Crooked legs, protruding eyeballs, unimpressive speech.

That's how the Apostle Paul was described.

Hardly the superhero we imagined.

Yet this ordinary man planted something extraordinary in an unremarkable Greek city that would

change the world.

So, what was his secret?

Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall points to Paul's letter to the Thessalonians,

where he finds the biblical model for churches that truly matter, places where real people

with real struggles find genuine healing.

It's the first in his series called Contagious Christianity.

Chuck titled today's message, A Church with the Right Stuff.

We like real people.

We don't like phonies, do we?

We want to be away from phonies.

When we sense that somebody is a fake, we can't get away fast enough.

But we like people that are authentic.

We like folks that are supportive, people who are innovative,

and generous givers rather than takers and users, don't we? We don't like to look back on an

experience and feel that we were used, that someone got out of us what they wanted,

and then that's over and we go on. We like to feel that that person gave, didn't try to just

suck the life out of us. Hey, that's what he thought about. In fact, he doesn't leave us with a list that some preacher could come up with.

He tells us the list, verse 3.

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