Following up on Paul's words about the splinter groups and factions in the Corinthian church, we might consider the following questions about application...
- What kinds of "groups" have emerged with people in your church (including in your own life)? Are there people that follow certain people (e.g., R.C. Sproul, Tim Keller, John Piper), schools (e.g., Calvinism, the Puritans), movements or issues (e.g., particular schooling methods, social justice matters)?
- How do the voices that exercise this kind of selectivity add and enrich the conversations within your congregation? How do they challenge you in ways that you haven't thought of before? How do they advance a deeper understanding of the Gospel and Kingdom?
- Do any of those selectivity patterns distract the congregation from the Gospel? What causes that to happen in your context?
- In light of Paul's words, how ought we to approach selectivity within the church? How can we see it as strengthening the church? How ought we to take care with it?
- Get introspective for a moment: in what ways do your own selectivity preferences present a distraction from the Gospel for you? What do you need to re-align to put them into proper perspective in light of the Gospel?
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