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Before I begin, let me say that this is the final sermon of a series I’ve shared called the Inspirational
Intersection.
I developed this idea of the I.I. shortly after seeing the movie Jerry Maguire in December 1996. If you
saw the movie, you might remember a scene where Jerry Maguire and the character that Rene Zellweger
played having a conversation about the sports agent agency that the two were starting. In the movie Jerry
Maguire asked Rene Zellweger’s character, “What kind of job do you want.” RZ’s character leaned
forward looked Jerry Maguire straight in the eyes and said, “I don’t want a job, I want to be inspired.”
When I saw that scene I practically leaped out of my theatre seat. That’s what I want with my life. I
don’t want a job I want to be inspired.
Not only do I want inspiration for myself, I want it for you. As your pastor I want you to be inspired.
Think of parallel lines. One line is what God wants us to do and be; the other parallel line is what we
want to do and be. Think of finding the intersection of those two lines. It’s a place where we are doing
and being what God wants and a place where we are doing and being what we want. It’s a place of
inspiration!
The first week in this series I explained the concept of the Inspiration Intersection. I talked about the
priesthood of all believers. As Protestants we believe that God gives every person a call. We can trust
this call because God knows us so well. God knows us better than we know ourselves. The sermon
closed with a groan from you—which was pleasing for me. I was just about to talk about how we can
discover what God wants—and then said come next week. You groaned—you were interested
The second week I talked about how do we discover what God wants from us. I talked about how God
pursues us. We don’t have to pursue God.
SLIDE: I shared this picture of Jesus knocking on a door. Where is the doorhandle? On the
inside. Most of the time God doesn’t force the divine self upon us. God is knocking on our door willing
to share our call. We decide if we follow. Most of the time God doesn’t force the divine self upon us.
Today as I close this series I want to focus on the line where we discover what we want to do and be.
In this series I’ve talked mostly about doing. I haven’t talked about our being—our character. Our being
is just as important as our doing. I will preach about this in the future.
Before I end this rather lengthy introduction I want to encourage you to get out the devotion that is in
your bulletin. This week I’ve given you five readings that will help us discover what we want to do. I
encourage you to use it every day. I also encourage you to use the outline that is in your devotion. I
believe that I might say something that God wants you to remember and reflect upon during the week.
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The objective of this sermon is fairly simple. I want every person today to be able to
identify at least one spiritual gift that God has given us. By discovering our spiritual gifts we
I have a dream for our congregation. My dream is that we do ministry based on spiritual
gifts. What I mean is that every person in our congregation will know his or her spiritual gifts.
We’ll frequently talk about spiritual gifts with others. AND We will have a well-defined process
for identifying spiritual gifts. When a person joins our congregation that person will be asked to
take a course or go through a process of identifying spiritual gifts. AND once we identify these
spiritual gifts we will have a placement process that will help people use their spiritual gifts.
This placement process won’t only be to our congregation—we could help place people into the
community.
AND when we call leaders we will do so based on our discernment of spiritual gifts.
Last week I went to a New Church Development conference in Orlando, Florida called
Exponential. Over 3,000 people attended this conference. I attended a pre-conference workshop
called Strategic Volunteers. The workshop was led by Tim Stephens who is an Administrative
pastor at a Methodist church in Granger, Indiana. At this church they’ve created a culture of
people using their gifts. They don’t even use the word “recruit” in their church. Recruiting has
the sense of filling a slot. Instead at Granger they try to identify the gift for which they are
looking. Then they pray about who in the congregation has that gift.
Think how this could work in our congregation. Say we have an opening for a Sunday
School teacher. A typical fist question is who can fill the slot. This process can work, but it’s
not empowering. Instead we won’t ask the question, “who can fill the slot?” We’ll ask the
question what gifts are we looking for in this person? Once we identify the gifts we’ll pray about
who in our congregation possesses those gifts. Finally, one role of every staff member will be to
identify spiritual gifts in the congregation. Ministry isn’t a spectator sport where lay people
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watch paid staff do ministry. Instead ministry in a congregation can work well when staff
Some churches have developed acronyms to describe this system that I’ve outlined. One
SLIDE
S Spiritual Gifts
H Heart
A Abilities
P Personality
E Experience
Today we’re going to just get a taste of this dream by looking at spiritual gifts. If all of
us know our spiritual gift we will be clear about our own line. We will know what we want to
do.
SLIDE A spiritual gift is a specific talent that God gives to us. The word that is
translated as gift comes from the Greek word charisma or charism. The word could also be
translated as grace. Each person has been given a charim—a talent or talents—that come are the
The Bible shares specific gifts or charims. In the passage from 1 Corinthians Paul listed
nine spiritual gifts. In Romans 12 Paul listed seven spiritual gifts; in 1 Peter 4 two gifts are
listed. In another insert that I’m going to have you fill out today, we see a partial list of the
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I don’t get caught up on the exact specifics of what talent constitutes a spiritual gift.
I’m less interested in debating what talents are spiritual gifts and more interested in helping
Another way to translate the word charis is that which delights. When we use our gifts,
our charisms we will often be delighted by the results. We are touched in ways that we could
have never imagined. When we use our gifts we might well up in tears. We are so delighted
Let me give you an example. One of my spiritual gifts is apostleship. God has given me
the ability to create new ministries in the future. I’ve done this my entire adult life. I’ve been
able to use this spiritual gift to help a friend of mine, Jeff Gravon. I’ve shared a bit of his story
before. Jeff was a classmate of mine in Worthington, Minnesota. He was a close friend of mine.
