Recovering the Gifts of the Laity

The significance of the release of spiritual gifts for worship has been rediscovered in the contemporary church. It is part of the recovery of the theology of the laity, the “people of God.” Within the worshiping community, each member may contribute to the corporate life and celebration through the expression of his or her particular gift.

One of the predominant and easily observed features of the contemporary movement for liturgical renewal has been the recovery of the ministry of the laity, together with the stress on the distribution of the gifts of the Holy Spirit throughout the body of Christ. This emphasis has been both a precondition and an effect of the renewal of liturgy. In churches where the leadership of the service had long been virtually restricted to clergy, laypeople have emerged in highly visible roles: reading the Scriptures, leading in prayer, assisting in the administration of the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, and performing other ministries of significance. Paradoxically, those denominations in which the laity have historically had a greater degree of participation in these aspects of worship are perhaps those least affected by the renewal movement of this century, no doubt because the more limited role of the minister in public worship has lowered the priority of liturgy as a theological concern.

Spiritual Gifts and the Body

The rise of lay visibility in worship has gone hand in hand with the recovery of the scriptural emphasis on the “peoplehood” of the community of faith. The English words “lay, laity” are derived from the Greek laos,“ people,” which the New Testament uses to designate those called into the new covenant. For example, Peter calls the church “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people [laos] belonging to God,” using phrases borrowed from the Old Testament narrative of the Sinai covenant (1 Pet. 2:9; Exod. 19:6); he further stresses the concept of peoplehood in elaborating, “Once you were not a people [laos], but now you are the people [laos] of God” (2:10).

In the writings of Paul, the peoplehood or calling of the laity is expressed chiefly through the concept of the body of Christ, and it is in the context of the life of the body that Paul sets his discussion of the operation of the spiritual gifts (charismata, pneumatika). A major locus for Paul’s treatment of the gifts is 1 Corinthians 12–14, where the apostle makes it clear throughout that the gifts of the members of the body are exercised not to promote the individual believer, but for the benefit of the body as a whole: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). Indeed, the “body” or “people” remains in focus wherever Paul discusses spiritual gifts. The differing endowments of the members of the body, he states, exist because “in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Rom. 12:5); the ministry gifts are given “to prepare God’s people for works of service” (Eph. 4:12).

Paul offers several lists of gifts, the contents of which partially overlap. Those enumerated in Romans 12:6–8 may be termed the “serving gifts,” which address the encouragement and corporate well-being of the assembly. Two series appear in 1 Corinthians 12: the “manifest gifts” which reveal the presence and power of the Holy Spirit (12:4–14), and the “administrative gifts” which facilitate the operation and activities of the church (12:28). The list in Ephesians 4:11–13 sets forth the “equipping gifts,” which consist not of abilities but of people given to the church by the ascended Christ for the enabling of others in ministry. These lists are evidently not intended to be comprehensive; the New Testament refers to other gifts and skills (especially those of service) exercised by members of the community.

From the New Testament descriptions of spiritual gifts, we can, in general, define a “gift” as any activity or skill or even person which contributes to the church’s ability to fulfill its mission of worship, witness and service, including those functions which add to the personal welfare and spiritual development of the members of the community. In this sense, “each one” (as Paul states) has one or more gifts, something to offer to the common good, and those gifts are regarded as conferred by the Spirit even when they coincide with what we today would regard as natural skills. C. Peter Wagner provides this definition: “A spiritual gift is a special attribute given by the Holy Spirit to every member of the body of Christ according to God’s grace for use within the context of the body” (Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow [Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1979], 42). Wagner catalogs and describes twenty-seven such gifts including martyrdom, celibacy, intercession, and others not specifically enumerated in the Pauline discussions. Clearly, when it comes to gifts that may be offered in the celebration of God’s glory in worship, the list could be extended to include skills in the liturgical arts, particularly in music, drama or choreography, and in architectural and other visual arts. The spectrum of such gifts is so broad that their practice cannot be restricted to a core group of ecclesiastical professionals; it is the laity that must exercise them in the fullest measure.

Loss and Rediscovery of Lay Involvement

Due to historical factors, the concept of the gifts of the laity was largely lost following the earliest centuries of the Christian movement. Among these factors was the institutionalism which settled upon the church in the Constantinian era. When the church made the transition from a persecuted minority to an increasingly established force within the fabric of Roman society, lay initiative in worship or any other crucial area became problematic. Liturgical functions in particular came to be concentrated in the priesthood. The demise of the Roman Empire and many of its institutions in the period of barbarian ascendancy left the church as one of the few viable structures of social organization, and the constant threat of societal disorganization further encouraged clerical authoritarianism within the church. With the retrenchment of old institutions for the transmission of education and cultural skills, and with an emergent sacramentalism which de-emphasized the service of the Word in the Christian liturgy, there was little opportunity for ordinary worshipers to equip themselves, through exposure to biblical teaching or other learning, for the exercise of their distinctive gifts.

