Mark Clark [00:00:03]:
First Corinthians, chapter 12 is where we are. And literally, we're. I think, in the 42nd sermon, I think of the masterclass series going verse by verse through the book of First Corinthians, and we've got up to chapter 12. We finished chapter 11 last week, and now there's a pivot in the book from 12 to the end of the book, as we'll probably get through the whole rest of the book through the summer. The reality is there's a pivot. There's a. There's a movement in chapter 12 where he goes from. If some of you felt like this has been a lot of vertical talk.
Mark Clark [00:00:34]:
It's been about you and Jesus, you and God. This shift now becomes a bit more of a horizontal talk. It becomes about kind of the horizontal life, the life that you and I live. Very practical, very about you and me. And as we live our lives, and almost like today, we'll almost feel like we're kind of delving into ourselves, looking deeply in ourselves, trying to figure out even our own personality types. If you've taken a personality test, you'll know that there's kind of profiles of people, and how you function in different ways is kind of the profile of who you are, and then that's how you kind of function in the world. And that's what Paul does here. It's very interesting because we know that when we take personality tests that we're all very different than one another.
Mark Clark [00:01:18]:
We all have different skill sets. We all have different things that we bring to the table. And you might be vastly different than your wife or your husband, for instance, and you function in different ways. Even yesterday, Aaron and I were moving this massive table into our house, and we were trying to get it in. And it was long. And so my whole approach to it was, okay, we're gonna get it outside the door from the outside, and then I'm gonna measure it with a measuring tape. I'm gonna figure out the inches, and then we're gonna go inside. And then we were worried that we couldn't get it around certain kind of corners in our house and which room where we have to go through in order to get around the thing.
Mark Clark [00:01:52]:
And so my approach was measure it, hold out the measuring tape, and then her and I would walk in the house together with the measuring tape and kind of try different angles, try different directions. And she was like, this is stuff, stupid. What are you doing? Let's just bring it into the house, and we'll get it in the house and we'll just figure it out when we get there. And I'm like, yeah, but I don't want it touching my floors. And so what if I get ahead and I move all the tables out of the way and we just do trial run? We'll do it. You know, they say measure twice, cut once. And so we'll try at different angles. Try.
Mark Clark [00:02:18]:
And she's like, man, no, no. We'll just get it in. We'll try to get it around the corner. Then we'll just go, oh, that didn't work. And then whatever. And so literally, she goes, you're not having much fun, are you? You're not making this very fun. I'm like, I didn't actually think we were trying to have fun. I thought we were trying to bring a table into the house.
Mark Clark [00:02:34]:
Right? That's kind of how I approach that. Not wrong, just different. All right? She's crazy, and I'm right. That's just the reality. And so even with my daughter yesterday, my daughter was. She was trying to move something. She was doing the flowers, and she had this kind of hose, and she was. And I said, okay, water the flowers, honey.
Mark Clark [00:02:56]:
She was trying to water the flowers. And then I came around the corner, and she had the hose, like, on the hardest spray. And she was just aiming. She's 8 years old. She was aiming at the flowers, just killing all the flowers, just like. And so I come around the corner. I'm like, no, no, no, honey. That's not how you do it.
Mark Clark [00:03:11]:
Here's how you do it. You get the spray, and you kind of aim it, and you kind of. And you go really light. And she goes, nah. She drops it and runs away into the backyard. I'm like, oh, my gosh. Here we go. She's gonna go to my wife and say I said something.
Mark Clark [00:03:23]:
So I'm gonna try to get to my wife first before. So I try to get around the corner of the house, and then Bella's already reached her in the backyard. And I'm already hearing my wife say, mark. All right. I'm like, no, right? And I go to the back. Yes. She's like, why did you tell her that? And I'm like, no, no, no, you don't understand. I was just trying to say, you're gonna kill all the flowers that mom bought last week.
Mark Clark [00:03:45]:
Cause I saw the bill for them, and I don't want them all dead. Cause then she's about to buy them again. So don't spray them like that. You just go on the really light and you go like this. And you just get the soil. You don't spray the flowers. And. And she's like.
Mark Clark [00:03:56]:
And my 8 year old's like, ah, I can't believe daddy took this away from me. And my wife's like, no. I'm like, yeah, but this is right. There's a right way of doing it and a wrong way of doing it. I'm just trying to, you know, lord forbid my 8 year old learns something from an adult. And she's like, you know what? It's your tone. I'm like, what are you talking about, my tone? She's like, it's not so much what you're saying, it's how you're saying it. I'm like, my tone's fine, grow up.
