Service

What is the purpose of the gifts?

To build the church

To strengthen the mission of the Kingdom

God gives gifts:

to every believer. (1 Corinthians 7:7)

to highlight His ability to use anyone. (Isaiah 55:9)

Scott Bozearth coaches two youth basketball teams in New Jersey. And it was a good year, both teams made a championship run this season. If you coach multiple teams, having a single team advance into a league tournament is no small accomplishment.

He and the parents of the youth on his team credit his "can do attitude" with his success. 12-year-old Abraxus Hannah had only stepped on the court for the first time this year. “Anytime I say I can't do something, Coach Scott always tells me I can," said Hannah. "I feel like he's made a really big difference in my life.” Parents agree that Coach Scott's can-do attitude has sparked a positive change in their children.

And Bozearth knows a thing or two about working through challenges. He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at birth, hindering the muscles on the left side of his body. That includes his left hand, which does not function as well as the right. In spite of this, Bozearth grew up playing basketball. He carried that passion into his adult life, where he coaches two teams in the Herb Henry Youth Basketball League. He believes his role is to do more than simply teach technical skills. He summarized his role in a recent interview with this phrase: "I love challenges. So, what I thought is, if God gave me a hand to play, I'm going to play like that."

Over the course of several months, Peter Skillman conducted a study pitting the skill of elite university students against that of the average kindergartner. Groups of four built structures using 20 pieces of spaghetti, 1 yard of tape, 1 yard of string, and 1 marshmallow. The only rule, the marshmallow had to end up on top.

Business students began by diagnosing the task, formulating a solution, and assigning roles. The kindergarteners, by contrast, got right to work, trying, failing, and trying again. Author Daniel Coyle explains the outcome, “We presume skilled individuals will combine to produce skilled performance.” But this assumption is wrong. In dozens of trials, the kindergartners built structures that averaged 26 inches tall, while the business school students built structures that averaged less than 10 inches.

We see smart, experienced business school students, and we find it difficult to imagine that they would combine to produce a poor performance. We see unsophisticated, inexperienced kindergartners, and we find it difficult to imagine that they would combine to produce a successful performance . . . individual skills are not what matters. What matters is the interaction.

The kindergartners succeed not because they are smarter but because they work together in a smarter way. They are tapping into a simple and powerful method in which a group of ordinary people can create a performance far beyond the sum of their parts.

Source:

Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code (Bantam, 2018), pp. xv-xvii.

3. to be used wisely and effectively. (1 Timothy 4:14)

4. to use His power through believers to transform people.