6^th July 2012

When it comes to understanding spiritual gifts we often turn to the New Testament and focus on pastoral issues surrounding the controversial gifts that were misused or misunderstood. However when we consider the multiple gifts mentioned and those not mentioned in passages like Romans12:5-8, 1Corinthians12:8-10, 1Corinthians14:26f, and Ephesians.4:11 it is clear that the activity of Jesus extends to the whole range of human experience. A spiritual gift has been described as, "a natural endowment set free by the Holy Spirit to blossom forth glorifying Christ and building up his church."

Today amid rapid cultural and social change we need to prayerfully ask God to grant and heighten the gift of creativity, an ability to dream and think outside the box, to extend beyond the normal range of our thinking. In this way we can respond to change, honour God and advancing the Kingdom in our time.

Encouraging Examples

Plan Christmas Now

In the June 2012 ACCatalyst, "Fixing Christmas" article Ian Clarkson exhorts us to act now and plan Civic sponsored decorations for next Christmas, to approach Councils, Shopping Centre Managements to encourage a decoration that stirs thinking, a gentle, confident contribution that includes Christ.

National Day of Thanksgiving

In every May since 2004, 1600 communities, and 5000 Churches have participated in a special Sunday called National Day of Thanksgiving. (This year the Penguin Uniting Church Tasmania took part) The concept encourages churches to invite representatives of the community to join them in order to give thanks to God for service organizations, ambulance, police, fire and emergency services. In this positive way Christians offer respect and encouragement to those who serve others and often run short of encouragement. Special resources are available. See their website.

The Regal Standard

During the period of the 2012 Atheist Convention held in Melbourne, Dennis Prince produced THE REGAL STANDARD, an easy-to-read "story newspaper" for mass distribution that basically said, "God is great and we honour Him". The project was a humble venture presented with guidelines and creative ideas for distribution.

Campus Crusade( Australia)

After prayer and special funding through Partnership Ministries USA, Campus Crusade launched an evangelistic web site. Within 48 hours they had 2 million responses. We may be a little sceptical! However as a result they had 26,000 E mails from people wanting to engage in a conversation about Christ.

The Real Easter Egg 

Each year millions of Easter Eggs are made from non-Fairtrade chocolate. In the UK a Fairtrade Easter Egg is the only egg in a box that explains Easter and gives money to charity. Churches and many schools joined a campaign by placing tens of thousands of mail orders that were delivered by Tradecraft. See their website.

Faith and Action

This list of examples could be extended into thousands of ways that God is stirring his people to address the challenge of change in our time. Perhaps there is a coming local or national event that you could align with. Perhaps you could partner with another church, a school, service group, real estate agent, children's play group, men's shed.
Why not gather a group of faithful believing Christian friends and ask God, by his Creative, Life Giving Spirit to release a flow of creative ways that you can engage the world and declare that God's Kingdom is among us.

Rev EA (Ted) Curnow July 2012