1 CORINTHIANS 13 FOR CLERGY AND CONGREGATIONS
(Adapted by Steve McCutchan, steve@smccutchan.com)
L: If clergy speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but congregations do not have love,
P: Clergy are noisy gongs and congregations are clanging cymbals.
L: If clergy have prophetic powers, and congregations understand all mysteries, and clergy have all knowledge, and congregations have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love,
P: Both clergy and congregations are nothing.
L: If congregations give away all their possessions, and clergy hand over their bodies so that they may boast, but neither have love, they gain nothing.
P: Clergy love is patient; Congregational love is kind; Clergy love is not envious or boastful or arrogant and congregational love is not rude.
L: Loving clergy do not insist on their own way nor are loving congregations irritable or resentful; loving clergy do not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoice in the truth.
P: Congregational love bears all things, loving clergy believe all things, loving congregations hope all things, and loving clergy endure all things.
L: Love among clergy and congregations never end. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
P: For congregations know only in part, and clergy prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
L: When clergy and congregations first begin, they speak like children, think like children, and reason like children but when clergy and congregations mature, they put an end to childish ways.
P: For congregations and clergy see in a mirror, dimly, but in time will see face to face. Each knows only in part; then they will know fully, even as they have been fully known.
All: For both clergy and congregations, faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
Zing!! This is brilliant. I’ve done the “personal Sibyl” application but this is a powerful application for clergy and congregations. Have you ever used it as liturgy? I’d love to do it in Chapel. Well, not love, because it is convicting. But “need” to do it in Chapel. Your love for The Church inspires me.