Helping Where It's Needed in Church

It's a running joke in churches that nobody seems to feel "called" to clean the toilets. Apparently that's not a very common spiritual gift! But behind the joke there is often a very real concern. In every church there are a set of jobs that need to be done and many of those jobs are not much fun and require serious commitment. Safeguarding, finances, health and safety are more likely to be words that fill people with concern than joy. But the truth is that it's probably only a luxury of the larger church (who often employ people to take much of the heavy lifting here) to allow people to only serve in areas they feel called and comfortable.

I think there are two issues here, a biblical one and a cultural one.

The biblical issue is around how we use our gifts. We have rightly taught people to use the gifts they have been given (Romans 12:6-8) and take their part in the body accordingly (1 Corinthians 12). We have then also seen that the Apostles explicitly appoint other people to do jobs that they weren't called to, so they could focus on the ministry of word and prayer (Acts 6:2-4). Should I insist on concentrating on using my gifts and avoid responsibilities that distract from that?

In terms of gifts, I think we are right to see that God has given us gifts and to use them to serve him where we can. We need to be careful here though. The joke about the toilets points to a real problem that our instinct (by which I suppose I mean our sinfulness) isn't to be called to less enjoyable things, even though we may be very competent at them. If you can do a particular task competently, why are you not gifted in that? Furthermore, we need to accept the principle of service and love modelled by Jesus (John 13:1-17; Mark 10:45). In the church of all places we should be willing to serve in ways we find hard. We can use our gifts and serve in places which we find harder, but are needed.

In terms of responsibilities, I suspect many pastors would say that it would be lovely to be able to focus on word ministry and prayer. We certainly need to hear the challenge that if those charged with the ministry of word and prayer can't do that ministry properly because they have too many other responsibilties, then that's a problem. However, we need to be a little careful. For one thing, we are not founding the church and nor are we apostles! Some of those who were appointed to take the practical responsibilities (Acts 6:5) clearly also had word ministry gifts (see what Stephen and Philip do in the next few chapters!). It was still good for them to take a lead on practical areas of ministry. In fact, what we see in Acts 6 is an insistence that the necessary jobs are done and the willingness to take those jobs on, perhaps despite what might have been the preferences of some tasked with the job.

I think the more influential issue though is the cultural one. The truth is that many don't go to church to served but to be served. Why? Because the culture we live in these days is one where I do things that I want to do, because they are positive for me. And if that's how I view things, then many churches are going to be a tough call, because for them to function they need pretty much every member to pull there weight doing stuff.

I wonder if part of the reason that big churches get bigger and small churches get smaller and die in the UK is that a lot people don't want to go somewhere where they might have to serve in ways they'd rather not. As I said above, the big churches often employ the 'unpopular' stuff out of the equation leaving people to show up and do what they find fun, intellectually engaging or whatever. I also wonder if this lays down problems for the future. When people move away and find a faithful smaller church, they're not equipped or willing to be a member there, because they aren't used to serving like that.

Whatever the reason, the vast majority of churches need members willing to serve in ways that will be costly because of the time they take and the type of work they involve. They need members who will willing take up the tasks that do elicit feelings of concern, becaue those churches won't be able to function without them. It's one of those areas where we need to step out of our cultural and follow are Master who came to serve.