By Glenn Thomas Carson, President
Disciples of Christ Historical Society

When one considers the history of the Church, she is, in many respects, considering the history of congregations. We celebrate the Church Universal, but, ultimately, there can be no real expression of that Church apart from the local gathering of believers for worship and communion. The history of the Church, then, is the multiple histories of congregations spread across time and geography.

A congregation is a living organism. It grows and it fades. It moves and it stands still. It thrives and it fails. As the Spirit of God moves through the life of the Church, we see the results of that motion in the ups and downs of congregations. It has always been so. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about a variety of issues facing first-century Christians, he was not saying that God had abandoned them, thus causing the problems they were facing. Paul knew that the Spirit of God was actively working throughout the Church, and no less energetically in Corinth. Even in the midst of trouble, God was there. In the good times God had rained his love on the believers in Corinth. And in the hard times, the Spirit had filled the congregation, bringing guidance and hope.

We know this to be true, because in his first letter to them, the Apostle was responding to questions from the congregation. Questions! The Spirit urged them to think about their faith. God whispered in their ears that mundane concerns were not so mundane after all. Christ, in the guise of fellow believers, goaded them to explore new avenues of thinking and creativity. They wrote to the one they knew could provide answers. And provide them, he did. For the Corinthians and for us.

The answers we hear from the Apostle form, in a sense, a history of the congregation at Corinth. We know, by the letters he wrote to them, the joys and the fears of one ancient congregation. And as we read his response, we learn that their problems were not so different from our own. And just as they turned to Paul for answers, we, too, can lean on his wisdom and know-how to tackle our own challenges.

Congregations and their histories, whether we are speaking of now or then, of here or there, show us that God is, indeed, working on our behalf. In fact, it is in communities of faith that we see the vital connection between divine will and human history. As a congregation moves through time, living out its own history, the Spirit of God is there at every turn, insuring that the history lived has meaning for our time and for eternity.

So, as Paul wrote the history-of-dilemma played out in Corinth , he was also writing on a larger page that told of congregational histories still to come. Across the ages, congregation after congregation has turned to Paul’s directives to discover how they, too, could transform their problems into solutions. In doing so, they not only heard the words of the great Apostle. They also heard the voices from Corinth asking questions that led to answers. And, in that, congregational histories are united across space and time to form one common story of God’s actions in the lives of his people.