Using your Gifts

Career aspiration

What do you want to do when you grow up?

We’ve got some of our kids in here today, and it’s always a fun topic to have.

Occasionally we’ll have discussions in our house about what the best job in the world would be, and also what the worst job would be.

I remember working at Hunter Water and learning about the dive team there - it sounded like a lot of fun, that is, until I learnt where they went diving - and let’s just say that it included the wastewater treatment plants.

But there are plenty of amazing jobs out there, and it’s nice to dream about them, particularly if you forget about constraints of what is realistic. You can dream about being an astronaut and landing on the moon. Or being a travel journalist where you get paid to take holidays.

Now maybe you’re thinking, that’s lovely for the kids, but I’m on the other side of my career now - I’ve been there, done that.

That’s all well and good, but I wonder if you remember that time when you were still at school. What did you dream about as your career?

Did you end up being what you dreamed? Or did you end up going down a completely different path?

It’s interesting to reflect on, because it is easy to put some jobs up on a pedestal and think of other jobs as beneath us. But is this a fair way to think about things?

But, whatever the career outcome, even if it’s a stay at home mum, I’m sure you all have or will work very hard at what you do.

And so for those who are either still in their career, or can look back on it, I wonder how you thought about that hard work? Could you call it enjoyable in any way?

Or did you see your job as something to do to earn a few dollars, and the quicker you could get away from the place the better?

I dare say I’d get a variety of responses to this if I spent the time and asked each of you individually.

The truth is, something similar happens when we look around the various jobs around the church. There are perhaps some desirable jobs, and some less than desirable jobs.

Many of you will work really hard helping out the church as you can. For some, you will find this work really rewarding - even enjoyable. For others, the work will feel like a real slog, and the sooner you can offload it, the better.

Today, we are coming to the end of our series looking at spiritual gifts, and I’ve chosen a passage that in some ways acts as a biblical case study for us. It’s a passage that will help us think about what work we do in church.

As we’ll explore soon, in many ways it comes across as rather idealized. In fact, the basic message is really quite simple. I can even state it up front, namely: in the church, you should work in your area of gifting.

That sounds simple enough - figure out your gifting, and work there. But if it was that simple, I could probably end my message now and we could all just get on with it.

But in practice it begs a lot of questions.

First of all, how do I know what my gifting is?

But even if you can figure that out, what if you don’t like the job that is best suited to your gifting?

What if a job needs doing and no one with that gifting is available to do it? Then what do you do?

Well, this morning, I want to attempt to look at some of these issues, but I’m going to try and come back to the point that while we’ll find that ministry in practice is far from idealized, the basic principle we get from this passage is still relevant - namely, in the church you should work in your area of gifting.

Context

But before we get into these issues, lets try and transport ourselves back into this time of the very early church.

You see, the book of Acts is a really exciting place to be.

Back at Acts 2, we had the Holy Spirit poured out, and by the end of that chapter, 3000 people are baptised.

After this we’re told that daily their number was being added to.

And so with this rather rapid growth as you might expect, the church experiences what you might call growing pains. And there was no church growth literature for them to turn to like we might have today. But they did have the Holy Spirit.

Now, I’m not going to spend too much time looking at the chapters between Acts 2 and where we’re going to focus in Acts 6, but I do want to make a very brief observation about this period.

You see, if we think about this period from a spiritual perspective, we see the devil using various tactics to attack this new church.

The first tactic he uses is to put the local authorities against them. In these early chapters, the church faces a massive barrage from the Sanhedrin.

But then we see a second tactic that the devil uses, and this comes at the start of chapter 5. The devil tempts the believers from within, and we get a spirit of hypocrisy which threatens the integrity within the church.

Well, we can actually view our passage today as a fresh attack on the church, but it’s a very different type of attack. In fact, I think it is a type of tactic the devil often uses because we don’t even recognise that anything bad is happening.

You see, the devils tactic in this passage is the good ole’ distraction technique.

All you have to do is take someones attention away from where it should be focused, and their effectiveness will be hugely impacted.

The distraction

Okay, as this is going to be our passage for today, let’s look a bit closer at the distraction because as we’ll see, in many ways it is a very subtle distraction.

