Be A Conversationalist Series

Opening and Introduction

Tonight, we continue our sermon series on sharing our faith. In our text today, we heard about Christians in Corinth that struggled talking to visitors. They were having a hard time communicating the way they wanted to be heard.

The gift of tongues was practiced, but misunderstood, and visitors, didn’t relate with what they were seeing or hearing.

Corinth had some challenges with expressing their faith. We can have trouble talking to people too.

Tonight, we’re going to take a closer look at how the church in Corinth struggled with talking with visitors. We’ll also look at how those in our community might have difficulty understanding what we’re all about. Finally, we’re going to look at how we can talk to those people who are unfamiliar with our faith, and help them understand what we believe, and what it means to us.

Corinthian church struggle

Corinth was a bustling Greek seaport of about 700,000 people, to the West of the city of Athens. It was an important city, on a thin isthmus separating two water ways. The geography was much like the Panama cannel where goods could take a small land journey and save a lot of time.

It was well known for a temple dedicated to the Greek god Aphrodite, the goddess of love, beauty and fertility. And this contributed to the city’s reputation of being morally corrupt. It’s here that Paul planted a church. But it struggled with the culture and influence of society.

There was a synagogue in town, but no Christian church building where the congregation could meet regularly. Instead, people gathered together in each other’s homes and celebrated in more than one small house church.

Some visitors were showing up at the homes. Perhaps to explore what Christianity was all about. But they didn’t understand what they were witnessing.

They heard people speaking in tongues, in language that was not understandable. The visitors thought folks had gone crazy speaking gibberish.

There’s another famous use of tongues that happened a few years earlier. Crowds witnessed a miraculous event where the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles, and they began to speak in languages that were understood by the crowd. Acts records what the visitors heard:

“The multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” (Acts 2:6-8, ESV)

We hear of the Apostles giving a sermon that was understood by everyone, in their native tongue. Speaking is about communicating a thought or idea. The event at Pentecost did that. But, that’s not the case in our text today. Instead, tongues became an obstacle for visitors.

The way that Corinth was speaking in tongues was not a means of convincing unbelievers to follow. It confused outsiders. It seems that the bizarre speech chased some people away.

Church language struggle

Today, we still have a problem talking to outsiders. We don’t use language that they always understand. Some of the words mean one thing to the church, and something else to those outside the church.

The world is a broken place with broken families, poverty, homelessness, rampant crime and abuse, the list goes on and on. People in our communities, that we might deal with on a recurring basis, may hide some of the pain and heart ache that they deal with. We all come from very different experiences. How well do we relate to people that are different from us?

LOVE is one example that might be hard for some to understand. Some think of love as physical relationships, short-term satisfaction, maybe even abuse, or a means to make money. It’s not a positive word used for strangers, or unknown people, or an unknown God.

How do you explain to someone what love is, if they’ve never experienced anything like it? The church uses the word in a different way, especially with the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself. Paul described love like this.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-6, ESV)

Love may be a foreign term to some people, and the word itself might be an obstacle that people throw shields up to avoid. It may be a challenge to talk to them about how God loves them too.

FORGIVENESS can be another obstacle. Jesus told us to forgive one another, and to turn the other cheek when people take from us. The world would rather dwell in hatred, revenge, payback and grudges, and may not understand what forgiveness really is.