We reached chapter 5 on church discipline in my expositional series through 1 Corinthians. It’s a tough passage for our young church in Iraq—a church with zero history of practicing church discipline despite numerous appropriate opportunities.
I felt apprehensive about the sermon’s reception by the congregation.
Then, as if to make matters more complicated, a couple minutes into the sermon the electricity went out—a regular occurrence in Iraq. I raised my voice to overcome the loss of the microphone and an elder handed me his phone flashlight so I could see my notes but I was speaking into stygian darkness.
“The backup generator will kick in soon,” I thought to myself.
Unbeknownst to me, the caretaker had left that week for a trip to Turkey and took the key to the cage that prevented the generator from being stolen. Unfortunately, this also prevented our frantic deacons from being able to fire it up.
I continued preaching for 50 minutes, in the dark, with no clue that the congregation was awake.
Occasionally, I would point the flashlight to my face and say, “Church, I want you to listen to this,” (having the effect, I hoped, to what I had seen at
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