Are all members using
their gifts?
"Are we giving the members of the church an adequate opportunity
to exercise their gifts? Are our churches corresponding to the
life of the New Testament church? Or is there too much
concentration in the hands of ministers and clergy? You say, ‘We
provide opportunity for the gifts of others in week-night
activities.’ But I still ask, Do we manifest the freedom of the
New Testament church? . . . When one looks at the New Testament
church and contrasts the church today, even our churches, with
that church, one is appalled at the difference. In the New
Testament church one sees vigor and activity; one sees a living
community, conscious of its glory and of its responsibility,
with the whole church, as it were, an evangelistic force. The
notion of people belonging to the church in order to come to sit
down and fold their arms and listen, with just two or three
doing everything, is quite foreign to the New Testament, and it
seems to me it is foreign to what has always been the
characteristic of the church in times of revival and of
reawakening."
- D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Knowing the Times [Carlisle, PA: The
Banner of Truth Trust, 1989] pp.195-196).
