“You’re the first woman to ever run sound here,” I was told when I joined the audio/visual tech team at a previous church. In the several years I served on the tech team, my ideas about service in the church changed. When I first joined the church, there were areas of ministry where I felt duty-bound to serve.

If there is one adjective that should not be used to describe service, it is “duty-bound.” I labored under the idea that the sacrifice that ministry required was joy. Ministering does mean sacrifice. Sacrifice of time, money, pride, impatience, control – yes.

Joy? No.

Basically, I thought the more miserable I was, the more I was giving of myself.

“My flesh doesn’t want to do this. Therefore, to do so then denies my flesh and that will win me service points in heaven. Can you hear the angels giving me a round of applause already?”

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

I Corinthians 13:3 even says, “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”

It took a while for the idea to get through the static, but I realized that service should be a joy (though I realize that doesn’t mean “easy”). Too long I slogged through week after week of utter dread. It is easy to justify this thinking with “God gives grace in weakness.” He most absolutely does! Neither do I want to be accused of people giving up from serving in the church because things get difficult. Talk to the Apostle Paul about difficulties!

However, I wasn’t dreading the ministries I was in because they were bad or wrong, or I couldn’t do it. I was dreading it because I had invested myself because I felt I had to. Ministry should ultimately flow from a desire of want to. God has given us personalities and skills and, well, talents. Like the servants in the parable of the talents, we have leeway to choose how to invest those talents for the Lord.

Ministry should not be foisted upon poor pew-sitters guilted into filling up a sign-up sheet. Each member of the congregation should be used to build up the other members as they find ways to use their spiritual gifts or natural talents for the Lord. Babies discover their fingers and toes by trying to eat them. Once they get older, they realize their fingers can grab things and toes help balance them while standing.

In the same way, I imagine churches finding out what lights the fire of their members. When an empowered congregation is set free, it opens the floodgates of joy. Joy even through the obstacles that come with service.

Truly, it’s much easier to see a young woman walk into your church and think. “Let’s put her with one of our children’s ministries.” Or expect all the men to want to be ushers. It’s time to get away from that. I Corinthians 12 combats this “collection of parts” view with the allegory of the body. It’s not a body if everyone is a hand, or a foot.

“If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body.” I Corinthians 12:17-20 (KJV)

Maybe that man has been given a talent for art that God has given him to use in the church and community.  Maybe that woman has a mind for math that can be used for financial details. When these people are encouraged in their gifts, the body gives glory to God.

In the years I spent at that church and in the church I’m at now, they did that for me. Took me in, found out my strengths and helped me find ways to serve where I can best. Now, instead of a burnt-out volunteer, I’m plugged into ministries that I enjoy and can get amped up about helping fellow believers as we worship together.

No bolting (heh) away here!