an intersting paraphrase

Though I speak with the tongues of scholarship, and though I use approved methods of education, and fail to win others to Christ, or build them up in
Christian character, I am become as the moan of the wind in a Syrian desert.

And though I have the best of methods and understand all mysteries of religious psychology, and though I have all biblical knowledge, and lose not myself in the task of winning others to Christ, I become as a cloud of mist in an open sea.

And though I read all Sunday School literature, and attend Sunday School conventions, institutes, and summer school, and yet am satisfied with less than winning souls to Christ and establishing others in Christian character and service, it profiteth nothing.

The soul-winning servant, the character-building servant, suffereth long and is kind, he envieth not others who are free from the servant’s task; he vaunteth not himself, is not puffed up with intellectual pride.

Such a servant doth not behave himself unseemly between Sundays, seeketh not his own comfort, is not easily provoked. Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things.

And now abideth knowledge, methods, the Message, these three: but the greatest of these is the Message.

–Joseph Clark, paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 13, quoted in Ernest Reisinger, Today’s Evangelism, and in turn quoted in Don Whitney's Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.