Well, I don’t seem to have caught a rhythm yet to my blogging . . . It was the same thing when I use to trying journaling . . . I would start the process with such high hopes . . . Go a couple of days without journaling . . . stick it in a drawer and beat myself up. But I don’t have to do that anymore . . . therapy, it’s a good thing!
Why do I keep buying into the propaganda that things slow down in the summer . . . NOT! It seems to me that summer is sometimes the busiest time in the life of the church . . . Or this has been by experience.
My summer so far has been quite hectic yet amazing things are happening . . .
Most thrilling is how church is responding to transformational ministry . . . it really is about being open to the Holy Spirit transforming us as individuals . . . The HS has worked on me in a powerful way to move me to a place where I can let go of things . . . YEA! I don’t have to be in control.
A confession . . . in this process I realized that I liked to be in control. When I worked as a clinical social worker that was one of the things folks liked about me . . . I was willing to step in and take over when things were in chaos or were moving to chaos or when I thought I could do a better job . . . one of my first supervisors invited me to join her on her new job for this very reason . . . it served me well then, but it hadn’t served me well as a pastor.
After ten years in ministry I now understand what it means to equip the saints for ministry and set them free to do ministry . . . it has been a long journey for me to bring this attitude to the church I partner with and it has been a long journey for them . . . however for me it has been very liberating . . . and for them I pray empowering . . . even helping them discover or (re)discover what it means to be the church in and to the world.
In a few weeks we’ll have another Bible study on gift-oriented ministry . . . when I arrived three years ago I started out with a similar study . . . it didn’t seem to work . . . we only focused on finding spiritual gifts not on deploying them . . . DUH! of course not . . . I wasn’t willing to give up control . . . so I look forward to see how God will use this to move the church forward.
There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but they all come from the same Spirit. There are different ways to serve the same Lord, and we can each do different things. Yet the same God works in all of us and helps us in everything we do.
The Spirit has given each of us a special way of serving others. Some of us can speak with wisdom, while others can speak with knowledge, but these gifts come from the same Spirit. To others the Spirit has given great faith or the power to heal the sick or the power to work mighty miracles. Some of us are prophets, and some of us recognize when God's Spirit is present. Others can speak different kinds of languages, and still others can tell what these languages mean. But it is the Spirit who does all this and decides which gifts to give to each of us. I Corinthians 12:4-11
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