I know a church where a family that are members of the church treat people in an unloving way. They cause drama on a day to day basis as well as problems in situations  like church business meetings. They are the biggest gossips in the church. Down through the years, multiple pastors have put up with their unChristlike and unloving behavior, catering to the family on many issues and situations. The reason pastors of this church have put up with this is that the family members are gifted in various ways, and it is believed the church needs their gifts so desperately that they can’t afford to lose them. They have expertise on everything from slaying vocal solos on the worship team to building a new media booth for the church. Oddly, they are extremely faithful even with grungy work. When the church has a workday, they are there. They are the ones who come and do things like sanitize the baby toys in the nursery or clean out the messy storage closets of the church. Their lack of love is overlooked because of what they contribute in other ways.

You can work really hard for the church or the ministry but have no love.

You can be faithful to anything or anyone for many years but have no love.

You can hone your gifts until you convince some people you are the biggest fish in your ministry pond large or small, but if you are a mean girl, or a bully, does it count for anything?

I have often wondered why people who are mean yet give so much to the church don’t invest their time in the local VFW hall or the PTA instead of coming to the church.

Linda Riley who in my opinion is one of the best writers on the subject of love says,

“One of the marks of Christian maturity is not that Christians know more or accomplish more. It is that they love more. As we mature, we experience an ever-increasing capacity to love.” – Linda Riley 

The apostle Paul was a great leader.

He started at least 14 churches. It’s hard to build something from the ground up, but there was Paul, doing it without social media, without a website, without promo as we know it. One of the churches he founded was in Corinth.  He wrote letters to the church there, and we have them in the form of 1 and 2 Corinthians. The emphasis of all of these chapters is leadership, spiritual gifts and the importance of working together. Right in the middle of those two chapters is 1 Corinthians 13. It sounds more like a poem for a wedding ceremony than anything else, and most people have used it for that for centuries. It seems kind of out of place in the middle of these two books, but really…was he writing something for a wedding? Although it can be used for such, that wasn’t it’s primary purpose.  He’s talking about leading and doing it in the best way possible.

I Corinthians 12:31 he says, “And yet, I will show you the most excellent way…”

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.  If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud  or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.  It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!  But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.

 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.  Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

~ I Corinthians 13

He talks about love in chapter 13 and then goes right back into leadership in the next chapter.

He’s making the point that the most excellent way to lead is not through our giftings, but through love — which only comes from Jesus.

Linda Riley says,

“God does something miraculous. He takes our paltry offerings and transforms them into something worthy of his name. He molds our hard hearts, making them soft and pure. Through adoption into his family he anchors our lost souls. He gives us the mind of Christ. He renews our strength like the eagles. He does not just cooperate with our old selves to make us a bit more loving. No, the old self, what the bible calls the flesh, must die daily. We must be born again and then continually renewed in the Spirit to live a life of love. If we are alive in God, He gives us the love that we then return to him. We can’t even generate enough love to love with. It all comes from the source: God IS love.” – Linda Riley, Life a Life of Love 

We can boast about our gifts and how we have honed them, and where they have taken us in a worldly sense or even in a ministerial one. But all of that is rubbish if we don’t love people while we are doing it.

I imagine the family I mentioned in the beginning of this post might get to get to heaven (if they even make it there) and have an empty account. All the years of singing solos on the worship team or sanitizing toys in the nursery is not going to mean diddly squat.

We are never more like Jesus than when we are loving others fully.