Mark Clark [00:04:17]:
And it was just vicious cycle, right? It was this vicious cycle of like, okay, what are we gonna actually do with this? What are we gonna. How are you gonna. It's a way of doing things. Not wrong, just different. All right? That's the reality. We were caught in it. And so there's different personality types. She approaches life perfectly.
Mark Clark [00:04:32]:
I'm always wrong. That's just. Different personality types, right? Here's the Apostle Paul. It's the same thing when it comes to you and I, and not being born with natural talents, not being born with environmental things, not being born with genes from our parents, but that's our first kind of natural birth. But the same thing happens when we're born again. When we're born, as John 3 says a second time, when we're born of the spirit, God does something. He actually gives us what the Bible calls spiritual gifts. And he gives them to us for a.
Mark Clark [00:05:02]:
So here's what he says now concerning spiritual gifts. All right? So that's the first idea. And some of you, this is gonna be a very content driven sermon. And so it'll feel maybe like teaching more than preaching. But what I wanna do is less try to do something in the moment and more equip you to actually know some information so you can go home to self evaluate, have the information, and then you can understand what your gifting is for the rest of your life. So that's what we're gonna try to do today. We'll see if we can do it in the amount of time. But have your phones out.
Mark Clark [00:05:31]:
If you're a pentaker, take notes and just listen to what I'm saying as I'm downloading it so that you can understand it, be equipped, and then go home and actually think, okay, which one is Me, how is this actually function? What am I supposed to do? But he says there's these things called spiritual gifts. And he says, I don't want you to be uninformed. Cause so I don't want you to be uninformed. And he says, there's different kinds, right? There's different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit distributes them all. So there's a variety of gifts. Now, the reason, before we get into what those gifts are, what you and I have to understand is why these gifts are given. They're given not just to sit on them. Implicit in the word gifts is the idea that you open them.
Mark Clark [00:06:11]:
Right? My kids don't. I don't give my kids Christmas gifts. And they say, okay, thank you, Father. I. I'll open this up in the summer. And they put it aside in their bedroom. That ain't happening. All right? They're opening that thing up.
Mark Clark [00:06:21]:
And a gift is meant to be opened up. So why would the Spirit give Christians gifts? Well, the reason he gives them gifts is because they're supposed to actually open them, use them, walk in them. In the midst of the spiritual war that we are a part of as a church, as a local church, as a church universal, the spiritual war, the coming of the kingdom, the movement, the mission that Jesus has us on, you are needed in every way, and your spiritual gifts are needed. And so if you have the gift of teaching, use it. If you have the gift of helps, use it. If you have the gift of giving and generosity, use it. There's nothing worse than I have sat with people with the gift of generosity, and they have said, look, here's how I want to bless you. Here's how I want to bless the church.
Mark Clark [00:07:05]:
Here's how I want to bless this global mission. Here's how I want to bless missionaries. Here's how I want to use my money for kingdom. There's nothing worse than seeing someone take that gift from God and bury it and become cheap and just say, no, I'm not going to use it for anything. I've seen both of those worlds. And the reality is, if your gift is giving, then you better use it with generosity. As Paul's going to talk about one of the passage. If your gift is teaching, if your gift is serving, it helps administrator.
Mark Clark [00:07:28]:
Whatever it is, you better use it. Don't just sit on it, don't just bury it, or the mission will never get accomplished. You can't just sit on something. We need you. Ministry and mission is not gonna be accomplished with just people on stage. Juggling around, doing things, and you're sitting back being a non contributing zero. There was a study done recently. What do you look at in a church? What's your highest priority in a church? And one of the people on the Barna research said, or a bunch of them, the highest amount of responses out of the multiple choice was a church.
Mark Clark [00:07:59]:
That really doesn't ask much of me because they're accomplishing it themself. That is literally the whole spirit and mentality that we have fought against from day one of Village Church in 2009, when 16 people were sitting in my house. Let's kick against the consumeristic mentality of the Western world that says, hopefully someone with gifts will do a bunch of church stuff and I can sit around and do nothing. That's not the way it is. We need you every. We all need one another, right? Yesterday, in the midst of this day where we did a whole bunch of chores in gardening, I garden. And so what I did is I buried my hose in my backyard and I dug a massive kind of trench all the way through all this dirt and soil. Then I took my hose and I buried it underneath all that, and then I covered it up with dirt.
