Our callings may be our comfort…
One thing I’ve come to realize about spiritual gifts and callings, is that a lot of people, myself included, limit ourselves to what those callings are. We’ll say “I’m called to THIS ministry…nothing else.” So throughout our whole lives we’ll do what we’re called to and do nothing after that season of ministry is over in our lives. It would be like a pastor leaving a church, and just sitting around until the next church came around that offered him a job. Or a worship leader leaving a church and not joining any church unless he/she could serve in the worship ministry only. Sitting around and waiting until something comes around that appeals to us. We waste time waiting when we could be serving in another place. I’ve played worship music for the past two years, I can play the guitar, but it’s just boring to me now. God’s going to take me out of that ministry within the church. I think we need to extend our gifts and passions OUTSIDE the 4 walls of the church. Maybe the pastor that leaves a church needs to become a teacher and get involved in a generation that so desperately needs to see something real. Maybe musicians need to quit thinking that they’re musical ability automatically makes them a worship leader, and they need to give music lessons and invest in some lost people.
I think maybe we’ve been fed this idea that using your gifts outside the church doesn’t glorify God…that’s a load of bullcrap. I commend bands that leave the world of christian music…real bands that have talent and take their message to a lost world….what an opportunity. I’m afraid that there are pastors out there who don’t even REMEMBER what it is like to be in a lost world…because they sit in their church office 30-40 hours a week, prepare sermons, and wait for people to come to them with their marital problems, lost friends, complaints about church stuff…and all that crap. Maybe they could have some more sermon illustrations of lost people getting saved outside the church walls, and maybe just some good sermon illustrations in general…you know the pastors i’m talking about…they use the same illustrations…over and over and over. Wouldn’t it be sweet if you called the church office, and the secretary said…”i’m sorry…he’s not here.” To which you remember…oh yeah…it’s tuesday…he’s out investing in lost people. I just think that to be a pastor it would be hard to be among lost people in your work place.
April 21st, 2006 at 9:31 am
I think the best thing I know to say and what I need to do is, just know Jesus, make it the priority. I think if you and I do that, He can lead us where he wants us. He can show us true freedom. Tyler, I know the fustration, of life and wanting to follow hard after Christ, and all I can say is I don’t know everything, but I know for me is that (I’ve heard this a lot lately, from a story Robby told me, and from a blog I read on Kyle’s xanga) is that’s it not about being relavant to culuture, or doing what’s popular, it’s about being relavant to Jesus (Alex McManus said something about that at the conference we went to), and letting people see Jesus through us. What if our goal was that we lived life so closely to Jesus, that when people hung out with us people could say that that’s the close I’ve seen someone be like Jesus, and not to do it so people would say that but to live a life like that (from Robby’s story he told me). I wrote this more for me than you. I love you bro and I’m so glad we get to go to Uganda together.