40 Acts – Gifted

Two weeks ago we looked at the unity of the early church, and we recognised that even in those early days, there were practical problems to be addressed.

Acts 6:1–7In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, ‘It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.’ This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them. So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

I touched on this incident in relation to the early churches ability to resolve potentially a divisive conflict.

What I want to focus on today using this same passage is about identifying and honouring people’s giftedness in relation to the church and outside to the community.

1) The first point is that there are many and varied roles in the church and many and varied skills to fill them

The problem in the early church was resolved, not by the apostles creating time to do it all themselves, but by finding people who are particularly suited to the job.

Henry Ward Beecher, a Congregationalist preacher who died in 1887 commented that no church can be prospered in which all the ministration comes from the pulpit." 1 I am not a one armed paperhanger.

The apostles realised that they needed help and could not do everything themselves.

1 Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from a Plymouth Pulpit

It’s not just gifts of teaching and preaching that are relevant in the church, but there are many, many ways to serve and build each other up. And most of these ways are intensely practical.

2) Secondly, I am not talking about talents here but spiritual gifts

Spiritual gifting does not equate to talents or skill or training: Talents have to do with techniques and methods; gifts have to do with spiritual abilities. Talents depend on natural power, gifts on spiritual endowment.2

Each person confessing Christ as Lord, living with the body of Christ, is given a gift by the Holy Spirit of the building of the body.

People themselves, as they grow under the power of the spirit, are a gift. If every member has discovered the unique treasure of his or her own being and is being received by others, there is tremendous fulfilment in power (Gordon Crosby)3

2 Leslie B Flynn in Erik Rees SHAPE 343 Tom Sine Live It Up 178

Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church spoke of this spiritual gifting given to each person

1 Corinthians 12Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. …4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. … 11 All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. 12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

The lists often quoted about spiritual gifting (and there are various ones within the Epistles) should not be regarded as exhaustive but as open-ended.

Let me highlight verse 7:To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Any individual involvement that contributes to the ministry of the church and to the common good is a spiritual gift4

We might struggle to identify our own gifts or wish we were gifted in different ways, but we’ve all been given our gifts specifically gifted by God to us and for a purpose of serving God. “I don’t want the gift given to me, I want my sister/brother’s gift” sounds more like a truculent child at Christmas rather than a mature Christian.

1 Corinthians 12:18–20 speaks of the value of every part of the body working in harmony:

God has placed 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.

Christians who don’t know their spiritual gifts and aren’t serving in the right place are missing out on some of the greatest blessings of the Christian life.5

4 Gilbert Bilezikian Community 101 1075 Bill Hybels Honest to God – Becoming an Authentic Christian 112

Bill Hybels wrote that all satisfied workers do work that is consistent with their God-given abilities, talents, and interest.”6

Have you ever noticed how uniquely adapted each animal is to its environment and its way of life? On land, a duck waddles along ungainly on its webbed feet. In the water, it glides along smooth as glass. The rabbit runs with ease and great bursts of speed, but I've never seen one swimming laps. The possum climbs anything in sight but cannot fly, while the eagle soars to mountaintops.

Is there anything you’re good at or that comes to you easily that you haven’t before considered could be used to bless others?

Let me tell you about a friend of mine who told me his passion was golf and he asked how that was a spiritual gift. So I asked him what he did on the golf course. He said that as he walked the fairways, his golfing buddies talked and shared their concerns with him. Isn’t that ministry? I asked. And he realised that during that time he was being Christ in that situation so he took Wednesdays off work and went golfing.

6 Hybels 137

Sometimes it is hard for us to assess our own gifts so we need to ask someone else what gifts they see in us.

You may not be an eloquent public speaker, you may not be good with your hands, but you may be an encourager, a listener or a shoulder to cry on or a great cake baker. All these are gifts. Introvert or extrovert, loud or quiet – all of us are created by God with specific God given gifts that differ from each other.

I used to teach the Willow Creek Network course on identifying your spiritual gifts but I have come to realise that ‘although God often gives a single major spiritual gift to one of his servants, he frequently gives multiple gifts and that spiritual gifts are dynamic rather than static.’7 He gives us gifts for the situation. Never say you can’t when God says “you can, and I will equip you for the time you need it.”

This concept of spiritual gifting is why the apostles said Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.

7 Engstrom & Cedar Compassionate Leadership, 50

They needed to be filled with the Spirit because without the Spirit, there is no spiritual gifting.

We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that when we serve others, we are not giving out of our own emptiness but out of an overflow of the spirit.

In the worship area of church for example, often people will say that they know so-and-so who is a great musician or singer who would be great in our team but not a believer, but if he is not a Christian then what s/he could contribute is not worship. We need to be filled with the Spirit in order to give out. Worship teams have to consist of Christians otherwise they are just a band playing good music.

In order to grow the fledgling church, the apostles needed to delegate roles.

Remember Jethro’s advice to Moses who was trying to it all aloneExodus 18:17-18 “What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone.