Mark Clark [00:08:41]:
Well, in the midst of this, it was a one hour process. I'm like touching my face or whatever. I go through the rest of my day and I look at about 5 o', clock, I've been out to the mall and I could look at five o' clock and literally I have a Hitler stash of mud on my face right here that I've at some point went like this. And my family never told me, all right? I look like a Nazi all day. All right? I'm at the grocery store. Hey, how's it going? I was like, what the. All right, what is happening right now? No, look, I need you, all right? I needed my family. We all need.
Mark Clark [00:09:16]:
Literally, I told my 10 year old, I'm like, cleanup. They got this dog, right? And so the deal when we got the dog was, you better clean up all the poop, right? Which they never do. Don't be so stupid, parents to think that your kids are actually ever gonna do what they say they do when they're sitting. Buy me this puppy. I swear I'll take care of it. All right? Literally. My kids haven't picked up poop in six months, and yet I get a phone call three weeks ago, daddy, can we buy another dog? It's a little puppy. It's so cute.
Mark Clark [00:09:43]:
And this one said, we'll clean up the poop every day. You've already shown me that you don't. What are you talking about? Anyways, I said, clean up the poop. Oh, dad, no, no. I said clean up. So I'm over here, and then I hear, daddy. What? She's like, the poop's up in the tree. Sorry, what? She somehow tied it in a bag and threw it up in a tree, and it got hung up in a branch, and I'm, like, shaking it so falls down on my face.
Mark Clark [00:10:08]:
What the. She needs me. I need. The church needs. We all need each other, right? We all need help. And if you sit on your gifts and do nothing, Jesus, we need you to actually serve and give and teach and lead and all of these things so that Jesus can win in the world versus Satan, so that Jesus can win in the world versus death versus destruction versus depression. He gave you gifts. This is what Paul's trying to say.
Mark Clark [00:10:38]:
He gave you gifts so that you would actually use them. And so the point is, you gotta open them up. You gotta use them for the sake of the kingdom. You gotta understand, you gotta have a desire in your heart that you're like, man, I want to see people's lives transformed. That's the mission of Village Church. See people transformed into fully devoted followers of Jesus. We only get to do that if you actually step up and use your gifts, Be inspired by the transformation of people. I got an email this week from.
Mark Clark [00:11:07]:
He said, hey, listen, you and I met together about a year ago. I came to you for some counseling. I have a few kids, and through a series of a bunch of unfortunate events, it's me as a single dad, and I'm raising them now. Young kids love them, blah, blah. And he says, a few months ago, I got a diagnosis of brain cancer. And the doctor says, In 14 months, I'll be dead. And I was hoping to be able to be baptized at church in the park with my son together. And I was hoping he would baptize us.
Mark Clark [00:11:34]:
Man, I'm looking at this guy and I'm like, this is a story of transformation of life, change, of repentance of a family coming together to glorify God publicly in the midst of baptism. Man, you gotta use your gifts to see that happen. Imagine that with whatever gifts I have, I decided to bury them. You guys know I was gonna go different directions in my life. I wanted to do different things. I wanted to become a professor. And people sat me down and said, don't. Don't become a professor.
Mark Clark [00:12:02]:
Use your gifts to start a church. Preach to People see people imagine that I bury that, then that story's not coming in. We gotta live. We gotta wake up in the morning and feed and be addicted to life changing stories in other people, not just yourself. And if you have that addiction and desire, then guess what you're gonna do? You're never gonna sit on what God gave you. You're gonna take it and you're gonna use it for the glory of God. You're gonna serve, you're gonna give, you're gonna teach, you're gonna prophesy, whatever it is God has called you to do. Now let's get into all of that and get through the list.
Mark Clark [00:12:35]:
There's a few lists. First question is, what are the gifts for? We just talked about the mission. Second question, what are the actual gifts? Now I'm gonna go through a few different things here. Two or three different categories of spiritual gifts. Okay? So the first category is what are called calling gifts. All right, so the idea that 30,000ft of a calling that people have and these come. There's about 20 lists given in the New Testament. I'm gonna look at three of the passages.
Mark Clark [00:13:03]:
There's four general passages that are used by scholars to recognize the spiritual gifts that are laid out in the New Testament. So here's one of them, Ephesians 4. Now this is the first category. These are calling gifts, office gifts, things that you maybe are wired and called to do. And so he says, Christ himself gave the apostles. So the first one is, he's going to say apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, teacher. So the first one, apostle. Now this is small a apostle.