Well, we see in this early period in the church, there are a number of core functions that the church should carry out. One such function is to bring people into the faith and then disciple them in this faith. Another function is to care for the vulnerable people within their community. Both are very important functions.

Now, remember I said that the church experienced growing pains during this early period. Well, as you might imagine, the work is coordinated from the people at the top, and when you have a relatively speaking small community, this works fine. As things grow, if the people at the top try to be involved in everything, well, let’s just say, it’s never going to work.

So what was the actual issue?

Well, one of the vulnerable people in the community are the widows. Unlike today, there was no government pension, where they can have money to live off. Their husbands would have been earning their income, and so after they pass away, circumstances can become very difficult, particularly if their children aren’t in a position to help out.

And so the church was able to provide a little assistance to this problem. As we see in this chapter, there is some system where by there is a daily distribution of food.

That’s all well and good, but this is where things get tricky. You see, this becomes a bigger and bigger need to fill. And new and bigger complexities arise.

Widows start getting overlooked.

And to make matters worse, there is a racial dimension to this.

As you’ll see in verse 1, we have reference to both the Hellenistic Jews and the Hebraic Jews. The word “Hellenistic”, by the way, is actually a reference to Greek culture.

So while they might both be Jews, the Hellenistic Jews are most likely Jews that had grown up outside of Jerusalem and took on much more of the Greek culture, whereas the Hebraic Jews were more steeped in the Jewish culture of Jerusalem.

Well, unfortunately, as often happens, a divide had become apparent, and whether it was a real problem, or just a perception, as they struggled to make the full food distribution, it was the Hellenistic Jews that were being overlooked.

So what’s the solution?

Well, in these sort of situations, we tend to have an initial response. If there is a new need - well, work harder.

It’s the solution we’ll often bring to our own situation. A new need arises - so you need to work harder.

But what happens when we try to solve our problem in this way? Well, a few different outcomes might eventuate. We either completely burn ourselves out - and this of course has the flow on effect that we then become useless to everyone. Or in our attempt to do everything, we keep dropping other balls.

Actually the analogy of juggling balls is a good one. You might be good at juggling balls, but there will be a limit to the number of balls you can successfully manage. Try to add another ball, there’s a good chance you’ll actually drop them all.

Well, let’s take a look at what happens in this case study of ours.

We’re actually given a little insight into the thinking of the twelve disciples who remain at the forefront of the activity of the church.

You see, the twelve realise that it would be possible for them to fill the gap. They’re physically capable of delivering the food that is required. However, this would be another ball for them to juggle. Add this ball and what happens? Well, they would be neglecting the ministry of the word.

God has specifically gifted these chosen men to perform a task, and it wasn’t to serve tables.

Now let me just highlight the subtly of this distraction.

You see, you could well imagine how easy it would be for the twelve to conclude, well, here’s a problem, I can fix it, so let’s go. It was one of their core functions so you could feel well justified in doing it.

But this subtle change of direction would have made a big difference.

Thankfully, the twelve did not fall for this distraction. They recognised it for what it was.

The first thing they needed to recognise is that God uses other people. It might seem obvious, but sometimes we can be fooled into thinking that if we don’t do it, nobody will.

And so, the twelve were able to identify seven people who were able to serve in the way that was necessary and had the character that was required for such a task.

Interestingly, in verse 6, you’ll see that they were then commissioned for such a task by praying and laying their hands on them.

And what happens as a result. Verse 7 tells us that “the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly”. When God’s people do what they are meant to be doing, it’s amazing how so often, we see growth just naturally occurring.

Application

Okay, so I want to pause here, because at this point, we should clearly be able to see the point I noted earlier, that is, we should be working in our area of gifting.

If we keep our eyes focused in the areas in which God has gifted us, then we will be much better at avoiding that distraction that can so easily take hold.

But as I alluded to earlier, this can be simple to say, but when it comes to practice, it’s a little more difficult.

What is my gift

Perhaps the first thing to highlight is that this lesson is much easier if we have a clear understanding of what our Spiritual gift is. Now for some of you, this might be really clear. For many, however, you might have a decent idea, after all, you’ve been volunteering in churches for a long time now, but if I was to ask you outright, it might be hard to give a nice clear response.

