Inspiring stories of churches working together, not because of a central authority; but through the love of Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:12-14 (MSG) -- You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts--limbs, organs, cells--but no matter how many parts you can name, you're still one body. It's exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain--his Spirit--where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves--labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free--are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge. It's all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together.
This is a famous passage many disciples are familiar with, describing how the church (the body of Christ) functions just like a physical body. Though there are many different parts; limbs, organs, cells, they function in harmony for the good of the whole body. The co-operation of our body parts really is a glorious thing. Without it we would die! In fact cancer is a disease where certain cells in the body stop co-operating and start acting selfishly. They encourage other cells to do the same and very soon a tumor is formed. If that tumor is allowed to grow big enough it can kill the whole body.
The church functions in the same way. In the