Mark Clark [00:13:29]:
It's a large a apostle. Are the people that Jesus called to write the Bible. They saw the resurrected Jesus. They had authority from the Spirit to write perfect things. That's all we're talking about. We're talking small a apostle. Literally in the Greek, it's the word apostolos. It means to be.
Mark Clark [00:13:43]:
It literally means to be sent out or a sent out. And so an apostle is someone in modern day who, who is sent out. But not only sent out, they're wired in a particular way to be sent out, to organize large things. So the apostle Paul would plant Philippi, Thessalonica church in Rome, church in Corinth. He would travel around, he would write them letters. He was organized, he was a networker. He was kind of a king in the sense of being able to oversee large networks and be organized enough to lead in that way. That's an apostolic gene.
Mark Clark [00:14:17]:
That's an apostolic gift given to people where they can missionally exegete a context and be able to lead big things, a network of things. All right, not just necessarily a local church, but a bunch of local churches. And so the apostolic gift, this is one of my giftings. And so the idea, I'll tell you, so you can kind of identify the gifts that I have so you can say, okay, I know him a little bit, and so I know what gift that is and do I have it or not or whatever. So when I have a particular gift, I'll share with you. But the apostolic gift is something where I can literally fly into a city or a town. I could fly into Saskatoon, Edmonton, Sacramento, whatever, and spend a couple days there and I'll be able to kind of exegete the cultural context in such a way where my brain will already begin to think what kind of church would be planted there. How would you plant a network of churches here? What would the messaging be? Would, what would the aesthetics be? How would you.
Mark Clark [00:15:07]:
And it becomes very natural the way that the Holy Spirit birthed in me an ability to understand, exegete missiologically an understanding of a particular place, a time, a people, how to communicate a particular message to a particular people. That's an apostolic gift. So some of you have that. Now none of these jobs are paid staff. All of these are soccer moms, business people, you as you nurses and teachers, whatever it is. This is the church at large figuring out what it actually is meant to do in the world and has a particular context of calling. And so this is the 30,000 foot vision of five major roles. And the reality is, most apostles, how would I say this if they're under a psychological evaluation? They're not always well, right.
Mark Clark [00:15:56]:
And what I mean by that. I remember listening to Erwin McManus years ago, and he talks about how he, he had these people come to him and he said, look, they grew up in the south, some Louisiana town or whatever, and they were called to. They felt they were called to go to like Hong Kong to become missionaries in Hong Kong and preach and teach and lead church planting movement and so on. And so he's like, yeah, okay. And then there was this board that was supporting them and they went and they were their family and they were killing in Hong Kong. But the board kept bringing them back and saying, we want to do a psychological evaluation of their family. We want to make sure that they're. And he's like, don't do it.
Mark Clark [00:16:28]:
If you bring them back and do a psychological examination on them, you are gonna ruin them. Because here's a group of people from Louisiana with five kids, homeschooling, think that they can make a dent in Hong Kong. What's more beautiful than that? Don't make sure they're healthy. They're not. That's the point. Listen. My wife tells the story to this day. When we were planting village church.
Mark Clark [00:16:51]:
See, an apostle is. Is one who was sent. Or if you were using modern vernacular, would be entrepreneurial, all right? Starting things from scratch. A pioneer, not a settler. All right? And so when we started village church, I remember the commitment that I had to. That was literally. My wife was pregnant with our third child, Bella. Very, very pregnant.
Mark Clark [00:17:09]:
Nine months. And I took. There was this one family. Now, you gotta understand, an apostle fights. And just for every scrap, right? Every single family, every single person being part of this thing. And so there was this new. And we were at a hundred people at the time, and there was this new guy he wanted to meet for lunch. And I wanted to connect him.
Mark Clark [00:17:26]:
And so I went out with him for lunch. And we're sitting at lunch, and we're having lunch. I'm like, I want this guy to serve. I want him to be on point. I want him to be on mission, be part of village. And I get a phone call from my wife, and it was like, hey, baby. She's like, hey, I'm going into labor. We need to go now.
Mark Clark [00:17:38]:
This baby's coming. And I'm like, oh, man. Okay. All right. Well, I'm at lunch. And she's like, what? This is a true story. The guy, the reason I remembered it. Cause he told it to me the other day.
