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| (World Trade Center 1, NYC) |
This is from my book Leading the Presence-Driven Church.
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The apostle Paul was a minimalist. As he traveled from church to church, across the first-century Roman Empire, he did not drag a production team with him. In 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, we see that Paul did not visit the Jesus-followers in Corinth with fog machines, black lights, powerful preaching, great intellectual arguments, stacks of Marshall amps, perfectly timed studio production quality music, a fair-trade coffee bar, tight jeans, stage lighting, creative videos, click tracks, and full color glossy programs. Instead, Paul came minimally, so that God might be worshiped maximally. He writes:
When I came to you,
I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom
as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you
except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.
My message and my preaching were not with
wise and persuasive words,
but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,
so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom,
but on God’s power.
Paul arrived with two things:
1. Proclamation
2. Demonstration
Paul shared his testimony about God, and gave a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. Nothing else. No crowd-pleasing techniques would be allowed to compete with Christ, and him crucified. Because if it turned into a production, people might rest their faith on the coffee, the jeans, and the fog, rather than on God’s power.