The situation began to change with the period of the Renaissance, marked by the recovery of classical learning in non-ecclesiastical circles. The rise of humanistic scholarship, coupled with the gradual emergence from the feudal system of a class of independent “burgers” or townspeople of business and trade, began to produce a stratum of people better equipped to exercise the calling and initiative of the Christian laity. This social development, along with the rediscovery of biblical doctrine and authority, contributed to the partial recovery of the role and responsibility of lay people in the Protestant Reformation. Furthermore, the limitation of gifts of worship leadership to the ordained priesthood was challenged in the Protestant tenet of the “priesthood of all believers.”

Yet even here older patterns remained largely unbroken; the persistent link between church and state inhibited the exercise of the gifts of the laity in the context of public worship. It was chiefly within the smaller communities of the Reformation, the radical Anabaptist movements, that lay involvement and leadership began to come to the forefront in community celebration. The rationalist Enlightenment, which broke down the mystique of the church/state authority structure, helped to pave the way for a more democratic thrust within the Protestant churches, as seen in the Puritan movement. The ideals of the Enlightenment and of Puritanism combined to set the tone for both political and religious life in the newly formed United States of America, where the lay leadership movement took root in several denominations, particularly on the frontier where clerical expertise was frequently unavailable. However, the growing cultural sophistication of the new nation brought a professionalism to the practice of Christian liturgy, resulting once again in the need for renewal in the exercise of lay giftings and capabilities.

On the North American scene, two factors seem to have contributed to the rediscovery of the gifts of the laity in the setting of corporate worship. The Pentecostal revival of the early 1900s, followed by the charismatic movement in the “mainstream” churches beginning in the 1960s, focused attention once again on the gifts of the Holy Spirit within the body of Christ, especially the “manifest gifts.” In the post-World War II period, neo-orthodox theology with its stress on Reformation themes brought to the major Protestant denominations a new emphasis on the priesthood of all believers. The accompanying “biblical theology” movement further exposed the church to the recovery of the corporate nature of biblical faith, and especially to the theological force of the concept of the laos or people of God.

Protestantism remained largely divided between those groups open to the exercise of New Testament charismata and those stressing Reformation themes. Unexpectedly, it was within the Catholic community that the concept of the people of God exercising their Spiritual gifts emerged with a major impact on worship. The aggiornamento to which John XXIII and Vatican II gave voice saw liturgy literally break open in Roman Catholicism. One might claim that the renewal movement within the Catholic Church represented a belated acceptance of the Reformation principle of the priesthood of all believers. The introduction of lay participation in worship came as a culture shock to many of the faithful, for whom the Latin Mass, hitherto largely the province of the priest, had served as a backdrop for personal devotion. Now, with the liturgy in the vernacular and with heightened lay participation in both leadership and congregational response, worshipers were disturbed in their privacy and required to pay attention to what was happening in the corporate action. For many, the transition to the new liturgy was a disconcerting experience challenging their comfort levels. For those who caught the vision, however, the experience was one of exhilaration. In many parishes, the participation of Catholic laity through the exercise of their gifts eclipsed the liturgical involvement of their Protestant counterparts. All this began to take place even before the rise of the Catholic charismatic movement.

The growing participation of Protestant laity in the leadership and conduct of public worship has been, in large measure, a response to the example set by the Catholic community. First lay participation has been written into Protestant renewal liturgies. Many of these are influenced by the shape of the liturgy which came out of Vatican II, itself an attempt to recover the pattern of early Christian worship with its sequence of entrance, service of the Word, service of the Lord’s Table, and dismissal. At the same time, the Pentecostal/charismatic movement has spawned the “praise and worship” pattern, with its extended service of song; conducted properly, the praise and worship style allows for and indeed requires, lay involvement in creative musical expression (as in the “song of the Lord” or the support of the worship team) and occasional exercise of liturgical gifts such as prophecy or the dance. Finally the emerging phenomenon of “convergence worship” brings the traditional praise and worship streams together, to create a heightened celebration of the peoplehood of the covenant community before its Lord. Worship of this type depends upon the willingness of worshipers to release themselves as channels of the manifold gifts of the Spirit.

A GIFTED SINGER?

If you are gifted musically, use that gift to honor God and bless people. Notice I said, “If you are gifted.”

When I was a pastor, it always made me a little nervous when someone would tell me how gifted so-and-so was as a singer (or musician for that matter) — and then would push for an opportunity for this person to “bless the congregation.” As pastor Rick Warren once put it: “We don’t glorify God with gifts we don’t have!”

Fortunately this never happened to me, but I was told of a young man who got up before a congregation and began to sing a special number. It was the worse singing this church had ever heard! He was off key and out-of-sync with the accompaniment. It was so bad the congregation simply did not know how to respond when he was done.

After the service people were avoiding him, but finally someone walked up to him and said, “Son, your singing was to the best of your ability and it’s no fault of yours how the song came out. However, the person who asked you to sing oughta’ be shot!”

God has a way (lots of ways actually!) of confirming our natural, God-given talents, abilities, gifts to be used to honor Him and bless others. What are you good at? What things do you enjoy doing? The answer to these questions may be a help in finding your niche in life, your contribution.