How would you answer the question, “Why does the Church exist?” Many people will say things like, “It's for the betterment of the community,” or, “It's a place for Christians to gather and worship,” or even, “It's where you go to learn about God.” Whether you grew up going to Sunday services or just visited one for the first time, it's important to know why the Church exists. In 1 Corinthians 12, it says the Church is the Body of Christ, made up of individual members who have different gifts. Those gifts are designed to help us proclaim the excellencies of Him who redeemed us out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). The Church is not a social club or a building you go to on Sunday. It's the hands and feet of Jesus, gifted and equipped by God to fulfill the Great Commission. This raises the bar for every Christian—even you—and begs the question, “What's my role in the Body of Christ?”
In this episode of the Even You podcast, Miles Fidell, Lead Pastor of Auburn Community Church in Alabama, discusses how God has uniquely wired every believer to participate in His Great Commission. Read a highlight from the interview, or watch the full episode in the video below.
Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,” so we can contribute to God’s mission. How does the average person at your church—whether that’s a 19-year-old student at Auburn University or a 60-year-old person in the community—discover how God has uniquely wired them for His mission?
Going through the book of Acts as a church, we heavily profiled the church in Antioch, which I call “the church on fire.” Antioch became the first sending church. They were the first ones to send out missionaries. They had a combination of three things happening at once.
They had revival/activity of the Holy Spirit, spiritual disciplines, and spiritual gifts. The problem when you talk about individual personalities and giftings and talents is we've gotten really good in America at equating individual calling with some type of personality profile. I'm all for personality tests—Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, Strength Finders. Learn about yourself. Self-knowledge is a good thing. But none of that is in the Bible. What is in the Bible is spiritual gifts. The Holy Spirit endows people with individual things that we don't talk about because we're not really comfortable with talking about how that functions in a local church context.
The No. 1 thing you have to remember about the gospel going out is it always originates with God sending it out. The gospel never bears fruit where humanity makes a good plan and does a good job. It is always the sovereignty of God. When He puts His hand on something, it moves. In Acts, it talks about Barnabas being like, “The grace of God is here in Antioch. God's hand is here.” And I looked around at our church, and I was like, “God's doing amazing things all over the world right now. It's not an arrogant statement. God's hand's here. His hand is on what we are doing right now. That's not us. We didn’t make ourselves attractive enough for God to notice. He just decided in His grace, in His sovereignty, to do this.” When God is willing, He will pour His Spirit out. That's step one.
Step two is spiritual disciplines—when you're becoming more like Jesus and practically working out deep discipleship, such as praying, reading the Word, doing meals together, practicing Sabbath. But when it came to spiritual gifts, no one really knew what gifts they had or how to express them. So, we took a shot, sent everybody home on a Sunday to take an assessment and sit through a teaching. About 3,500 people did the assessment. We needed people to identify their unique gifting. Once you understand spiritual gifts, you understand it's not a talent. It's a part of you that's not you. For instance, anybody can be generous, and everyone should tithe. But somebody with the gift of giving is somebody whose God’s hand is on that man or that woman as they write that check, and they love it. So, when they start to operate with a knowledge of recognizing this gift is not them, then they can do it with more confidence. It's helped me with a prophetic gift. When I'm on stage, I'm not resting on, “Come on, Miles, preach a good enough sermon.” God's given me a gift, and so I lean into that. What does everybody say when God's moving? “It's like you're not even talking. It's like God's talking.” That's exactly what is happening because the Holy Spirit has gifted me individually to do that.
The problem that we're running into is that we have a really clear context for gifts that happen on stage. But how do you raise up the gifts that are not in front of the crowd so the Great Commission can go out? It’s about asking the question, “How does that relate to accomplishing what we're trying to accomplish?”
The intersection of your gifts and the purpose God has for your gifts happens when you get burdened and bothered by what bothers God. For me, it was contemporary, cultural, lukewarm Christianity that nauseated me. That's what kept me up at night. It's what kept me in my seat on Sundays going, “I just can't stand this.” But that's not your burden. It's not everybody's burden. God is individually burdening people related to his mission. And if we can carry our burdens together inside of these giftings, then there's a fire attached to it. So I always felt bad that my burden was American because it just seems more acceptable to be more heartbroken about Muslims in the Middle East or the impoverished community of orphans in Russia. You need to stop apologizing for what God has bothered you for. I am losing sleep over how many people are going to get up and go to church tomorrow and not care. I want them to care. And so that's not me. God feels that way, but He put that in me. So we start asking God, “I got this gifting, and You got this mission, but where have You broken my heart to participate in what You're doing?”
The Even You Podcast
On the Even You podcast, we want to empower ordinary people to say, “Yes!” to extraordinary purpose. Hear how everyday believers are using their gifts to have an eternal impact on people’s lives around the world. Learn more, share, and listen to the podcast now!
