Ministry: The Work of God’s People - 3 - Gifted for Service

Scripture: Ephesians 4:1-16

Ephesians 4:1–16 NIV

1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. 7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8 This is why it says: “When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people.” 9 (What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

8/4/2024

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Communion

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 1: Communion

Handing out spiritual gift inventories to be brought back next week.

Opening Prayer:

Gentle God:

we have traveled through many waters

to reach this place,

but share one baptism;

we arrive from different backgrounds and traditions,

yet share one faith;

we are, each of us, unique and precious to God,

and are members of one Body;

we have different dreams and doubts,

yet our hearts beat with one hope;

we are graced with different gifts,

so we may offer them in service to one Lord.

Gifted for Service

Success!

What does success look like?

Some people measure success by how much money they have in the bank. Some religions believe you can tell how good a person is by how much money they have. The better they are, the more God loves and blesses them with money. That idea runs contrary to everything Jesus taught. In fact, most of us don’t want to talk about money in church because Jesus taught that it is the poor who inherit his kingdom, and those who have money can’t get in.

Lots of people measure success by the number of relationships they have. The more people we have involved, the better we must be doing, right? Yet Jesus had over 120 disciples at the point in His ministry when His disciples were struggling to understand Him the most. At the moment He was fulfilling His purpose of giving His life for them, almost all of them had deserted or betrayed Him. Even at the resurrection — His victory over death — there were few disciples who believed Him at first. So, Jesus was not successful by the standard of numbers.

There are people who measure success by the amount of energy and activity spent. We have programs on our phones and watches that count how many steps we take and reward us for getting more in each day. I saw a movie several years ago where a man hired to kidnap and impersonate the pope was getting dressed, and he had the phrase “Jesus is coming... look busy.” tattooed on his lower back. I think there are many churches that use that as their mission statement — their reason for existing. They are convinced that a busy church is a successful church, no matter what they are doing. And there are many people who think they are good people because they are busy people, no matter what they are doing.

And yet one of the most significant things that set God’s people apart from everyone else in the Old Testament was keeping the Sabbath and stopping activity for a whole day each week. Even Jesus, who would still perform healing on the Sabbath, had no problem leaving everyone when He needed to spend time alone with His Heavenly Father.

The world measures success in many ways, including money, the number of people, and the amount of activity, especially in groups seeking to serve others. However, none of these things are sufficient to measure how faithfully we serve Jesus with the gifts He gives us. Our gifts come from and connect us to Jesus, equipping us to serve with Him.

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One God

The Jews could never agree among themselves on how to measure faithful service to God. Paul had the enormous task of trying to show how Jesus gave new standards to all the Jews and the new Gentile Christians. That’s why this whole letter to the Ephesians begins with Paul telling us that Jesus is above everything in creation. He is the Lord of Creation and the one Who holds all things together. If you miss this point in Ephesians, you miss everything. Everything Paul teaches us about being the church in this letter only works or makes sense when we submit ourselves to Jesus and follow Him faithfully.

Most organizations will tell you that they rise or fall based on the ability and performance of their leadership. We are no different in the church. We look to our pastors, our conference leaders, our worship leaders, our lay leaders... anyone who has a title with “leader” in it tends to be the people we expect or hope to have what it takes to make us grow and be successful. When we notice things are off, those are the people we look at for explanations of why and how we will fix things. This might also be why finding and keeping good leaders anywhere is often challenging. Most of us don’t want to be in that place of responsibility.

But when you are looking for the leader of the Church, whether it is the Church across the entire world or three people who meet in a tiny chapel out in the woods to worship God and pray for each other, their leader is always Jesus. You may have some middle management between Jesus and the people, but our mission and orders come from Christ — not the preacher in the pulpit, on TV, or anywhere else. We may be tempted to substitute someone or something in the place of Jesus and treat Him as the symbolic leader of the Church, doing things in His name but not necessarily by His will. But that is not how we were designed, and it is not God’s will for His Church.

Jesus is the source of the Church. There is one Lord, one baptism into the one Body by the power of one Spirit, who connects us to one God the Father, who works all around us, within us, and through us.

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Gifted Parts

Jesus came into the world to create and arrange us into His Body, the Church. He chose us to be His disciples and gave us the spiritual gifts to serve Him faithfully.

When we think about those gifts, we often think about talents and skills or sometimes the way we feel we lack them. But the first gifts mentioned here are people: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors (or shepherds), and Teachers. Sometimes, we see these names as spiritual gifts, but in this context, they are not spiritual gifts given to individuals; they are spiritual roles of people Christ has given to the whole church. It takes many spiritual gifts to fulfill the role of an apostle, just as it does to be a teacher, pastor, evangelist, or prophet — and not every person fulfills those roles in the same way. Peter and Paul were apostles with different gifts, serving different people in different places. Both were Christ’s gifts to the Church.

