Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Pentecost 10
August 13, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
HEARING YOUR CALLING, SHARING YOUR GIFTS
Ephesians 4:1-16
A crucial part of Christian Spiritual Formation is hearing your call to ministry and sharing your gifts for ministry out in the world as part of the body of Christ. Most ministry takes place outside the walls of the church.
At Crescent Hill Baptist Church we have adopted a gifts-based team approach to ministry. We no longer have a Nominating Committee that meets each year and selects people to fill slots within a committee structure. And we thank God for that!
Instead, each person is asked to pray and discern their gifts and discover what particular ministry they have a passion for. Then you follow your passion and share your gifts as a member of the body Christ, as you are called to do ministry in the world.
Hearing Your Calling
That word “called” is significant. It is important that we listen for God’s calling in our lives to particular ministries and acts of service.
Two Callings
I think God’s calling comes in primarily two ways. There is The Call From Beyond and The Call from Within. They are not always mutually exclusive. Sometimes they happen together.
The Call From Beyond
In the Bible, we often witness The Call From Beyond. This is the calling God gives for people to do certain things they may not necessarily want to do, do not particularly feel gifted to do, nor do they have a driving passion to do it.
When I think of The Call From Beyond I think of Moses called to lead the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. He did not speak well and had no passion for the task. But it was something God needed done and God chose Moses for the job.
I think of Jeremiah. The last thing Jeremiah wanted to do was to be a prophet. He said he was too young and he stuttered. He spent most of his prophetic life depressed, yet he did the task God called him to do.
It may very well be the case that God might on occasion work through us best in those places where we are not particularly gifted. Sometimes our gifts can be self-serving and can possibly limit our ability to hear God’s calling to a place outside the realm of our giftedness and desire. Having a gift in one area does not exempt me from doing what I’m not interested in.
Peter, the disciple of Jesus, was able to use his passion and giftedness to speak. But Jesus told Peter that his faithfulness and service to Jesus would lead him where he did not want to go - into places of suffering, persecution, and tradition says even death.
Sometimes God calls us to places we do not want to go, to do things we do not want to do, tasks we do not particularly feel gifted to carry out, service we have no driving passion for. There are simply some things God needs done in the world and we must surrender our lives to those callings.
I refer to this as The Call From Beyond because it doesn’t spring from within us, from our desires, our passions, even our gifts.
And so we must learn to listen carefully to God’s voice.
That’s one reason we need the church. It’s why we need worship, a place where we offer our lives to God, opening our ears and hearts to God’s Word, a Word beyond ourselves, outside ourselves. God is more than our own inner voice. Sometimes God is the voice from Beyond. There is The Call From Beyond.
The Call From Within
There are other times when God’s calling is directly related to our best gifts and deepest God-given passions. This is what I refer to as The Call From Within. It is so deeply connected to who we are and what we want to do. You hear this call and there is a joy so deep and profound you almost burst with delight.
It is the calling of which Frederick Buechner speaks in his well-known line where he says God often calls us to the meeting place of our greatest joy, our most profound hunger, and the world’s deepest need.
The first time I heard John Claypool in person was April of 2000 when he presented the preaching lectures at Baptist Theological Seminary of Richmond. He described his calling in this way: He said he carried within himself this great love for God and this great love for people and felt it was the calling of his life to bring the two together. I think he fulfilled that calling in the lives of many people, several of whom are sitting in this room.
I think the nature of God’s call is most often rooted in our truest self and its passions, as long as our self and our passions have been nurtured in the practices of Christian spiritual formation, such as prayer, scripture reading, worship and service.
It is crucial that our passions be spiritually nourished. Without the nourishment of spiritual formation practices, our passions can mislead us. But when given and guided by the Spirit, our passions can lead to a life of abundant joy and fulfilling purpose.
God’s call, I think, is most often about devoting ourselves to doing whatever it is that makes us feel fully alive in this world and gives our souls a deep sense of peace. It may be difficult and costly, but it brings joy to our lives. It’s about doing what our truest self wants to be doing.
The Nature of God’s Call
Now whether God’s calling comes from Beyond as something we do not want to do nor feel gifted to do, or whether God’s calling comes from Within deeply connected to our gifts and passions, God’s calling is always marked by some form of service - the giving of the self for the good of those in need. If your life demands very little sacrifice from you and you never encounter those in need, you most likely need to listen more closely to the voice from Within and Beyond.
