I presume you can talk.
And you can stand up right?
Great. So you can preach. We’ll put you on the roster.

How does that make you feel?
Outraged that I even suggest that we have a preaching roster which includes everyone?
Because preaching is too important? It should only be done by people who have a gift?

I totally agree. It is. It should.

But so is making and serving morning tea.
It is too important. It should only be done by people who have a gift.

If you disagree, you should read 1 Corinthians 12 again.
We all have gifts. We should use them for the building up of the church.
And if I’m doing things I don’t have the gift for, that means I’m ignoring the things I do have a gift for.

If you think morning tea should be just a roster which includes everyone it implies to me that you think it’s not important. But 1 Corinthians 12 says different. It says that everything we do is important. Every gift is important, no matter how small or trivial the world thinks it is.

Some years ago a friend and I visited a church we had heard about which was famous for its culture and the speed it was growing. We wanted to see how they were doing it.
Nobody talked to us. Nobody. They ignored us completely.
I walked around taking brochures to make it obvious I was new. Looking at all the notice boards. … nobody.
So I gave up and went to get a coffee. The lady who served me asked, “Are you OK? You look like something is troubling you.” … this lead to a conversation where she gradually pulled it out of me. I was quite hurt that in a church that big, so famous for its culture… I was ignored. I honestly just wanted to go home and cry.
But after talking with her, I felt a lot better. She made me feel incredibly welcome. Even now, 30 years later, I remember her. Jane. Lovely lady.
Because of her, we went back in the evening. We had a good experience.

She had a gift.
She wasn’t just on a roster to hand out coffee. She was doing a ministry.
She was living out 1 Corinthians 12. She was living out “being the body of Yeshua”.

This article has more discussion on what that means, and what it looks like when we all do only the things we’re gifted for.

Sure, we can have a roster for morning tea. But only people with the gift should be on it.
People without the gift will do a bad job. They will get sick of it. They will get tired of doing it.
People with the gift will do an amazing job. They will love it. They will happily do it forever. Yeshua will thank them for what they have done.

Show them that we value their gift. Show them that we realise that it is as important as a preaching gift.

Show the world that we’re different.
Show the world that we’re the body of Yeshua.