By Tanya Jolliffe
About 15 years ago, I felt called to help plant a church. I attended church multiplication boot camp with three other people and spent two years planning, promoting, and preparing for the launch. For the first six years of the church, we fondly referred to ourselves as a “church in a truck.” Each Sunday morning, a twenty-six-foot box truck would back into a location we had rented for Sunday morning so that the setup team could unload multiple five-foot tall rolling storage cabinets. Within about 90 minutes of being unloaded, the sound and video equipment, classrooms, hospitality center, and welcome banners were in place and ready for the hospitality, education, and worship teams to take over.
You have likely heard the ancient proverb, “many hands make light work.” When setting up and tearing down a “church in a truck,” that was very true. What was also true was that it required many people willing to use their gifts and talents as one unified body.
1 Corinthians Chapter 12 teaches about spiritual gifts. “There are different gifts but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6). “The body is not made up of one part but of many. God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body” (1 Corinthians 12: 14, 18-20).
Although I have been actively involved in mainline denominational churches my whole life, it has only been in the last few years that I have seen these roles with fresh eyes. The talk about fivefold ministries and the prophetic, the revival at Asbury University, and healing services conducted across the country have brought the next part of the teaching in 1 Corinthians 12 to light for me.
“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church, God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues” (1 Corinthians 12:27-28).
Was this the fivefold ministry people were teaching about? After reading Ephesians 4, it made me think so.
“It was he (Jesus) who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11-13).
After meditating on both passages and remembering the days of setting up and tearing down a church, I could better see what I had missed. One body with many parts and all functions are essential for the unity of the body. Some roles are essential, like that of the pastor, standing front and center once everything has been prepared. Some roles are behind the scenes, like the setup crew. Others are teachers in the front line, ready to guide little ones toward Him. While those gifted with hospitality are mainly unnoticed, if the donuts, cookies, or coffee were missing, the light would shine brightly on their service.
God desires for the body of Christ to be built up and reach unity in the faith, not according to religion or denomination but in faith. If we are to find this unity as one body in faith, we have to accept that different people have different gifts and let each person use the gifts they have been given for the good of the body. Some are gifted to perform miracles, heal, and prophesy. I don’t believe those are my gifts, but the scripture says they have been given to someone. If we are going to find unity, we need to make space for people to heal those who desperately need it. We need to make way for the word of the prophetic to guide us and lead us back to Jesus during dark and uncertain times. We need to stop arguing whether those are gifts in the name of religion and believe the Word of God in faith. When we become unified in the truth of God’s Word, we will find peace, hope, and healing as we walk out of the dark toward the light.
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