The vast majority of churches need members willing to serve in ways that will be costly because of the time they take and the type of work they involve. They need members who will willing take up the tasks that do elicit feelings of concern, because those churches won’t be able to function without them. It’s one of those areas where we need to step out of our cultural and follow are Master who came to serve.

It’s a running joke in churches that nobody seems to feel “called” to clean the toilets. Apparently that’s not a very common spiritual gift! But behind the joke there is often a very real concern. In every church there are a set of jobs that need to be done and many of those jobs are not much fun and require serious commitment. Safeguarding, finances, health and safety are more likely to be words that fill people with concern than joy. But the truth is that it’s probably only a luxury of the larger church (who often employ people to take much of the heavy lifting here) to allow people to only serve in areas they feel called and comfortable.

I think there are two issues here, a biblical one and a cultural one.

The biblical issue is around how we use our gifts. We have rightly taught people to use the gifts they have been given (Romans 12:6-8) and take their part in the body accordingly (1 Corinthians 12). We have then also seen that the Apostles explicitly appoint other people to do jobs that they weren’t called to, so they could focus on the ministry of word and prayer (Acts 6:2-4). Should I insist on concentrating on using my gifts and avoid responsibilities that distract from that?

In terms of gifts, I think we are right to see that God has given us gifts and to use them to serve him where we can. We need to be careful here though. The joke about the toilets points to a real problem that our instinct (by which I suppose I mean our sinfulness) isn’t to be called to less enjoyable things, even though we may be very competent at them. If you can do a particular task competently, why are you not gifted in that?

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