That is why churches have ministries. If it all relied on the pastor, it could not grow past the

pastor’s capacity. Multiply the leaders, multiply the effectiveness of the church.

We, as well as the fledgling Acts church, recognise that we need to have the right people in the right roles. We need the square pegs in the square holes and the round pegs in the round holes.

We need to recognise that all the roles of the church in its operation and ministry are spiritual roles.

3) Thirdly I want to break the myth of the divide between secular and scared

Sometimes our gifts may not seem spiritual by our mind of divided secular/sacred tasks.

We can easily stifle growth in the church by (1) failing to recognise the importance of our gifts in the life of the church or (2) failing to allow the gifts of others to flourish.

In both cases we risk hindering the growth and well-being of the body and the spread of the gospel message. We need to consider whether we might be in danger of falling into either of those mind sets.

What underlies the problem of the church is an ancient and erroneous divide between secular and sacred – jobs we think are godly and roles we think are just work; jobs we rank in importance in the church and those we do not consider worthy of being called a gift.

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12:14the body does not consist of one member but of many.And remember verse 7 that we have already looked at:To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

And to belabour the point, Paul goes into some detail about the importance of all the roles, not just the glamour ones, using the eye, hands and parts that are less presentable analogy.

Is one part of the body more important than another? All parts are important. If you don’t believe that to be true, tell that to a friend of mine whose grand daughter was born without an anus and needed surgery at birth to correct that.

In church it is often the unseen roles which enable the church to function. They are not less important.

Sir Michael Costa was a great orchestral Conductor of the 19th Century. It is said that one day he was conducting a rehearsal in which the orchestra was joined by a great choir. Midway through the session the piccolo player stopped playing. It seemed innocent enough – after all who would miss the tiny piccolo amidst the great mass of instruments blazing away? All of a sudden Sir Michael stopped the entire orchestra and choir. “Stop! Stop! Where’s the piccolo? What’s happened to the piccolo?”

We may sometimes feel like that piccolo player – that we don’t have much to offer, that if we stopped our ministry no one would notice anyway. Yet the Great Conductor notices, and needs us to complete his orchestral masterpiece!

We only notice or acknowledge the work of the cleaner when the toilets are not cleaned and we only notice the servers after the service when the cups of tea do not turn up. Yet each one is serving in their gifting. Shouldn’t we encourage them in their gifting?

Wyn Fountain, Christian businessman from Auckland wrote: Either an activity is under the Lordship of Christ or it is not. If it is, it is sacred.

If it is not then it is not a legitimate activity for a believer to be engaged in. Our everyday occupation should be a vehicle for our ministry, as we serve the Lord and others. Every occupation provides that vehicle. It should be just as real, and pointed, effective and part of kingdom life as a ministry that goes on in the pulpit.8

The apostles were not looking down on the task of distributing the food to the widows as something beneath them. The emphasis is on the fact that if they took this on as well, they would be forsaking their main purpose which was to tell people about Jesus. The fact that they asked that the men chosen for this needed to be full of the Spirit and wisdom (Acts 6:3), shows that they valued this responsibility.

The task may appear unimportant or trivial in our way of grading importance, but the person doing it is never that, and he or she has the opportunity to turn the job into an act of worship (Tom Wright). 9

8 Wyn Fountain Thy Kingdom Come in the Other Hundred Hours 199 Alistair Mackenzie and Wayne Kirkland Where’s God on Monday 71

It is interesting that when we appoint a new pastor or elder or ministry leader we often lay hands on them, indicating that this is a spiritual role. But when we appoint practical workers, we do not.

But listen to the story again: They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

The apostles prayed and laid their hands on them (Acts 6:6) as they began their role of serving to congregation and this shows the significance they placed on this appointment.

It might seem surprising that an apparently practical role should have had such a spiritual requirement. But should there be any division? God can use all our gifts for his glory, whether we view them as ‘spiritual’ or not.

The apostles were saying that there was no room for ‘holiness hierarchy’ here: this job had value within their spiritual community.

We have created an artificial false divide between roles that we see as spiritual and roles that we think of as secular, but that is a lie.

The work of our hands (whatever that may be) and the work of our minds are acted out prayer, a love offering to the living God.10

The 17th Century Puritans recognised this:Cotton Mather declared, “Oh let every Christian walk with God, when he works at his calling, act in his occupation with an eye to God, act as under the eye of God”.11

In conclusion:Ministry is meeting another’s needs with the resources God gives to you.12

None of our gifts are insignificant. “We often underestimate our ability to make a significant difference in our small corner of the world,” 13 but God does not.

In this time of Lent, as we focus on being generous to those around us, let us identify and use our spiritual gifts to bless those around us, not only on Sunday and not only to our church family, but to the community outside the church.

10 Richard Foster Prayer: finding the heart’s true home 18311 Richard Foster Money Sex and Power 612 Rusaw & Swanson The Externally Focused Church 8813 Mackenzie and Kirkland 27

Let us encourage others to use their spiritual gifts and to honour them for doing so, because we minister from our diverse giftings to the glory of God.