The Gifts of the Congregation

August 15, 2021 1 Corinthians 12:1-12 The gifts of the congregation 13th Sunday After Pentecost Year B – non lectionary Opening Song Welcome Call to Worship Leader: There are different spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; and there are different ministries and the same Lord; People: Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many parts. Leader: We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free. People: We were all given one Spirit to drink. Come, Holy Spirit! All: Let us worship God! Stewardship Moment Every believer has a calling. In order to fulfill our calling to the utmost, God has provided each of us with a unique set of spiritual gifts. Knowing and leveraging our spiritual gifts enables us to be more effective members of the body of Christ. According to 1 Corinthians 12, the Spirit of God, acting in a direct and intentional way, desires to bring fullness and balance to every body of believers. This is His will, and it can only be realized through the sharing of our spiritual gifts with one another. The concept is both profound and exciting. We are commanded by God to be good stewards of the gifts He has given us. Good stewardship therefore compels us to know, understand and utilize our spiritual gifts to better fulfill our calling, and by doing so, bring our unique contribution to the body of Christ. Serving with our gifts is a powerful form of stewardship. You would think that Christians already know everything there is to know about serving. After all, we are taught from a very early age that serving others is the path to pleasing God. While there is a fair amount of truth in that statement, there is also much confusion as to what actions best constitute Christian service. At the basic level, serving is giving—giving of our time, talents and treasures, and giving of our prayers and affections. To think deeply about acts of service is to come face to face with the heart and message of Christ. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve (Matthew 20:28). This knowledge compels us to always seek ways to achieve a fuller expression of our life of service. Ministries and churches have long sought to increase the volume and effectiveness of the service we provide in the name of God. The sobering reality is that, unless each of us accepts and learns to function within the framework of our giftedness, the church as a whole will not maximize its impact. Who will benefit from better stewardship of this collective giftedness? The answer is simple. Everyone we come into contact with. The ripple effect is endless. For our local brothers and sisters in faith, the sharing of our gifts builds them up. Our individual gifts mesh with theirs to produce a rich and beautiful tapestry of service. Leveraging our spiritual gifts, we all contribute to the experience of a healthy and whole family of Jesus Christ. “As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God,” (1 Peter 4:10, NASB). Significantly, without each of us serving with the full knowledge and power of our unique spiritual gifts, the Kingdom experience is incomplete, and the resulting outcomes are partial rather than whole. The criticality of spiritual gifts to our collective well-being has been neglected for far too long. It’s time to embrace and be good stewards of the unique gifts God has endowed each one of us—with arms and hearts wide open. Prayer: Heavenly Father, help me to understand and use my unique spiritual gifts to glorify you and build up others. Amen. By Diana Myers Prayer of Thanksgiving Almighty God and everlasting Father, we thank You that You are our bountiful Provider and for the many gifts that we enjoy so freely from the fruit of the earth. May we be wise servants and faithful stewards with the many blessings that we have received at Your hand. May we take of what You have given to us with a grateful heart, and cheerfully give back to You a small portion of the abundance of Your grace, that we have received at Your hand. Keep our hearts ever thankful towards You, and give us a tender compassion for those around us that are hurting or in need. May we be willing to share our portion with others and may we show forth the love of God in our lives, with a cheerful and gracious disposition, especially to those who are disadvantaged and needy. Accept our offering of prayer and praise and thanksgiving for all that You have given to us, and receive we pray, these small tokens of our love, knowing that all things come from You and we offer back to You of the bountiful goodness that You have given to us. In Jesus' name we pray Source: https://prayer.knowing-jesus.com/prayer/offertory-prayer-for-gifts-and-giving-1134 Song Whom Shall I send? UMH 582 Scripture 1 Corinthians 12:1-12 1 Corinthians 12:1-12 Common English Bible Spiritual gifts 12 Brothers and sisters, I don’t want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts. 2 You know that when you were Gentiles you were often misled by false gods that can’t even speak. 3 So I want to make it clear to you that no one says, “Jesus is cursed!” when speaking by God’s Spirit, and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit. 4 There are different spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; 5 and there are different ministries and the same Lord; 6 and there are different activities but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. 7 A demonstration of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good. 8 A word of wisdom is given by the Spirit to one person, a word of knowledge to another according to the same Spirit, 9 faith to still another by the same Spirit, gifts of healing to another in the one Spirit, 10 performance of miracles to another, prophecy to another, the ability to tell spirits apart to another, different kinds of tongues[a] to another, and the interpretation of the tongues to another. 11 All these things are produced by the one and same Spirit who gives what he wants to each person. 