Church in the Wild

Week 1: Know Your Why
Pastor Rick Henderson            January 3-4, 2026

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Note: This manuscript isn’t a transcript of the sermon, but a planning guide showing what the speaker intends to say.

 

Photo Fun: If you were taking the photo, how many of you would take it with your Kodak app? No one?

Every now and then, I like to remind myself of the story of Kodak. For well over a century, they were a blue-chip company, a sure thing for investors. They were the powerhouse in the photography industry.

If your birth year starts with a 2, you are going to think this is crazy. Back in the day, when we took photos, we had no idea what they would look like. We had to take the film to photo processor and wait for days before we got them back.

If you’re old enough, there was a time when every single one of us used their products. Now, maybe a handful of you have used their products in the past 10 years.

KODAK STORY:

• 1997: $31 Billion ($63 Billion in today’s dollars)
• 2012: Bankruptcy

If you were a shareholder in Kodak, you lost your total investment. 10,000 people lost their jobs.

• Today: $1.2 Billion

The company still exists. That number is nothing to sneeze at. And yet, that’s a tragic fall. If we were to dig into the personal side of people who lost careers, people who lost investments that they were counting on for retirement, this is devastating.

What happened between 1997 and 2012 that could cause this giant to fall to its knees? How many of you think their demise is due to technological disruption—the advent of the digital camera?

• Tragic Irony: Invented the first digital camera

There’s something about stories of downfall that draw me in, they are irresistible. It’s not schadenfreude. I don’t delight in the suffering of others. I’m captivated by these stories because it doesn’t matter how big something may be, how old it is, how strong it is, or how much money it may have; it’s far more fragile than we think.

We could be talking about a company. We could be talking about a family. We could be talking about a church. Good people with good intentions go wrong all the time.

SLIDE: Golden Circle (Simon Sinek)

If you’re a fan of Simon Sinek, you recognize this as the Golden Circle. When it comes to your family, where you work, or even our church, what do you think is most important? Is WHAT we do? Is it HOW we do it? Or is it our WHY?

Here’s the sad but true story of Kodak. They lost sight of their WHY. When people lose sight of their WHY, all they can see is their WHAT and HOW. This has happened to countless churches. People become fixated on and loyal to what their church does and how their church does it but forget the why behind it all. The WHAT and the HOW will change. It’s the WHY that never does.

Do you know what would have saved 10,000 jobs, grown investments, and propelled Kodak into the future? If someone could have reminded them that they were not in the photography business. Photography was their WHAT. Rather, they were in the business of capturing memories. That was their WHY. If they had held onto that, they would have had all they needed to adjust to a changing market, and it would have changed lives by protecting people from financial ruin.

I know this is church, not business school. Hang with me long enough to wrestle with this question.

QUESTION: Why are you WHAT-ING?

This may be the dumbest sounding question you ever hear me ask. And yet, it just might be the most important question you can ask yourself, the most important question to keep asking yourself. All the things you do—that’s your WHAT. Why do you do what you do? We should also ask, why don’t you do what you don’t do?

• You chose to be here. Why?
• If you’re married, what’s the WHY behind all you do and don’t do with your marriage?
• If you’re single, what’s the WHY behind all you do and don’t do with your singleness?
• If you’re a student, what’s the WHY behind all you do and don’t as a student?
• If you’re retired, what’s the WHY behind your retirement?

There’s a lot of stuff going on around this church. What’s the WHY behind it? Do you know happens when a person loses sight of their WHY? What happens when a church loses sight of their WHY?

When we lose our WHY we lose our WAY.

Welcome to our new series on 1 Corinthians. They were a church who lost their way because they lost their why. Grab a Bible and turn to 1 Corinthians. It’s in the second half of the Bible, called the New Testament. It’s the seventh book: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, then 1 Corinthians.

While you’re turning to it, I’m going to put on the screen what I believe is the theme verse is for the entire book.

1 CORINTHIANS 16:13-14 Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.

I want to challenge you to memorize this verse. Why we are we calling this series Church in the Wild?