These roles are vital to the Church. Without them, we will not grow disciples of Jesus. These five roles are like the seeds that grow into different kinds of churches — the basic building blocks of a family of believers.

Apostles lay the foundation of the gospel and keep it firm so the church stays connected to and grows from Christ. Prophets listen to God and share His Word with His people. Evangelists help communicate that Word to those who do not know Christ and invite them into the family. Pastors or Shepherds care for the family and ensure they stay connected to God. Teachers help everyone grow and mature and find their own role in the church.

You don’t have a church without a firm connection to Christ, ways of communicating with people inside and outside the body, and the means to help them grow. You can have the best music, speakers, food, and friendliest people who help everyone with everything in the community, but you won’t have a church that Jesus leads.

We don’t fit well when we start with what we can or like to do instead of starting with Jesus. Instead of being a well-oiled operation that Jesus holds together, we become a pile of spare parts, any one of which could fill a need but is not very useful by itself or when it is not assembled together in the right way. Many gifted people do things for Jesus, and they live around others just like them, like a pile of spare parts. However, there is a difference between those who use their gifts for Jesus and those who work with Jesus. So, we can find our gifts and talents on our own, but we cannot use them effectively if we are not connected to the Body of Christ.

Apostles can be good at starting businesses. Prophets make good coaches and mentors. Evangelists are often excellent communicators. Shepherds are good counselors and restaurant managers, and good teachers can teach many things. But they all need each other to be a church. We need all those roles and all the many gifts that make them up to work faithfully with Jesus.

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Grow Your Gifts

When we come together as a body, we can help one another grow in our gifts. We speak the truth in love, calling out Christ in each other, helping each other be nourished by His Word and led by His Spirit. The Body of Christ helps us practice our gifts and learn to work together. We have the choice of whether to participate in this or not. Even if we attend church every week, we choose how much we connect with others and participate in the ministries. Most of that participation does not come with a title either.

When I was in school, I learned that I was not good at everything. Some things were easy to learn, and other things were very difficult. The older I got, the less things came naturally, and the harder I had to work to learn them. There were times when I spent more time doing the things I enjoyed than the things that were difficult for me. I did not get good grades in the subjects that I did not spend time working on. And it affected more than just me. When I had group projects but did not do my work, it affected the whole team, meaning someone else had to pick up my slack and work extra hard for us to get through well.

I played on several sports teams throughout school, and most of the time, I did not put in any more practice than was required. My lack of gifts in those areas and lack of interest made it one of those experiences that was not enjoyable much of the time. I learned from those experiences, and they helped shape who I am today, but they were places to serve in the moment and not to stay. They taught me to work hard even when things were not easy.

Language classes were another struggle for me. I was okay with English but struggled with Spanish. Yet God has used that struggle to do some of the most powerful ministry in my life. It was easy to think I was an okay student on my own. But it became much more difficult when I had to apply that knowledge or use those skills in coordination with other people. When I tried to plan my skills around serving God, it became almost impossible because I discovered God was as happy to use my weaknesses as my strengths in ministry. God isn’t interested in spare parts. He doesn’t need us to do any of His work. He wants the whole package, and He wants to grow us into HIs vision of Who we are in Him, not what we can muster up on our own.

I could ask you what your gifts and strengths are and encourage you to grow and develop them. But the truth is, we are not in charge of that. The Lord gives and takes away those gifts according to His good pleasure, not our own. One of the most powerful points of the Gospel message is that we do not have to stay the same. God can change us! We just have to be willing to receive and follow Him into and through that change.

So today, we have some spiritual gift inventories for you to take home, fill out, and bring back next week. Some of you took something similar last year. We would love for you to take this again. Your results may be the same... or they may have changed a little. These tests do not set anything in stone. They give us all starting points to learn to serve and grow together in Christ. We would like you to bring them back to us so that Bekah and I, as your pastors, have better ideas on how to help you grow and serve in the Body of Christ and add to what we already know about you. Also, as our nominations team continues to pray over our leadership for next year, we will have a little more information about where you can fit, serve, and grow well.

We want you to be who Jesus calls you to be—no more, no less. If you are willing, he will give you every gift you need to serve Him wherever He leads.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, we know you don't need us. Yet you call us to follow you and serve with you. You give us gifts that are meant to be shared. When we keep our gifts to ourselves, they rot on the vine and drag us down. Help us today to recognize those gifts that You give us. Give us the courage to trust in You as we use them to serve with You. Hold us together with our brothers and sisters in Christ, matching our strengths and weaknesses in a way that takes the attention away from us and gives You the glory and honor You deserve. Help us to find our place in You and grow into the Church You are calling and leading us to be. In Your Holy Name, Amen.

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