Mark Clark [00:17:54]:
And I'm like, I just ordered, though. Like, it'll be here soon. I'll have. Like, I'll be an hour, and then I'll come and get you, right? And she's like, click, right? And I'm like, all right. So I'm like, oh, don't worry about it. He's like, what is it? I'm like, oh, don't worry. I have a baby anyways, so what do you do again? And so we're chatting, we're about 10 or 15 minutes in, and this guy goes, you know, I feel like. I feel really bad.
Mark Clark [00:18:16]:
I think you should probably go. I'm like, yeah, you think I should go? Yeah, I think you should go. All right, fine. Get the bill. I go, listen, I'm not well, all right, all right. That's an apostle. They're crazy. They just do crazy.
Mark Clark [00:18:29]:
You do not want them, you know, pastoring you for Instance, all right? Cause an apostle's thinking systems, structures. He's flock focused versus sheep focused. He or she, all right? They focus. Think about the big picture. They don't necessarily always like the granular details. All right? So some of you are apostles. Alan Hirsch says these words. He says, I can find no situation where the church has significantly extended the mission of God, let alone where the church has achieved rapid metabolic growth, where apostolic leadership cannot be found in some form or another.
Mark Clark [00:19:06]:
All right? So it's this idea of people. Even when we started village church, it was like, everyone at the time was like, hey, let's go after college K. All right? It's cool. Because all the college kids are cool and they'll make the church cool. And I'm like, college kids don't have any money and they're transient. That's a dumb plan. All right? The only reason to go, if you go after college kids, then one of two things happen. They're gone.
Mark Clark [00:19:27]:
If you don't let them on stage to read their poem. All right? That's not a sustainable plan. So let's go after people, you know, who have jobs, can sustain a mission for the sake of the kingdom. Yeah, we'll reach a college kid, Sue. Cause they. We love them. We're not going to build a church on them, all right? You do one, say one little wrong thing, they're going to start a blog about it, and them and their friends will be gone and you'll be broke. So apostolic thinking thinks strategically.
Mark Clark [00:19:54]:
Flock, big picture. How do we. Movements and networks of things. Okay? So that's an apostolic thinker, and maybe that's you. Now, it doesn't mean you're leading a bunch of churches and church planning networks and whatever. It might mean that you have 40, 50 people in groups that actually depend on you for discipleship and vision and inspiration and theology. You're an apostolic entrepreneur type person who's thinking, how do I start new things? How do I pioneer new things? Okay, that's the apostle. And then there's the prophets.
Mark Clark [00:20:20]:
Okay? So he's saying, Jesus gave these gifts to the church so the church can function in the world. So the first is apostle. And if the apostle is a sent one, a prophet is one who knows things and communicates things. All right? So they know things and communicate. They discern what God wants to say to a particular people at a particular time, and they speak it into their life, right? And so they say, they're able to say, now here's the reality. A prophet, this is not foretelling this isn't a psychic. This isn't saying, here's what's gonna happen in your life here. You're gonna know you're gonna die this way or your kids are gonna do this.
Mark Clark [00:20:55]:
It's not that. It's forthtelling the word of God, taking the good theology and doctrine of the scriptures and forth telling it so it lands on your life. This is also one of my giftings. So my giftings are the first three ape. All right? So what I talk about is apest, all right? And apest, what tends to be the best church planters tend to be here. And I'll tell you why in a second. But that is those three. That is what my gifting is.
Mark Clark [00:21:19]:
And so the prophet. The prophet speaks forth into a person's name relationally at times, but also sometimes disconnected. They're Ezekiel, they're Jeremiah, they're Jesus, they're John the Baptist. They're speaking prophetically into a culture and into a people group and saying, here's what I think God has for you. You need to repent of sin. All right? Now, here's what the prophets, they're good at that. But what they're bad at is caring. And so you don't want a prophet shepherding you in life, because a prophet is just gonna tell you what to do.
Mark Clark [00:21:53]:
They're very black and white, and so they're like, if you come in for. So this is what happens to me, right? Couples come in, okay? Couples come in over the years, and they're Christians. They've grown up in the church. They want me to marry them. They love Jesus, and yet they're coming to me. They said, we've been dating for three years, and we're sleeping together. And I go, okay, here we go. All right, listen, the Bible isn't cool with that.