Not because our city is bad or scary, but because every church on the planet lives in a context that can knock it off its feet. Every church, wherever it may be, lives in a context that can make it forget why it exists. The same is true for every organization, every marriage, every individual. There are always forces at work that can blur our purpose.

What happens when we lose our WHY? We lose our WAY. This is our thesis, the anthem that will be repeated throughout the series.

SERIES THESIS: Stand FIRM and FEARLESS, but let LOVE lead.

Stand Firm: Stay anchored to your WHY. There are things that are going to constantly change all around you. It’s not your job to control that. It’s our responsibility to keep our feet, to hold on to our purpose, our why, no matter what changes around us.

Fearless: C.S. Lewis once said that courage is the form of every virtue at its testing point. Think about the fruit of the Spirit: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Those are very different qualities, but they're always going to look like courage when they’re under fire. It’s easy to be kind when everyone is kind. But when we live in a time when contempt is the order of the day, being kind looks like courage.

Let Love Lead: This is why we can’t stop at standing firm and fearless. We are always going to encounter compelling personalities and groups who, by all appearances, seem to stand firm for truth and good things. And they do so with guts. They don’t let difficult circumstances and people stop them. They don’t back down when attacked. How can you know they are of God? Or how can you discern if they merit your trust? Do they lead with love? Something that we’ll encounter in 1 Corinthians is that it doesn’t matter how impressive we are, how stunning our religious lives and accomplishments—if we don’t have love, we are nothing.

BACKSTORY OF CORINTHIANS

If you want to know the backstory of the church at Corinth, start in Acts 18. The Apostle Paul preached in that city for about 18 months. The church began with the help of some prominent and wealthy folks. They started strong. As best as we can tell, this church was full of gifted people.

Some of you know my favorite expression. For every mile of road, there are two miles of ditch. They found the ditch. 1 Corinthians is a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church. When he wrote it, these were some of the ditches they’d fallen into.

• Tribalized around personalities
• Sexual misconduct: incest, prostitution, celibate marriages
• Divorce
• Performative spirituality
• Chaotic worship services
• Tensions between men and women in leadership
• Wealth-based discrimination

The wealthy used communion to embarrass the poor.

• Competition for status
• Legal Disputes
• Pseudo-Intellectualism

This church was littered with bad thinking, scandalous behavior, and broken relationships.

Tertullian was a brilliant theologian and author from North Africa. He’s a cherished figure from Christian history. He described 1 Corinthians like this.

The whole first epistle was written…not with ink but with gall. –Tertullian

There will be times that this book feels about as fun as a financial audit and colonoscopy rolled into one. And yet, the letter itself is a model of what it looks like to stand firm and fearless, but leading with love. As he wrote it, Paul cracked open his chest so that we could see the heart that was driving it.

1 CORINTHIANS 4:14-15 I am writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children. Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.

This is written from the disposition of a loving dad. He aches for them. He wants better for them than they want for themselves. That’s his motive for writing. What’s our motive for studying it? I think about the prayer in Psalm 139. Search me, God. Find any offensive way in me. As we read let’s hold to that prayer, and let’s remember this.

We may not share the same GUILT, but we share the same VULNERABILITIES.

We may not do the same things they did, but we’re vulnerable to forgetting the same thing—our why. And what happens when we lose our why? We lose our way.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11

It may seem strange to start by reading towards the end. But this is where Paul gives them and us the lens through which to process everything. Bible scholars almost unanimously agree that this is the irreducible summary of the gospel. It’s the capstone. This is it. This is everything. As I read it, think about our thesis: Stand firm and fearless, but let love lead.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.

This is your why. This is what anchors your life.

By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

If this isn’t true, belief is vain. It’s good to be sincere. But sincerity is a waste if the belief isn’t true.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.

An honest reading of the Bible will always lead to an invitation to believe based on evidence. This was the first century version of citing sources. Go and talk to these folks. Investigate for yourselves.

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

Paul was a man who lived free from shame. He wasn’t a slave to his past. And yet, he never forgot his past. He could be honest with himself and with others about it because he was transformed by the grace of Jesus.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

FIRST IMPORTANCE:

He described this as first importance. We might say, these are the non-negotiables. Whatever we may disagree about, we must agree on this.

