This was one of those weekends that didn't start out like I had planned. My son, Richard, has been doing an excellent job teaching a series of lessons during our family integrated Bible study on the divided kingdom. They are so good that I really hated to interrupt them. But due to previous commitments, he was unable to be there this morning to teach Sunday school. So I decided to start a series of lessons on the spiritual gifts. It seems that there are few subjects in a church that are more confusing than this one. Most attempts to describe spiritual gifts divide the gifts into two categories such as speaking and non-speaking. However, God divides the spiritual gifts into four categories – and even uses different Greek words to describe them. If God divides them into four categories, that we really should learn the reason for this division.
It is crucial that we uncover the spiritual gifts that God has given to each of us so that we know how we fit into the body of Christ and what functions God has wired us to fulfill. None of us has all of the spiritual gifts – only Jesus had that. The rest of us have one main motivational gift and we are greatly in need of the other children of God within the body of Christ.
I came back from Washington DC on Friday night with a head cold. By this morning I was feeling terrible. I sent a video to take my place in the family integrated Bible study. However, just a few minutes before service started, the young man in our church informed me that he had the necessary cabling to hook a computer to our sound system. Since I am accustomed to doing web conferences from my home, we decided to take a chance and see if I could teach Sunday school from home. This afforded me the opportunity to begin our study on spiritual gifts but keep everyone safe from my germs.
A bunch of people walked in and had strange looks when they could see the slides on the screen and they could hear the teaching and see people being attentive, but were unable to locate the speaker. So was probably a little bit surreal to them. But the feedback was positive and people are excited about the study.
While this seems only incidental, I believe it opens up a new era for our church. There are a number of families – particularly among homeschoolers – who have difficulty finding a church where they can worship safely and not have their own convictions violated. We can open up those services to people across the Internet to minister to their families and hopefully be an encouragement to them. May God help us to use this opportunity wisely and make He enlarged the customer ministry only as He sees fit. We see greater opportunities for ministry – not for our glory or notoriety – but so that we can glorify God and edify those in His Kingdom.
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