Mark Clark [00:22:14]:
I know. Pastor, we're struggling, okay? We're struggling, all right? So can you pray for us? Cause we're struggling, and I'm like, yes, I could totally pray for you. But also. Stop it. Right? Because a prophet's not just gonna sit and go, yeah, I'm gonna shepherd you. Oh. We're gonna journey together. Gonna walk alongside of you through this season of your life.
Mark Clark [00:22:39]:
Roman says this. Pull up your pants, get a job, figure your life out. You know, shut the light off when you leave. All right, all right. That's a prophet. And they always have a Bible verse for everything, right? They got theology, they got Bible. They know what's right. And so they see the world black and white, and they're just going to tell you, here's how it is.
Mark Clark [00:23:01]:
Go deal with it. And then that's why you need. Later, you're going to need the pastors, but so their prophet is going to see. And actually, Alan Hirsch makes the point that these are chronological. If you look at a city or a town or a movement, what's gonna happen is you're gonna start with apostolic work, and the apostles gonna do their work, and the prophet's gonna do their work, and the evangelists gonna do their work. People are gonna come to know Jesus, and then you're gonna need a shepherd and a teacher to take those people. So these are pioneers, and then these are settlers. These are people actually settle in and shepherd and teach the people and disciple them.
Mark Clark [00:23:34]:
Where these people are kind of blazing a path at 30,000ft, speaking prophetically into a culture of people's lives. So this is what a prophet does. So maybe that's some of you. You're prophets. You think black and white. You have a Bible verse for everything. And you want to tell people where they're wrong. You want to tell people where they need to repent.
Mark Clark [00:23:49]:
And what I would say to you is, be very careful the way that you do that. The heart in which you do it, it has to be done. As you walk alongside of people, things bother prophets, they bother them, and they should bother you. But as they bother you, you need to walk relationally with people rather than disconnected from people. There was a guy I went out with last week. He told me something. It kind of messed. I didn't like it.
Mark Clark [00:24:10]:
It didn't sit right in my spirit. So I was, like, praying for him and just like, hey, we gotta. And I said, hey, man. I didn't. You know, this kind of unsettled me, but I wanted to. And he's like, yeah, and he received that, and we're gonna meet. All of that that's done relationally. Cause he knows I love him.
Mark Clark [00:24:24]:
It's not just on Facebook, on social media, telling everybody what's right and wrong and saying, well, I'm a prophet. I'm allowed to be a jerk. That's not what he's talking about. All right. Jesus walked alongside John the Baptist, had disciples that he would be a prophet to. Okay, okay. Next are the evangelists. And the evangelist.
Mark Clark [00:24:41]:
I didn't mean that to be that color. But so anyway, it's supposed to be the same color. Okay, Prophets. Okay, now we've changed colors. Okay, let's roll with it. Evangelists. So evangelists. Now these.
Mark Clark [00:24:52]:
If this person a Sent one. If this person's one who knows and communicates, then the evangelist is a recruiter. In modern vernacular, they can recruit. They actually get the job done. They take you from one place, they see you converted to Christ, and they actually are able to see you come to know Jesus. That's an evangelist. It's someone who actually can communicate the gospel enough where you actually come to faith in Jesus. They call faith out of you.
Mark Clark [00:25:17]:
You come to know Christ. And so the reality is this is like. If you read the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwick talks about Paul Revere. Paul Revere, of course, the famous writer who went through the cities and said, hey, the redcoats are coming. The British are coming. They're gonna kill us. And all the cities ran away and they were all saved. And Malcolm Gladwell makes the point.
Mark Clark [00:25:34]:
It wasn't just because Paul Revere had a loud voice. It's because he already had an interconnected network of people that he knew and people who trusted him. There was another guy who made the same ride and nobody listened to because he didn't know anybody. The evangelist knows people, has a network of people, can actually recruit people to actually believe in Jesus. You look at a guy like Rick Warren. Rick Warren, Literally, the stories about Rick Warren are, he'll walk into a grocery store, he'll lead five people to Christ before he gets to the till. All right? That's an evangelist, all right? Just get stuff done, all right? He doesn't sit around and dream. All right, we should do this.
Mark Clark [00:26:06]:
We should plan. But I've never actually talked to a non. The evangelists don't love hanging out with Christians, all right? Christians drive them crazy. I remember when. And so this is my third. My third of the. Of the Matrix. So I remember when we first got married, there was some people, and they're like, oh, I know what to get you.