12 Christ is just like the human body—a body is a unit and has many parts; and all the parts of the body are one body, even though there are many. Sermon The gifts of the congregation So yesterday I started to read this book. Someone gave this book to me as a gift, probably about 3 years ago. The title is called The second mountain – the quest for a moral life. Judging from the title, it did not seem like something that appealed to me. I am still not sure of why the person (another pastor) gave it to me. But it was a brand new book, and it cost $28, so I felt obligated to read it before getting rid of it. It turns out I love the book, once I started reading it yesterday I couldn’t put it down. the author is a writer for the new York times. And basically he says that in life all of us have to climb two mountains in life. First we climb the mountain of establishing our life. Our parents tell us and prepare us what we should be in life, and we set off on our life journey establishing a career, a family, a lifestyle, we get a job, get a car or other transportation, we buy a house of find someplace to live, we start a family – that takes up a lot of our life, - that is the first mountain that we must climb. but once we get there we look around and wonder if that is all that there is to life? Usually once we have climbed that mountain in life, we are still fairly young and we still have a lot of life left and we really start to question our lives and what our purpose is – according to the author that is the second mountain that we must climb. “It all started with two questions put to me by my grandmother during one of our family’s regular Sunday afternoon visits with her in the nursing home where she spent the last 3 years of her life. She was always glad to see us. There were smiles and hugs all around every Sunday. But once in a while she would let her guard down and tell us just how difficult life had become for her. Grandma had outlived her husband and two of her sons, and she was bedridden. One day she said to me, “Why doesn’t God let me die?” That was the first question. Naively, I said what many of us have said in response to questions like that; “Maybe God has something more for you to do.” These words would prove to be prophetic. Years later I would recognize that moment as the beginning of what was to be a great change in my life. “The second question was much less dramatic than the first. Grandma simply asked, “What did the preacher say in church today?” We had to admit that we didn’t know, because we hadn’t been in church that day. We knew that we didn’t dare tell her any stories, because the pastor called on her regularly and she was sure to find out the truth. We went to worship the following Sunday, and every Sunday after that, so that we could give Grandma accurate reports about the content of the services. Sometimes we actually took notes during the sermon so that we wouldn’t forget what the preacher said. “This went on for about a year, and as the Sundays passed we found ourselves more and more drawn to the gospel message. One day, my wife and I both realized that we were going to worship for ourselves, because we wanted to go, and not just so we could give a good report to Granma. We became excited about god and the church. It was a genuine conversion experience for both of us. Christ became real to us for the first time in our lives. Grandma didn’t have to pump us to tell her about church anymore. We shared without being asked, because we couldn’t help ourselves. “That’s how it all started, but that was only the beginning. God wasn’t finished with me yet. A few months later, at the end of the ordination service at Annual Conference, the Bishop invited everyone who felt called into ordained ministry to come forward to the altar. I had a very strong feeling that I ought to go. It felt like someone was tugging at me, urging me to go. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. My father and I had just purchased a business together. It was no time to be thinking of a career change, so I overruled the feeling. I remember literally hanging onto my chair to prevent myself from going forward.” [Lectionary Stories: 40 Tellable Tales for Cycle A by John Sumwalt] Well you can imagine how this story ends. Once God starts knocking on your door for one thing or another, God can be pretty persistent and Stephen Groves, the man in the story, did in the end get both a college and seminary degree and become an ordained pastor. But what I liked about his story was that it wasn’t only about his calling. It also was about the struggle his grandmother was having the discern what God was doing in her life and how with a simple question she planted a seed in her grandson that would have an impact on many people. You know it is usually God who encourages us to climb that second mountain – to start to think about how we can use our gifts, our talents, our life in order to help others to make that climb. It is usually that small still voice inside of us that is edging us on, telling us to do more, hinting that there is something more to life. the church is the place where we start to climb that second mountain of meaning and I guess you could say a moral life. The church incidently is also God’s storehouse of good things. It is the place where God cooks up those plans that will change the world. It is the tool shed for tools that will be used to do some amazing things in the world. We are the tools by the way. God has whispered in the ear of each one of us. God has give each one of us a job to do, God has given each one of us special gifts and talents to use in the world. One thing that I like about this book is that the chapters are really short – so that I don’t get bored. But in one chapter he says that there is that one thing in life that as a child we are drawn to, it fascinates us and keeps our attention. And that as we grow older, we may have less and less time for it, but we do not forget it. And as we get older – that is the thing that we are drawn to when we want to wind down and get in touch with our spirits. That is our god given gift Most of us have heard the bible story of Jonah and the whale – and how God called Jonah to do something and he ran away, but God persisted until he finally answered God’s call. Close: