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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.

I came up with this idea of the intersection.

SLIDE The Inspirational Intersection is an intersection of discovering what God wants us to do and be
AND what we want to do and be.

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!

This has been a short, three week series.

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.

How do we do that? I shared three ways.

Frequent fellowship—spend time with each other
Weekly worship
Daily prayer and Bible Study.

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

will most definitely know what we want to do.

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

empower people to do ministry based on gifts.

Some churches have developed acronyms to describe this system that I’ve outlined. One

church has a process called SHAPE.

SLIDE
S Spiritual Gifts
H Heart
A Abilities
P Personality
E Experience

The goal is for every person to know his or her shape

SLIDE Another acronym a church uses is STRIDE

S Spiritual Gifts
T Talents
I Individuality
D Dreams
E Experiences

This is the dream.

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.

What is a Spiritual Gift?

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

result of grace. We are graced with these talents.

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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spiritual gifts. Administration, Exhortation, helps of helping, prophechy, apostleship, faith,

leadership, and so on.

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

people discover and identify their spiritual gifts

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

about what is happening.

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

officiate at his two funerals.

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

could do the ceremony of commissioning the plaque and tree.

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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

past Friday I teared up in delight.

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.

What happens to me when I use my 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

them with care.

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.”

The idea wouldn’t have occurred to me.

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Amy has this gift. It’s more developed in her than it is in me. Life flows easily when we

use our gifts.

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

Amy a certain way.

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

go to bed late. Life isn’t a burden; it’s a delight.

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.

Many parts of the body—one body.

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

for a body to function properly.

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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,

but that is a promise. Let me share how this can work.

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

know our gifts; something very special is happening!

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