Mark Clark [00:26:23]:
And there were these Christian people, and they're like, you got married. We should give you and your wife the best game ever. It was actually called Bibleopoly, all right? It's Monopoly with Bible cities as the thing. So, like, Boardwalk was like Jerusalem or some nonsense, all right? I literally threw that piece of garbage in the trash, all right? Because Christian things bother me, all right? I like Christians, but I like them. I don't love them all the time, all right? They're weird, all right? And so an evangelist doesn't really like hanging. They don't feel comfortable around Christians. Christians make them weird. Christian movies make them weird.
Mark Clark [00:26:57]:
Christian music makes them weird. Christian books make them weird. They just don't. They're not like the best friends, but they love non Christians. They'd rather hang out with non Christians. And to an evangelist, anybody who doesn't lead a bunch of people to the Lord every year isn't really a Christian. All right, so if you think like that, you're probably an evangelist, right? If you think about the world in those terms. So what you gotta start to understand is that people think in a particular way, and we gotta start to understand not wrong, just different.
Mark Clark [00:27:25]:
And evangelists, they want people to come to know Jesus. That's it. Yeah, Gloria. Global mission, whatever, worship ministry, whatever. Get people to know Christ. People who are far from God need to know Christ. That's what they care about. All right? More so than caring for people's feelings or whatever.
Mark Clark [00:27:41]:
Now, this is all why you need the ministry of pastors. Because pastors will take the people that these three save and they'll actually shepherd them and love them and. And later we'll see the teaching. A shepherd. If. If this person is. If this person knows and communicates, if this person recruits, then this person cares. Shepherds, leads alongside cares for your issues, your counseling, your marriage, the way you're raising your kids, the problems of your soul, your addictions, the things you want to accomplish in life.
Mark Clark [00:28:11]:
These are the people who lean in and they actually care. And so if you look at the reality of. Let's say, let's. Let's put in the context of a budget meeting. Okay? So there's a budget that needs to be presented to the church. How do these four people interpret that budget? Okay, so, hey, guys, we have an $8.56 million budget for the year. Okay, so let's say we get up and we pitch that to you guys for the year. The apostle is thinking this, okay, what's the systemized plan? Where's the PowerPoint? I need to see the data on what we spent from January to July.
Mark Clark [00:28:44]:
I need to understand what it was spent on. I need to see the structure. Supposedly you're gonna, you know, want some money for a building. I think I heard that somewhere. Okay, I wanna make sure I get the PDF and the details of what kind of pipes you're buying in order to put in that building. Right? That's how an apostle thinks. Cause they're thinking 30,000ft. Sustainable plan, networks, systems.
Mark Clark [00:29:02]:
All right? The prophet is like, on this budget, I see no Bible verse. Where's the Bible? Is this church one of those churches that doesn't use the Bible? I need a Bible verse for Every line item, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 12. This is how you think. It's how you process. The evangelist is like, this budget better be reaching non Christians or I ain't giving no money. Yeah, yeah. Christians and their discipleship. I want non Christians to meet Jesus.
Mark Clark [00:29:31]:
That's what an evangelist thinks. And the pastor goes, aw, is there, like a picture of a person? Aw's a puppy. I care for you, I want to help. I want to love you. I want to walk alongside. I want to make sure that people feel right in life, that they feel connected. And they say words like love and community and communication. All right? All of these are massive, all right? Many of you are pastors, all right? You're caregivers.
Mark Clark [00:30:05]:
So if that person is sent and that person knows and communicates and that person recruits, this person cares, all right? And the church is. A high percentage of the church actually are shepherds. Because Christianity and its values tend to draw people who are already naturally gifted around pastoring, shepherding, and caring. All right? And then there's the final one is teacher. The final 1 in Ephesians 4 is teacher, which takes. If that person sent and knows and communicates and recruits and cares, this person systematizes. They're a systematizer. They fill in the blanks.
Mark Clark [00:30:38]:
They bring pens to church. They write notes on their phone. They wanna understand things so that they can distill them. If all these people are looking at the budget, this person's saying, do people understand the budget? Can people get it? Can people really grasp it for themself, be equipped in themself and then go on with their life and actually carry on what you've said? And so oftentimes people say to me, hey, you're like, that was a great sermon. It was 40 minutes of craziness. But when I left, I didn't know what to do. All right? That's somebody who thinks I'm a teacher, right? But I'm not a teacher. I'm a prophet.
