Leadership Thought: So, You Don’t Think You Have Anything to Offer Your Church-A Lesson on Spiritual Gifts.

Dear Friends,

Last night I met on a zoom call with a group of church attenders who were investigating the possibility of joining our church. The class was designed to help them discover their spiritual gift(s).

I believe knowing your spiritual gift(s) is one of the most important lessons a believer can learn. Far too many church members have never discovered that God has supernaturally gifted them with a resource that is critical for their functioning within the body of Christ.

Pastor David Jeremiah says. “No church can be what God intended it to be, Jesus wants it to be, or the Holy Spirit has gifted it to be without the knowledge of spiritual gifts.”

Because we feel it is so important for believers to know their spiritual gift(s), we ask each prospective member to take a Spiritual Gift Assessment Test in order to help them discover their spiritual gift(s).

Today too many members have never known that at conversion, God provides them with at least one spiritual gift, (some more than one) which, when exercised, will enable them to more effectively serve within the body of Christ.

I try to impress upon church members that every “member is a minister,” and every member has some gift(s) to offer and share with others that will help contribute to the building up of the body of Christ.

I often envision that sitting in church every Sunday are beautifully gift-wrapped packages with tags attached that say, “Given in love by the Holy Spirit for ministry.” Some of those packages have been unwrapped, and the gift(s) within have been discovered and deployed. But sadly. most of those beautifully wrapped packages still remain unopened and the gift(s) within have yet to be discovered.

I believe the measure of any church is never determined by its number of bodies, the size of its buildings, or the amount of its budget, but by the number of its members who have discovered their spiritual gifts and are deploying those gifts in the service of Christ.

Knowing your spiritual gift(s) is important. Paul says, “I don’t want you to be uniformed about spiritual gifts” (1 Corinthians 12:1).  He writes to his friend Timothy and exhorts him saying “Don’t neglect the spiritual gift within you” (1 Timothy 4:14). And Peter reminds us. “Each one should use whatever gift he received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in various forms” (1 Peter 4:10-11).

If you are not using the gift(s) God has invested in you, you are adversely impacting the body of Christ and diminishing its effectiveness.

Tomorrow we will look at some of those gifts, how they are discovered, and the impact they have on those who possess them.

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom