We have considered Paul's admonition to the church in Corinth as to its posture of cruciformity and the mission of reconciliation, so now we will turn to the way Paul structured worship and leadership in the church, as well as consider how he handled conflict within the church body to maintain growth and faithfulness.

The Structure of the Church

Paul did not believe the church's potential would happen as a natural by-product of existing in community together. After all, he wrote these letters because the church had failed to live up to his expectations for them. Indeed, the majority of the text in these letters was devoted to addressing specific instances of misconduct or poor decision-making.

A full consideration of Paul’s advice is beyond the scope of our discussion, but we will consider two core components of the life of their church: their practice of worship in the Lord’s Supper and the structure of their leadership as members of a body.

Sacramental Worship (1 Cor 11:17–34)

Paul had grave concerns about the ways in which the Corinthians were engaging in worship. He was concerned they were presenting themselves—as a corporate body—unworthily before God (11:29–30). Paul wrote about the gravity of this situation in regards to the way they came together to participate in the Lord’s Supper.

The problem was that, when they came together as a church to eat and drink in the name of the Lord, they divided themselves along socioeconomic lines. Witherington notes that, in the Lord's Supper, “the social stratification of the congregation was overemphasized and exacerbated. A serious division between haves and have-nots was thus threatening the fragile unity of the Corinthian Christian community.”

Those who were well-off arrived earlier to the meal than those who were poorer, because the poorer had jobs and other necessities to manage. The wealthy picked the best food for themselves, started drinking early, and gave the leftovers (if any remained) to the latecomers from lower social classes.

This kind of hierarchy was common in Greco-Roman cultic meals and celebrations, but Paul argued that such division had no place in a community bonded over the cross of Christ.

The pride of the wealthy—and the resultant humiliation of those who had nothing—was not a remembrance of Christ, but was a demonstration of “contempt for the church of God” (v. 22). A community properly centered in cruciformity could only participate in the Lord’s Supper as equals with one another. Any practice of the Eucharist that favored some over others was a failure to recognize the cross as an act of transformation—an act of reconciliation—for all.