Thought for the Week: Gifts and ministry
Ruth Tod reflects on gifts and ministry
Paul Parker, recording clerk of Britain Yearly Meeting, posed an important question in the first issue of the Friend in 2015. He wrote: What is your ministry?
Ministry, he suggests, is not only what we are prompted to say in Meetings for Worship. It is what we are led to say and do in our lives. He also asks: What is the ministry of your Meeting?
When Paul asked these questions at our Area Meeting, earlier in the summer, I felt a little daunted and challenged by them. They seemed to hold an important key to the whole process of discernment amongst all the possibilities and concerns that present themselves. I think we can easily be sidetracked by the ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’, which reflect underlying feelings of duty, fear or guilt. I think the idea of ministry turns this attitude around because it takes us directly to questions such as: What are the promptings of love and truth in our (own) hearts? Where do our hearts beckon us?
In the 2014 Swarthmore Lecture, Ben Pink Dandelion wrote about the theology of spirit-given gifts, in which our gifts enable us ‘to live out our ministry’. Perhaps, if we know what our gifts are, we have the clue to what is our ministry. Our starting point is not the wrongs of the world, not our duty, not our guilt, not even our fear. Being members of a peace church, we know about the cycle of fear, anger and violence perpetuating itself. The energy of fear and guilt is no good for us or for anyone else; nor, in the end, will it resolve the problems we see around us. Rather, our starting point is our God-given gifts: those things that bring joy to our lives and that inspire, stimulate and fulfil us. Gifts help us see who we are and who we are meant to become. Trust in our gifts and our energy flows, joyfully inspiring and awakening others. The energy of love and wisdom transforms all of us.
Following this train of thought, a group of Friends recently held a short workshop to explore our gifts together. It is easy to ignore or forget them, or even to assume we don’t have any worth mentioning. So, we began by sharing what we love to do, what brings us joy and inspiration, and what skills, ideas and experiences we bring to these activities.
As we listened, we wrote on a card all the gifts that we saw in each Friend and then presented our cards as gifts to take away as treasures from the afternoon. For some, who had never before thought about pleasure or skills as gifts, this exercise was a revelation; for others it was an affirmation of what we knew or half knew. We acknowledged how easy it is to take gifts for granted, instead of giving space for them to grow. We saw that they are the voice of our heart and soul.
In the search for our ministry, we do need to consider our concerns and practical matters such as resources and feasibility. However, I believe that the beginning and end of our discernment is what our hearts say to us and where better to start than with our gifts? Perhaps a similar process could help Meetings, as well as individuals to find their ministry. As Ben Pink Dandelion reminds us in his lecture, the Quaker community is a place to test and use our gifts, to find support as well as opportunities, to experiment as well as express them and to be welcomed as we are. Our Meetings are also places to find a shared ministry that brings together all our gifts.
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