In part, we looked at this during the first two of our workshops that we’ve been running during the afternoons. It gave a list of 20 spiritual gifts that are listed throughout various parts of scripture and gave a definition of each, and then you could give some consideration to the extent to which that description would apply to you.

There are also other resources that will give you a questionnaire to help you narrow it down.

But even then, I’d suggest for some, it can still be a little unclear. I’d actually argue that while the list of 21 gifts are the ones listed in the Bible, I’m not convinced that it was meant to be taken as an exhaustive list. You might not fit perfectly in any category, but God has still gifted you for his purposes.

If what you are doing is building up God’s church, does it really matter what we call the gift, go for it.

I would encourage you however, particularly for those who are younger, to try lots of things. Sometimes you don’t really know what your gift is until you actually try it.

Less Desirable

Okay, well, lets say you know your gift, or at least you have some ideas of how you can be of good service to God’s church. But then an opportunity comes up to do a volunteer job in the church that is… what shall we say???… less than desirable.

Let’s take a classic example - cleaning the toilets.

Now first up, it’s probably worth noting, cleaning the toilets is not one of the listed gifts of the spirit. Although maybe if you want to choose one of the gifts that were listed in the SHAPE material, you could call it the gift of service or helping.

Well, okay, so we’ll say there is an opening on the cleaning roster - which actually is the case - but then there are a few objections we might make.

Not fun

The first objection is that its not a desirable job. It’s not particularly fun and you don’t get much joy from it.

You might even look at our passage today and think, look, even the twelve didn’t take the undesirable job.

But this is actually not what happened. There is no sense in the passage that the task of delivering food was beneath them. The food service was still important.

All jobs that serve the church are important. In fact, I’d suggest that any attempt to try to rank the importance of each task is a foolish thing to do.

And the extent to which you find it unejoyable - well, perhaps it’s worth considering how much you are being influenced by the “me, me, me” nature of our culture. When we are self-centered, it’s easy to look with disgust anything that’s not self-satisfying. But as we take an other-person focus, we can actually start to take pleasure in helping others.

Not my gift

But okay, that might be well and good, but you have a better objection, and it’s more in line with our passage this morning. You’ve got other gifts you should be focusing on.

Now this is where it can get slightly tricky. Because at times, it can be appropriate to actually look at your personal capacity to volunteer, and to assess that this would be a distraction from what God wants from you. In this way, you very well may be using the lesson from this passage to focus on your gifts.

However, it is also easy to use this as an excuse when really it is a cover for the fact that you just don’t want to.

Perhaps it’s worth asking the question the twelve asked. If you did this undesirable job, are you really being prevented from doing what you should be doing? The answer might be yes, in which case, say ‘no’ to the task at hand because it is a distraction.

But if on the other hand, you can see that you do have capacity to help in an area that has need, then maybe it is something you should be putting your hand up for, even if it is not your primary gift.

What if a job really needs doing

Now, there is one last problem that I want to address today as I try to put this idealized lesson into practice.

You see, here’s the thing. It’s all very nice as we consider how each job will have someone suitably gifted to fill the role.

The problem is, sometimes a certain role that is necessary comes up, and in that particular church, there’s not really anyone to fill it.

So, is there a time when you need to fill a role outside your gifting, even if it means neglecting other opportunities?

It’s worth noting that we don’t live in an ideal scenario, and for a time, we may need to do this. But this is one reason why we should be praying hard. Pray that God will raise up a suitale person, or give someone a suitable gift so that the role can be filled more appropriately. It can be truly amazing how God can work in this way.

Sometimes I wonder how many times we don’t find the people we want because we don’t ask our heavenly father for people with that gifting.

For a time, you may need to move outside your normal area - but allow these experiences to teach you more about yourself, and to look to God for the help we need.

Conclusion

I do recognise that as we look at the passage before us, it is easy to oversimplify the lesson and think that it is all easy.

The reality is we live in a complex world with many factors influencing how we see things.

But take the time to listen to God. Listen to where he wants you to be. Reflect on the ways God has gifted you so you can be best placed to serve him.

While these complicating factors exist, the reality is, the main lesson we learn from this passage still applies - make sure you aim your ministry focus to the area in which you have been gifted.

So let me pray...