As a boy he was always doing something or other with gunpowder or firearms or climbing dangerous trees, or tumbling into the river. He was full of pluck, and full to the brim of the love of adventure.

Walls and buildings, awe-inspiring architecture or stunning pipe organs, theater seats or space age sound systems—these do not turn a group of people into a church. The church consists of people who may gather in a building called a church, but the building itself is does not certify those who gather inside.

Most of the New Testament churches have frictions or divisions, but Corinth runs away with the prize. Paul writes to the Galatians of false teachers and to the Philippians of envious evangelists. Divisions on the inside, attacks from the outside—this becomes the playlist for the next 2,000 years.