The Spiritual Gift of Cleaning Bathrooms

There's been a recent movement in churches to help people discover their strengths, their talents, and their spiritual gifts, with the hope that if people knew what they liked to do and what they were good at doing, than they would have more to contribute in terms of volunteering at church. Often, a church would have people working in children's ministries who had signed up years ago because of guilt or because their own children were in it, but they had no real interest in children (they liked their own children, just not other people's kids) and they weren't good at it, but they would stick it out because they thought that what a good Christian did. So the strengths/talents/spiritual gift movement was designed to help people discover what God had gifted them to do and then place them in opportunities where they could do those very things. It's a movement that has some wonderful positive things associated with it, and many volunteers now serve in roles that are better fits with who they are as people, and our children's ministries are better places because for the most part, the volunteers want to be there because they enjoy it, not because they have to.

For all of the good that's come from that, though, is that no one has yet to discover the spiritual gift of bathroom cleaning. The strength of chair stacking. The hidden talent of floor mopping. I think that the more specialized we've made spiritual gifts, the more we think that those acts of service are better left for people who have that spiritual gift. Trouble is, you can't really find that. I know, you can make an argument that 'acts of service' is a spiritual gift, but if that's the case, it operates more like the gift of evangelism, where some may have the gift, but all are called to do it. There may be people who prefer to serve in ways such as stacking chairs or setting up tables (and do it better and with more joy), but each of is called to do those things.

I think Erwin McManus, quoted by George Barna in Master Leaders, sums it up nice when he says this: Somewhere along the way, I began admiring people who have that kind of humility. I wanted to be like them and longed to become that kind of person. And then, on a practical level, I thought, look, I don’t know how to be humble, but I know how to do humble things. So I’m just going to fake it. I’m just going to take out the garbage and stack the chairs and clean the floors and scrub some toilets. That’s what all the people I really admire do, and maybe, eventually, it will translate into who I am. I think we have to actually love humility. And that’s how you can begin to know if you’re moving in that direction: when you love people who live lives of humility, people who are self-effacing, and people who are differential (126).