Mark Clark [00:31:13]:
So I'm gonna tell you to figure your life out, and then I'm just gonna pray for you, all right? If you're looking for five points in a poem and all those points start with the letter F, you're in the wrong place. Wait for Ken Dick to preach, right? That's what he does. He systematizes everything. I'll be sitting in meetings. The guy will have the whole, like, a cross stick figured out by the end of the meeting. I see what we're doing. We're doing eight things that all start with G and Four sub points that all start with S. I'm like, you did that in six minutes.
Mark Clark [00:31:46]:
I've just been screaming at everyone to figure their life out. But he systematized it and figured out a way where you can understand it and go home and work on yourself. That's a teacher. All right? And so now you begin to. Okay, personalities, spiritual gifts. How do you begin to understand yourself? How do you begin to get. What am I actually called to do in life? Will people get it? That's you. All right, if you're a teacher.
Mark Clark [00:32:09]:
And so here's the thing, okay? Let's jump over to the next thing, or we'll never get through these Romans. Chapter 12 is another passage, then we'll come back. So the first one are calling gifts. The second category are are serving gifts. Okay? So there's a list in Romans 12 where he says this. We have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, okay? So he starts out with prophesying, and I've already talked a little bit about that, where a prophet foretells the word of God, discerns quickly what's going on between right and wrong, and compels people without shades of gray. They speak truth into people's lives and so on.
Mark Clark [00:32:44]:
And they do it relationally, okay? And then there's this. Then prophesy in accordance with your faith. If it is serving, all right? Serving is a gift. Somebody whose whole mentality, whose whole heart in life is to clean up, is to help people in their life actually move to be better so that people are well in the world. All right? Their whole posture is, how do I let other people shine? How do I do stuff sometimes? Now, here's the thing about serving. There are two versions of serving. Sometimes people who have the gift of serving, where all you're thinking about is serving other people. Sometimes that can be done in front of people, on stage, in public.
Mark Clark [00:33:23]:
All right, so I'll give you two examples. This is so my wife, Erin. One of her gifts is serving. She just wants to serve people, whether it's hospitality or making sure they thrive in life. And she wants to do it. But she's also a really good, smart, upfront leader. People follow her. There's literally, I will go around.
Mark Clark [00:33:39]:
So she'll do this. She wants to make the world a better place by serving people. But she is really good at doing it kind of in the public eye at times. And so she'll get on her Instagram account. I literally meet people all the time. Her And I will be at parties and I'll be sitting there and they'll walk up to me and they'll just ignore me. They're like, yeah. I'm like, hi, I'm Mark.
Mark Clark [00:33:57]:
They're like, yeah, whatever. Listen, Aaron. And these are. And where's your Insta stories? I've been waiting. And these are 55 year old men. All right. My wife and I, we sit in bed and we watch your Insta stories together. And we laugh.
Mark Clark [00:34:09]:
Ha ha. Mostly cause they're making fun of me, but usually. Cause she has this amazing content where she's going through life and she's just, she doesn't care what people think of her. She'll sit there without makeup on and whatever. She'll just be like, oh my goodness. And they just thrive off her Insta stories. And then she uses that platform to talk about Uganda and talk about people in need and blah blah, blah. Because she loves to serve people.
Mark Clark [00:34:29]:
But she can do it up front on a stage and people follow. There's another version of it which is very behind the scenes. So my assistant, Aaron, confusingly same name, she is a very behind the scenes person, but has the gift of serving. So she wants other people to shine, wants other people to thrive, wants other people to accomplish the things they're gonna accomplish in life, but she does it very quietly. I think her last Instagram post was two years ago. All right, that's not her thing. She's quiet, she's behind the scenes. You never know who she was.
Mark Clark [00:34:56]:
And she just wants other people to actually shine. So which one of those are you? Just because you're a behind the scenes person doesn't mean you don't have this gift. Just because you're an upfront person doesn't mean you don't have this gift. Is that your heart, is that your skillset to serve? And then it says, if it is teaching, then teach. And so some of you, you have a gift of actually systematizing, teaching, content, understanding doctrine and theology and the way that people should live and actually think. And you need to actually function in that gift and don't bury that gift. Fourthly, he talks about encouragement. If it is to encourage, some of you have the gift of encouragement or exhortation.
Mark Clark [00:35:31]:
Some of you, the church is dying and depressed because you're burying your gift of encouragement. You need to go out of your way to encourage people, to exhort people again in the context of relationship. Exhorting them, encouraging them, building up, never slandering, never pulling down. If you're one of those.