirit”<\/em> <\/a>unmatched for depth and breadth on exegetical and pastoral issues (if a bit dated regarding recent trends among Pentecostal and Charismatic movements). On the perplexing and sometimes heated discussions around women in the church of Corinth, I was most grateful for the perspectives from Claire Smith (“God’s Good Design”)<\/a>, Kathy Keller<\/a>, Michael Bird<\/a> and Craig Keener<\/a> (arranged here roughly along the complementarian-egalitarian spectrum). There’s definitely less scholarship out there on 1 Corinthians from non-Western perspectives, so I look forward to keep discovering and learning in future!<\/p>\n\n\n\n For preachers, bible study leaders and keen readers, here\u2019s a few thoughts and tips in no particular order:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n