I officiated at his wedding; he stood up for me when Amy & I were married. We were friends.
Jeff had a very serious form of cancer. His illness received some media attention. Jeff
was the boys basketball coach at New Prague High School. His story was featured on KARE 11
when Tubby Smith spoke at a fundraiser for him. He died in January of last year. I helped
Recently I’ve been working on getting a plaque in Jeff’s memory on the property of the
Worthington YMCA. When we were growing up in Worthington the two of us spent most of our
summer at the YMCA. I’ve been working on this project for the last few months. This past
Friday I received a call from the Executive Director of the YMA in Worthington. He was very
supportive of the project. He got to know Jeff when Jeff would take his kids during the summer
into the YMCA in Worthington. During our phone call on Friday we talked about when we
When the phone conversation ended I teared up. You can ask Amy and she’ll tell me that
in the 12 years we’ve known each other she’s seen me cry less than five times. I don’t’ cry, but
at times I’ll tear up. After this phone call on Friday I was just so delighted about the possibility
of having this plaque honoring Jeff on the property of the Worthington YMCA.
I’ve been able to use a gift that God has given me—visioning into the future—and this
Who receives a spiritual gifts? Do just pastors or super Christians receive gifts? No.
Every person in the universe has received a spiritual gift. All of you have been gifted. You have
spiritual gifts.
When we are using these gifts life just wonderfully flows. The projects that we do might
be hard, but we enjoy them and can do them. When we are using our gifts life comes easier than
when we aren’t using our gifts. We are creative, and passionate and just naturally know what to
do.
Let me give you an example. My wife, Amy, is very good at hospitality. Hospitality is
not a spiritual gift listed. Hospitality can be an outgrowth of helps. This week at her job at St.
Josephs Catholic Church some guys were coming over to do some work on the building. She
told me about this. Then she said, “I’m getting some donuts and drinks to give them a welcome
to our building.” I thought, “what a great idea.” Amy just knows how to greet people and treat
I thought—I never would have been able to figure that out. If you had said to me, some
guys are coming over to the our office to do some work, I wouldn’t have thought about getting
them some donuts or juice. It’s not that I’m against giving donuts and juice to people doing
work on our office. If someone else had shared this idea, I would have said, “great, go for it.”
Amy has this gift. It’s more developed in her than it is in me. Life flows easily when we
Another piece of this—we aren’t critical of others or critical of ourselves when we don’t
have a gift. Remember our gifts are given to us by God. Because Amy has that gift and I don’t
doesn’t mean that you should be critical of me because I didn’t come up with the idea of giving
donuts and juice to a worker. This doesn’t make me less of a person. You can’t expect
something of a person that the person doesn’t have. God didn’t wire me this way; God wired
As I shared at the start of this sermon the goal for today is to help each of us identify our
spiritual gifts. When we use our gifts we discover activities that we want to do. We are
delighted, something wonderful happens. We enjoy what we are doing. The work might be
hard, but we don’t mind the hard work. Time passes quickly. We’ve willing to get up early and
Paul went on to write in the last part of 1 Corinthians 12 that God gives different gifts to
individual faith communities. We didn’t hear this Scripture today. You can read the entire
chapter in the devotion for tomorrow. He shared the metaphor of a body. A body doesn’t
consist of one member, but many members. He wrote a foot wouldn’t say that because I am not
a hand I am not a body. A foot can’t be part of the body unless the hand is part of the body.
These different parts of a body can’t function without the other parts of the body functioning.
You can see how easily this metaphor translates over to a faith community. A faith
community, a church has been given many different gifts. We need all of the gifts working
together. We need people in our community who have other gifts. We need many different gifts
One of the phrases that you’ll hear me say often is no one owns a ministry in a church.
My reason for saying this comes out of my understanding of the placement of gifts by God in a
church. If only one person does a ministry that person is preventing other people with gifts do
the ministry. It’s easy for the ministry to become about the person and not about what God is
doing. Sure we can have leaders of ministry, but even leaders of ministry need to look for other
gifts in that ministry. When we have ministries that are using a number of different gifts we will
be much healthier as a congregation. When one person owns the ministry suddenly ministry
becomes about personality and power and control—it’s much easier for conflict and burnout to
happen.
When I started this sermon series four weeks ago I shared the promise that if all of us
know our Inspirational Intersection that we will grow as a church. I don’t make promises often,
Imagine a congregation where everyone is delighted in what they are doing. Imagine us
at Chain of Lakes as a place of delight. We don’t see our ministry in the congregation as
drudgery—it’s fun and a delight because we are using our gifts. We know our gifts; other people
This week we are encouraging all of you to invite a friend or family to worship next
Sunday. We’re asking all of you to extend an invitation. If you have the gift of evangelism,
we’ll really ask you to use your gift. I know that we have these gifts in our congregation. If you
identify yourself with this gift, use that gift this week.
Let me wrap up by encouraging us to identify our gifts and then claim them. I want all of
us to be able to say off the top of our head one, or two, or three spiritual gifts that we’ve
identified. I would love for these gifts to be part of our conversation at Chain of Lakes. Over the
next few weeks when I see you I’m going to ask you what you’ve identified as your spiritual gift.
I would encourage you to ask each other what you’ve identified as your spiritual gifts. Today at
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our time of fellowship I’d encourage you to ask each other what you’ve identified as you
spiritual gift.
Explain how we’ll have people fill out cards with Kellie playing music