SPIRITUAL GIFTS

Mine are helps, hospitality, and administration. Leadership is way down the ladder, but I can do it if no one else steps up. Bruce Bugbee's Network curriculum is life-changing and was the basis for many years of the mega-church's conviction that our time and energies were best spent in the areas of our spiritual giftedness. Completing the curriculum was required before your volunteer efforts were accepted.

Then, the church expanded and the volunteers were stretched thinly, so the new thought was "Just Jump In!" God will bless your efforts. No time to explore your giftedness. We'll do it later, or not at all. God can use you anywhere.

Such a fresh wind and a deja'vu reading John Ortberg's recent message at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. John is a truth teller; a psychologist and Bible scholar never timid in teaching the truth.

Paul says it like this to each person, “Everybody has been given the manifestation…the gifts, the gifting…of the Holy Spirit for the common good,” for the benefit of the body and, beyond that, the world, and here’s the plan:

• The church should be led by people who have been given the spiritual gift of leadership.
• The church ought to be shepherded by people who have been given the spiritual gift of shepherding.
• The church is to be taught by people who have been given the spiritual gift of teaching.
• The church is to be administrated by people who have been given the spiritual gift of administration.

Starting to catch on to how this deal works? There’s never been anything like this before.

By the way, this is not optional for the church. There is no plan B for churches based on credentials or religious bureaucracies or denominational structures or human-made traditions. God’s only plan for His church was that it should be organized according to spiritual gifts. Led by leaders, shepherded by shepherds, and so on. For any church to fail to do this is to defy the Holy Spirit and to deny the authority of Scripture. And, plus, by the way, it won't work so good.