Universal Church

At the Urbana 2006 Missions Conference, Rev. Oscar Muriu gave the following paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 12:14-27. (Rev. Muriu is the Senior Pastor of Nairobi Chapel in Kenya, a church that has grown from 20 members in 1991 to over 3,000 members and has established 25 church plants.)

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the American church should say, “Because I am not African, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the Canadian church should say, “Because I am not Asian, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were European, where would the sense of joy be? If the whole body were African, where would the sense of order be? But in fact God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The Canadian church cannot say to the Asian church, “I don’t need you.” The American church cannot say to the African church, “I don't need you.” On the contrary, the Asian parts that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the African parts that we think are less honorable should be treated with special honor. And the Latin American parts that seem unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while the presentable parts like the big, wealthy American church need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

The brilliance of this paraphrase is that it emphasizes the interdependence of all the worldwide ethnic parts that constitute the body of Christ.
But, if we were to take this paraphrase and apply it to one local church, the meaning would be destroyed. The meaning would be changed into something like, “within this local church, we need each other in order to be a whole body of Christ.” That would not be true. It is not true that an ethnic church can say to all the other ethnic groups of the world, “I don’t need you. By myself, and within my own ethnic group, I am a self-contained and self-sufficient body of Christ.”