Jesus took what we DESERVE so we can have what he DESERVES.

A theological term for this is substitutionary atonement. In Hebrews, it says that for the joy of it, Jesus endured the cross. He took the full weight of divine punishment for sin. He substituted himself for us. One of my favorite pastors would say, The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me.

Now, you can believe that from your soul to your toes and it still won’t change anything. We must reckon with this.

A DEAD Jesus is a WORTHLESS Jesus.

If Jesus is still dead, our hopes are dead. Our faith is pointless, and all of this is, at best, a waste of time. Charlie Dates is a pastor whom I admire. If you’re ever in Chicago on the weekend, visit his church. He said this.

He was raised literally, actually, victoriously, historically, and majestically.
–Charlie Dates

The resurrection is a physical reality. It means so much more than after my body wears out and dies that I get to live forever. That’s true. And that’s great. And yet, the reality of resurrection means so much more than that. The resurrection is both the power and pattern for the life of the follower of Jesus right now.

The same power that raised him from the dead is in you if you have trusted in him by faith. So, standing firm and fearless, but leading with love—it includes your participation, but isn’t based on your power. Resurrection is also the pattern of your life. Your life and my life should be ongoing sets of stories of dead and broken things being restored and renewed. That’s why we love sharing faith stories around here. Every story is a story life being returned.

With that in view, let’s reread this line.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For those of you who are grammar enthusiasts, you’ll love this. This was originally written in Koine Greek, in Greek this [pointing to screen] is a present, passive indicative. That means it’s current, ongoing action, that is happening to us. The intent is for us to understand it like this,

1 CORINTHIANS 15:2 By this gospel you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

The gospel isn’t the STARTING POINT—it is the POINT.

Tim Keller used to say the gospel isn’t the ABCs of salvation, it’s the A-Z. Maybe this will help.

SLIDE: DOT LINE DOT RAY

To be a follower of Jesus means there is a point in your life when you believe that Jesus died for you and was raised again. You put your trust in that. You give your allegiance to him. In another place the Apostle Paul wrote, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

One day, you die. Then comes heaven. There are lots of ideas and questions about that. We’re doing a series on Heaven in August. But what about the in between? [Pointing to screen] What about this? Paul says, this period right here, we are being saved.

There’s an old school way that people talked about this. [Pointing to screen] At this point we were saved. The theological term is justification. [Pointing to screen] At this point here, we will be saved. The theological term is glorification. [Pointing to screen] However long or short this stretch of time is, we are being saved. The theological term is sanctification.

You were saved. You are being saved. You will be saved.

If you go back to the beginning, Genesis 1. God made people in his what? In his image. We were made to reflect him. With our diverse personalities, gifts, and temperaments, you were made to be fully you while reflecting him.

Each week we end our services by reading 2 Corinthians 5:14-15. The love of Christ compels us…We don’t live for ourselves but for him who died for us and was raised again. If you keep reading that chapter, it says we are his ambassadors. So what is this time period all about? What’s the why?

To be continually formed, more and more, to look like Jesus. The point, the why is for our lives look like what it would look like for Jesus to live our lives.

• Are you becoming more like Jesus in the way you show up at work?
• Are you becoming more like Jesus in the way you show up at home?
• Are you becoming more like Jesus in the way you steward you money?
• Are you becoming more like Jesus in the way you steward your body and sexuality?
• Are you becoming more like Jesus in the way you face health concerns?
• Are you becoming more like Jesus in the way you handle conflict, even serious conflict?
• Are you becoming more like Jesus in the way you respond to authority?
• Are you becoming more like Jesus in the way you steward authority?

SLIDE: Golden Circle (Simon Sinek)

There’s going to be a lot of different answers when it comes to what we do with our lives. Again, lots of diversity. For followers of Jesus, this [pointing to screen] is always the same. While there is much around us that’s always changing, what doesn’t change is that are lives are to become more and more like the one who lived, who died for us, and was raised again.

1 CORINTHIANS 16:13-14 Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.

ILLUSTRATION: GA Studdart Kennedy

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