years ago in a revival service at Evangel Temple a man stood up and told how at a young age he felt the call to ministry. But his family own a successful business and his dad wanted him to take over that business, which he did. He said, even though I am a successful businessman in Montgomery, I am one of the most miserable men alive, because God won’t uncall me. Tonight, obey God’s call, obey God’s voice, and go dig up that buried talent and use it for God. Paul speaks of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians. Paul says that there are 3 types of people in the world and in the church - those that can hear and talk with God and know what their gifts are, those who can’t hear God directly but still know what their gifts are, and those who can’t hear God and have no idea of what their gifts are – we all fall in one of those categories. And even though Paul says that we have gifts, he also tells us that gifts are not given to individuals but to communities. That is one reason why when we learn what our gifts are – we have to climb that second mountain – be willing to give and help others. God gives each community a gift, so that the community – the church – the congregation can fulfill its mission to reach out to others. In chapter 12, Paul specifically mentions several gifts – words of wisdom, words of knowledge, faith, the gift of healing, the gift of prophecy, the gifts of miracles, the gifts of discernment, the gift of speaking in tongues, the gift of being able to interpret tongues. When those things are present – you know that the holy Spirit is with that congregation. In 1 Corinthians chapter 13 – one of the most famous bible chapters in history – Paul says that the greatest spiritual gift present in a congregation is the gift of love. This month we have been celebrating the gift of music that is present in this congregation. And today we honor the 50 year ministry of Marcia Mellott. We are truly grateful for her gift of music, of leadership, of creativity and a willingness to give in a kind hearted caring matter. Her ministry has been a perfect example of what it means to climb that second mountain. She worked diligently in the school system teaching music, but also worked diligently in the church and the community – freely giving her talent to the world. She also has that greatest gift – the gift of love. I have been grateful for her cheerful, fun, and loving spirit that comes through in all that she does. Marcia thank you for your service and may God continue to bless you. You are truly an inspiration to all who know you. You have touched us as a community – let each of us be reminded that we are the tools that God will use to make the world a better place. Let each of us check that small still voice that encourages use our gifts each and every day to make a difference. Prayer God of love and of life, let us take time to look deep within ourselves and discover the gifts you have blessed us with. May we take the time to direct our lives in a way that best uses our own unique combination of gifts. May our education help us discover where our strengths and interests lie. May our faith guide us in realizing our gifts. May we always be open to the direction of the Spirit and never forget the love you have for each of us. Give us, O Lord, the perception we need to look within ourselves and discover the beauty and gifts we posses. Give us the courage to show others the talents they have. Help us serve others in the community and in so doing build up your kingdom. We ask this through Jesus, our Lord. Amen. Song Many Gifts, One Spirit UMH 114 Announcements Closing Prayer for Facebook Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for sending the Lord Jesus to live and die for me, and thank You for bringing me into Your family because I have trusted Jesus as my Saviour. Thank You that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that You have sent Him to indwell my heart and to lead and guide me into all truth. I pray that You would take my life and use every part of me, to Your praise and glory. Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for sending the Lord Jesus to live and die for me, and thank You for bringing me into Your family because I have trusted Jesus as my Savior. Thank You that my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that You have sent Him to indwell my heart and to lead and guide me into all truth. I pray that You would take my life and use every part of me, to Your praise and glory. Source: https://prayer.knowing-jesus.com/Prayers-about-Spiritual-Gifts Community Time – Joys and concerns Benediction Children’s Time See what this is? It's a gift. You know if you get something covered in pretty paper or the big bow, you're getting something pretty special. We give each other gifts on birthdays and holidays, because we care for that person. They may be a family member or a friend. We love gifts. They're usually something we want. Your family member specifically picks out that gift with you in mind, because they want you to like it. Well when you were born, you were given gifts specifically picked out for you. These gifts were given to you by God. We also like to call them talents. The talents God has given you can be whatever you're good at. Sometimes it involves a sport, maybe you have a musical talent, or maybe you're good at science and math, or maybe you are more artistic and can draw really well. Whatever the case, God made you good at something for a reason. He wants you to serve Him with your talents. The Bible says in Colossians 3:23-24, “whatever you do work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord not for men since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward it is the Lord Christ you are serving.” What that verse says is that with your gift you can serve the Lord. It doesn't matter what other people think of you, as long as you're doing what God wants you to do. So don't be ashamed of your gift, or try to use a different gift that's not yours. Use the talent God gave you and you can bless others with your talent just as if you're giving them a wrapped gift. Additional Illustrations