Our church is doing a bit of a thing on 1 Corinthians at the moment. We're up to chapter 12 and the exposition about spiritual gifts and it fell to me on Thursday night to lead the young adults bible study on this topic.
We had questions about what spiritual gifts were, and what it meant to be one body with many parts. Then we came to some practical questions for our week-to-week church life. We were asked to think about how to encourage people in our congregation to use their spiritual gifts for the good of all.
"How can we do this?" I posed the question to the group.
I don't know what answers I was expecting, but I was surprised to notice that all of the conversation after this centred around feeling a sense of belonging to the people in the congregation rather than gifts and how to use them.
Perhaps using our gifts arises more naturally out of being in healthy relationships. Perhaps when we focus on the gift, we are being a little bit strained or forced.
Perhaps we should be concentrating on growing community and relationships and from there encouraging each individual - already loved and valued by the group - to share their strengths and gifts with everyone.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
It's kind of like walking - when you concentrate and think about it too much, while doing it, you tend to stuff it up (especially when going down stairs!)
Maybe, because we are given our spiritual gifts naturally, we find them naturally and then they happen - without thinking about it too much and run the risk of making mistakes...This isn't to say that we shouldn't fine tune our gifts - for example, practising the music before we play, or just not preparing and trying to 'wing' leading the service or preaching (!)(don't do that!!) .... Our relationship with God is first and foremost, and then with our neighbours, and brothers and sisters in Christ. Relationships are tops!! :) Let's work on them more.
Think you're right.
Post a Comment