We all have a calling in whatever we do to be partners with God to fulfill God’s purposes in the world. Those divine purposes have always been the transformation, healing, and reconciliation of the world back to God and among all people. Our text this morning calls us
to lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called, with all humility and gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Love, unity, peace - these are God’s purposes in the world. The specific ways in which we partner with God in fulfilling these purposes may change throughout our lives. The Spirit can call us to different missions in different seasons of our lives. But God’s goals are the same - love, unity, reconciliation, transformation, healing, peace.
Sharing Our Gifts
Both calls - The Call From Beyond and The Call From Within - most often are rooted in our giftedness.
And these gifts are gifts of grace from Christ.
In Ephesians 4:8 Paul quotes from Psalm 68. Actually he misquotes. Psalm 68 says “He received gifts from people. Ephesians 4:8 says “He gave gifts to people.” It’s what Eugene Peterson calls “creative misquotation.” It is deliberate in order to make a point. The one, in this case, Christ, who received gifts from on high, gave gifts to us.
The gifts he has given are plentiful.
Here in Ephesians 4 are all verbal gifts related to the word of God. They are four-fold: apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers (teaching shepherds). Work that is rooted and grounded in the word. Word-work.
There are other gifts.
In Romans 12 there are seven listed: prophecy, service, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, and compassion.
In 1 Corinthians 12 there are eleven gifts: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, apostles, teaching, discernment, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.
The list concludes with 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul says all gifts are useless without love.
Back in Ephesians 4 he connects that word of love to the purpose and goal of our gifts.
There is the personal goal of growing up in Christ into mature personhood. That is, we grow into our true identity as God made us and intends us to be.
In addition to the personal goal there is the larger goal of the whole church growing up into a mature, healthy and whole spiritual body: bones, ligaments, blood supply, everything joined and knit together so that each part works as it should and the whole body grows toward maturity.
The purpose of our gifts is to personally mature in Christ and to equip the saints, which is the whole church, and build up the body of Christ - in love. We know we are maturing as persons and as a congregation when, no matter what our gifts, no matter what our calling, we are growing together in love.
These lists of spiritual gifts are not exhaustive of all the gifts the Spirit gives. And sometimes the work is not about identifying our gifts, but realizing what we are doing as a gift - caring for the elderly, feeding the hungry, nursing the sick, making music, spending time with children, loving your family, forgiving your enemy, working for peace and justice and reconciliation.
Whatever our gifts, whatever our passions, our first passion must be to please God and to do God’s work in the world, whatever it is God needs done.
Commissioning
There are three people from among us that we are commissioning, blessing, and affirming today as they follow God’s call to ministry: Steve Clark, Annette Ellard, and Brittani Massey.
Steve and Annette have been called by God and commissioned by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to share God’s love and spread the story of immigrants and refugees through video production. That is their gift, their passion, their particular calling.
Brittani Massey is leaving later this month for seminary in Richmond, Virginia to follow a calling to ministry. She is unsure of the particular shape of that ministry. But is following God’s leading each step of the way.
What about you? Where is God calling you? What does God want you to do where you are? Are you hearing a Voice From Beyond calling you where you may be afraid to go? Or do you hear a Voice From Within calling you to use your gifts and follow your passions to partner with God and make a difference in the lives of others? What are your gifts? What does your best and truest self feel passionate about?
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
As we enter into the silence, would you listen for The Call From Beyond and The Call From Within, as we pray, “Speak, Lord, in the stillness.” Let us be silent. (SILENCE)
Ever-living God
made not by human hands
but rather the Maker of human hands and human hearts
you call out to us from Beyond
you speak to us from Within
to shape our hearts and use our hands and minds and voices
to do your good work in the world.
We are grateful for the ears of Steve and Annette and Brittani
who were open to hear your call
and courageous enough to follow where you are leading.
We may unsure of our gifts and passions and the particular calling you have for our lives.
But the needs of the world are very clear.
We live in a world gone terribly wrong.
Oriented around money and land
we are driven to war to protect what we believe is ours
and to kill those who threaten our way of life.
Change our way of life, O God.
Redirect our passions and priorities.
Teach us that human life is more precious than money or land.
Teach us to share our money and land for the good of the world,
the good world you have created and blessed.
Enlarge our vision
Inflame our passions
to do something about the madness of our world.
Grant us wisdom and courage for the living of our days.
Heal the woundedness of our own lives.
Comfort our pain with your peace.
Surround our fear with your presence.
Bring healing to the world with our lives.
And teach us what it means to pray, “Our Father . . .”
feed back to Greg
return to Sermon Index
CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
We would like to hear from you.
Return to oldsite Home page
Return to newsite Home page