Tuesday, May 1, 2012

How do spiritual gifts relate to the church?

When you go to a church service, what do you see?  Does one person run every aspect of the church, be it the deliverance of the message, direction of the worship program and the ministration of the small groups?  Or are many people involved throughout the entire church service?  Do you find yourself in an environment where you are actively encouraged to participate in almost every facet?  Or does the leadership subtly discourage you from participating in the church service, due to your perceived lack of qualifications or experience in the ministry?

Overall, churches are supposed to help reach out to people with the message of salvation and help people grow in their relationships with God.  Churches are an ideal place to help people grow in their faith, so they can apply the message of God’s love to their own lives as well as their own individual spheres of influence, such as their families, friends and others around them.  In the same thought, church leaders hold a great responsibility in ensuring they provide an environment that fosters spiritual growth for all people, where God has each of them in their spiritual walk.

When people are looking for a church, you can often hear a wide variety of comments concerning their impressions of churches such as, the pastor gives great messages or the worship team is awesome.  On the surface, these sound like great things in a church, but you often have to look beyond the silver lining to see the whole picture.  In some churches, you may have a talented pastor who can do almost every aspect of the church service each week by giving the message, leading the worship and teaching the small groups.  Other churches may have a similar scenario where the same person preaches each week, the same worship group performs every week, and the same person teaches the small groups.  As a result, you may begin to realize there is something wrong with the picture when you notice a pattern of everything revolving around one or two or three persons, even though you have a church full of able-bodied congregants.  What happens when you decide to make the plunge and jump in with both feet in getting involved with the church?  Will there be a place for you if you want to help preach, get involved in the worship team or teach a small group?

So what do you find beyond the silver lining of the church?  Consider what you see when attending an orchestra.  Do you focus on the conductor for the entire show or do you end up listening to the beautiful sound of many instruments harmonizing with one another?  The conductor and instrumentalists play an important role in the performance.  However, the sound of the music does not revolve around any one individual or instrument, but rather as the whole group coming together for one purpose or goal.  The same premise basically applies to the church.  Does the congregation perceive that the church service revolves around one leader or small group of leaders, or instead, do they see the church coming together for the purpose of sharing the message of God’s love in an unadulterated manner?

In the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians he explains this same concept about spiritual gifts in the church.  The Apostle Paul explains that every believer plays an important part within the church, no matter how major or minor his or her role.

 “Now the body is not made up of one part but of many.  If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.  And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, 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 an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?  If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has arranged the parts in 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.” (I Corinthians 12:14-10 NIV)

Overall, we need to remember that every single believer plays an important role in God’s church, regardless of his or her stature.  As the Apostle Paul says, we can speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but if we do not have love, we are like a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. (I Corinthians 13:1)  Likewise, the importance of genuinely loving others is of vital importance to our churches, since each and every believer has been entrusted with a spiritual gift or gifts according to God’s purpose.     

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