"the refuse of the world"

I quoted this passage replying to Erin's comments on yesterday's entry, and I think it's a great challenge:

I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things.

I do not write this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. ...I urge you, then, be imitators of me. (1 Cor 4.9-16)

...as Paul imitated Jesus in this. Why don't our Christian "leaders" look like this--fools for Christ's sake, weak, in disrepute (not to mention ill-clad and buffeted and homeless)? Is this what we ourselves are headed towards?