Spiritual Gifts: The PURPOSE of gifts

How do we win the game?

Again we are not playing a solo sport but a team sport. We win, not by entering into our own glory by kicking goals but by getting the team across the line. Some people play our game as though it were a solo sport. They think that winning the game means being popular, being influential, being authentic, being noticed, and beating others. But we play our game for the purpose of building up the body of Christ and getting each player over the finished line.

Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.  (1 Pet 4:10–11)

[This series on Spiritual Gifts belongs to the sermon titled 'Charisma (1 Peter 4:10)' which I preached at St Philips, York Street on Sunday night. You can downloaded it here or on the resource page.]

Spiritual Gifts: The STEWARDSHIP of gifts

How do we play the game?

We play the game with the recognition that there is really only one person of importance in the stands watching us play. We play for an audience of one. God is watching us, and it doesn’t matter if other people don’t recognise how well we kick the ball, or stopped the enemy, or set up the play, our praise comes from our Father who loves to watch us play. There will be times when we will intentionally do something the other players will get angry at you for, like admitting you kicked the ball out, or by being gracious to your enemy, or by passing the ball to one of the inexperienced players, or by not cheating. But that’s ok because our praise comes from our Father.

[This series on Spiritual Gifts belongs to the sermon titled 'Charisma (1 Peter 4:10)' which I preached at St Philips, York Street on Sunday night. You can downloaded it here or on the resource page.]

Spiritual Gifts: The UNIVERSALITY of gifts

How many people play the game?

It isn’t only ministers, pastors and those who work for the church who have received spiritual gifts. Rather every Christian has been given a gift which they should use ‘to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.’ (1 Peter 4:10) Every Christian has a gift. Ministers must recognise this and use their own gifts to coach their people to use their gifts effectively to build up Christ’s body. Hence Ephesians 4:11-12,

It was he [Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Who do the ‘works of service’? God’s people: You! Who prepares them? Their pastors and teachers (etc). Sometimes we tend to think that we are spectators watching and cheering a game played by the minister. But that is totally misguided. Ministers are coaches who train and prepare God’s people play the game: to love, to offer hospitality, to speak the story of Jesus and to serve others in gracious ways. Ministers are not the only ones playing the game. Sadly some ministers only spend their time coaching others, and don’t get in and play the game. Others are so busy playing the game that they forget they need to coach others. What we need are player-coaches.[1]

[This series on Spiritual Gifts belongs to the sermon titled 'Charisma (1 Peter 4:10)' which I preached at St Philips, York Street on Sunday night. You can downloaded it here or on the resource page.]

Player-Coaches as Kings, Prophets and Priests

At the new Redeemer Church Planting Centre Blog, Tim Keller reflects on Willow Creek (one of the largest and most influential churches in the world) and the tendency for Mega Churches, Reformed Churches and Emerging Churches to be reductionistic in emphasising either the kingly, prophetic or priestly aspects to church.

The time at Willow led me to reflect on how much criticism this church has taken over the years. On the one hand, my own ‘camp’ — the non-mainline Reformed world — has been critical of its pragmatism, its lack of emphasis on sound doctrine. On the other hand, the emerging and post-modern ministries and leaders have disdained Willow’s individualism, its program-centered, ‘corporate’ ethos.  These critiques, I think, are partly right, but when you are actually there you realize many of the most negative evaluations are caricatures.

John Frame’s ‘tri-perspectivalism’ helps me understand Willow. The Willow Creek style churches have a ‘kingly’ emphasis on leadership, strategic thinking, and wise administration. The danger there is that the mechanical obscures how organic and spontaneous church life can be. The Reformed churches have a ‘prophetic’ emphasis on preaching, teaching, and doctrine. The danger there is that we can have a naïve and unBiblical view that, if we just expound the Word faithfully, everything else in the church — leader development, community building, stewardship of resources, unified vision — will just happen by themselves. The emerging churches have a ‘priestly’ emphasis on community, liturgy and sacraments, service and justice. The danger there is to view ‘community’ as the magic bullet in the same way Reformed people view preaching.[i]

I think Keller nails this. The churches we need to be planting are ones that are tri-perspectival with due emphasis on the kingly, prophetic and priestly. In order to do this we need what Mark Driscoll calls ‘player-coaches‘ who are able to serve as kings, prophets and priests and at the same time train other leaders. In a new church plant these player-coaches will be godly men who work a job and serve in the church with energetic joy. They have years of ministry experience, are good fathers, loving husbands, and tough. Driscoll writes,

Too often this last point is overlooked, but when Paul said that a pastor must fight like a soldier, train like an athlete, and work hard like a farmer, he had in mind the manliest of men leading the church (2 Tim. 2:1-7). Sadly, the weakest men are often drawn to ministry simply because it is an indoor job that does not require heavy lifting.[ii]

Since new churches are flat broke, we need a team of player-coaches who can get things done and lead the church through the sheer force of their godly influence. While they lead the church in this way the church planter can stay doggedly focused on mission. He is not a pastor but rather a missiologist who studies the city and who leads a church filled with missionaries who reach the city and with pastors who care for the converts.

Who’s in?

[ii] Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006), 54.