Rethinking Church

 1 Corinthians 12:31b - 13:13
 
 31b  But now let me show you a more excellent way....    
   ¹ If the Bride of Christ could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, the Bride of Christ would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If the Bride of Christ had the gift of prophecy, and if the Bride of Christ understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if the Bride of Christ had such faith that the Bride of Christ could move mountains, but didn’t love others, the Bride of Christ would be nothing. ³ If the Bride of Christ gave everything to the poor and even sacrificed its' body, the Bride of Christ could boast about it; but if the Bride of Christ didn’t love others, the Bride of Christ would have gained nothing.
   ⁴ The Bride of Christ is patient and kind. The Bride of Christ is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. The Bride of Christ  does not demand its own way. The Bride of Christ is not irritable, and the Bride of Christ keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ The Bride of Christ does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ The Bride of Christ never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
   ⁸ Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages^[and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! ⁹ Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! ¹⁰ But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.
   ¹¹ When the Bride of Christ was a child, the Bride of Christ spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when the Bride of Christ grew up, the Bride of Christ put away childish things. ¹² Now the Bride of Christ see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then the Bride of Christ will see everything with perfect clarity. All that the Bride of Christ knows now is partial and incomplete, but then the Bride of Christ will know everything completely, just as God now knows the Bride of Christ  completely.
   ¹³ Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

AMEN