What If You Never Opened the Package?

This week, I'm up to Lesson #4 in "My Top 10 Faith Lessons":  We don’t all sing on key or in the same rhythm, dance with the same movements, or see life the same way.  Our task is to teach others to appreciate the differences.

All you had to do was watch us Virginia United Methodists gathered in Hampton for Annual Conference try to do the "Happy Dance" with Bishop Cho to realize the truth of this lesson!

We are certainly not all called to be dancers, or preachers, or teachers, or musicians, or.... The list could go on and on.  But we are all called by our baptism to be ministers:  to get involved, exercise spiritual disciplines, be evangelists, help our churches become missional, and celebrate our diversity and our connectionalism as United Methodists.  We must work together as partners in ministry with all our varied abilities, opinions, lifestyle choices, and ways of doing things if we are to accomplish our mission to make disciples. It takes all of God’s people to do all of God’s work.

In the description of “The Ministry of All Christians” in The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church 2012, paragraph 131 reads:  “There is but one ministry in Christ, but there are diverse gifts and evidences of God’s grace in the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:1-16).  The ministry of all Christians is complementary. No ministry is subservient to another.  All United Methodist are summoned and sent by Christ to live and work together in mutual interdependence and to be guided by the Spirit into the truth that frees and the love that reconciles.” (p. 96) 

If we truly believed these statements - that all people are of sacred worth and should be included in the life of the church to the fullest extent possible given their unique gifts and graces, our congregations would realize that there are even more ways to be the body of Christ than we ever imagined.  God’s gifts are richly diverse for a variety of services; yet all have worth and dignity. We are all given unique gifts to equip us for the task of being disciples. The church and the world would be different if we truly lived like we believe these statements.

We are all happiest and most whole when we are using the unique gifts of grace that God has given to us.  In leadership roles in the church, we do our best ministry when we use those gifts, especially as they flourish and change across our lifespans.  Even more importantly for our role as leaders, we are called to help others identify and use their spiritual gifts and talents within the church and community and to bring awareness to our congregations (and the world) that every gift is of the greatest importance. Helping others to recognize, develop, and use their spiritual gifts multiplies the work of the kingdom and transforms lives.  Gaining a greater appreciation of how our diversity makes us stronger transforms the world.

We each have unique gifts, strengths, talents, and abilities that enable us to live out our faith in a wide variety of ways.   The limits and variety of those gifts are known only to God. There is a quote attributed to Gautama Buddha, "The Buddha," that reads:  “Everyone is gifted – but some people never open their package.”  Certainly worth pondering, huh? And with that, lesson #4 ends….