Christ, Our Common Center

The epicenter of Christian life and the life of the Church is Jesus Christ.

That hardly sounds groundbreaking. After all, Christ is literally in the name Christian. Yet if this is so obvious, why are Christians so often tempted to make something else the point?

The church in first-century Corinth wrestled with this very temptation. Surrounded by a culture captivated by status, influence, and reputation, the Corinthians gradually imported those values into the life of the Church, aligning themselves with personalities rather than with Christ.

The Apostle Paul addressed this toxic pattern head-on with a probing question:

“Is Christ divided?” (1 Corinthians 1:13)

Paul hangs the full weight of his appeal to the Corinthians on this question, reminding them that the Church is built upon Jesus Christ alone. Christ is the Head of His body. Every believer belongs to Him, and every member belongs to one another. Our unity has never rested upon shared preferences or celebrity but upon our shared participation in Christ.

Yet our culture quietly trains us to evaluate everything. We compare. We rank. We review. Like the Corinthian church, these habits can easily find their way into our church families. We compare pastors to our favorite communicators, worship to our ideal experience, and churches as though we were consumers browsing a marketplace rather than members participating in the life of Christ’s body.

There is nothing inherently wrong with preferences. The problem begins when they become the measure of the Church itself.

Paul refuses to let us think this way.

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul?” he asks, pushing his argument even deeper.

“Servants, through whom you believed… I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:5-6)

This is striking: Paul doesn’t defend his reputation or compete for approval. He simply steps out of the spotlight.

Servants.

Christ is the point.

His ministers are not.

Then Paul adds:

“No one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 3:11)

Everything in the Church rises or falls on that foundation.

This is why he later writes:

“This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” (1 Corinthians 4:1)

Pastors are not celebrities, brands, or superhuman. They are fellow members of Christ’s body entrusted with a particular calling. Like every Christian, they come to the same cross, receive the same grace, gather at the same table, and belong to the same body.

Scripture calls pastors to faithful accountability. But there is a profound difference between correcting one another as members of the same family and evaluating one another as dissatisfied consumers. All members are called to sacrificially love one another. Often that requires laying aside our preferences.

One seeks restoration.

The other seeks satisfaction.

The Church was never meant to revolve around personalities, preferences, or experiences. It was meant to revolve around Christ. And because we participate in His life, His life becomes the pattern of ours.

The shape of Christ’s life was the shape of a cross. He poured Himself out in humble obedience to the Father and sacrificial love for His neighbor. As His body, we are not merely called to admire that life but to participate in it together. The cross is not only the means of our salvation. It is the shape of our communion.

The question, then, is not whether a church satisfies my expectations, but this:

Does this community, by God’s grace, help us participate more fully in the cross-shaped life of Christ together?

Because that is what it means to be the body of Christ, unified in self-giving love!