Impact of Grace #2 - Ministry Engagement
Description
In this message on Romans 12:3–8, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund explores how God's grace calls every believer to serve the church with humility rather than pride or passivity. Discover what gift you've been given — and why waiting for the "perfect" moment to use it may be the very thing holding you back.
Summary and Application
You Have a Gift the Body Needs
There's a moment in almost every new conversation Kurt has where someone asks what he does for a living. Say "pastor" and the conversation shifts. So sometimes, he says, he'll call himself a "spiritual guide" instead — just to see where the conversation goes before circling back to the truth. It's a small, funny bit, but it points to something real: most of us come into any conversation about church with baggage. Maybe you tried it once and left. Maybe the version of God you've heard about isn't one you recognize as good. Kurt's response is usually the same: "That's not actually the God of the Bible." The real invitation of the gospel, and of church, is often different than what we've experienced or assumed.
That's the backdrop for Romans 12:3–8, where Paul moves from the theology of grace — you can't earn it, you can't save yourself, it's a free gift — into the practical question: now what? Last week's message covered Romans 12:1–2 and the call to complete devotion. This week's text takes that devotion and turns it outward, into the life of the church.
Don't Think Too Highly of Yourself
Paul opens with an exhortation before he even gets to the "body" analogy: "Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought" (Romans 12:3). Kurt suggests this is deliberate — before Paul can tell you that you have a gift and the body needs it, he has to address the temptation to say, "I don't need the body at all."
It's an easy case to make. Church has red tape. Church is full of imperfect people who annoy us. Wouldn't it be simpler — maybe even more effective — to just do good on your own terms? Kurt's answer: sure, it might be faster alone, but what's built together is more sustainable, because it isn't dependent on just one person. He points to Revelation 19:7–9, where the church is pictured as the bride of Christ — an image used throughout Scripture to describe how seriously God takes this connection between himself and his people. "If you said to a friend, 'I love you, just don't bring your spouse to dinner,'" Kurt said, "they'd think you were crazy." Yet that's often exactly the posture we take toward Jesus and his church — wanting one without the other.
Kurt goes further: if someone is chronically unable to find a church worth committing to, always finding fault, always moving on, that's worth examining. Not because churches are perfect — they aren't — but because the deeper pattern may be less about the church and more about not wanting to belong to anything larger than yourself.
Have Sober Judgment
But Paul doesn't stop at "don't think too highly." He pairs it with "think of yourself with sober judgment" — an accurate view of yourself, not an inflated one, but not a deflated one either. If thinking too highly leads to "I don't need the church," thinking too lowly leads to "I have nothing to offer it."
Verses 4–6 ground this in the body analogy: "Just as each of us has one body with many members... so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others" (Romans 12:4–5). Kurt illustrated this with a story close to home — a bus full of middle schoolers breaking down before a trip at OHC's Wexford campus. Each spiritual gift responds differently: the gift of prophecy names the truth of the situation plainly; serving hands out water before anyone asks; teaching explains what actually went wrong; encouragement looks for the silver lining; giving offers to cover the repair; leadership organizes next steps; mercy checks on the driver. None of those responses is more essential than another — the bus, like the body, needs all of them.
Paul's list of gifts in verses 6–8 comes with a qualifier for each: speak faithfully, serve humbly, give generously, lead diligently, show mercy cheerfully. The manner matters as much as the gift itself.
Don't Wait for the Perfect Moment
Kurt closed with a warning about delay. He quoted author Paul David Tripp: "Delay is disobedience in a tuxedo. Delay gives you room to rebel against the authority of God while telling yourself that you have every intention to obey, and in doing so, you ease your conscience when it actually needs to be troubled."
Kurt named the common excuse directly: "It's not my season." Someday, when things settle down, you'll get involved. But someday has a way of becoming never. The invitation isn't to find the perfect ministry fit before you start — it's to raise your hand for whatever's in front of you now.
Underneath all of it is the gospel itself. Romans has already established that all have sinned (Romans 3:23) and that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) — but that verse doesn't end there. "The gift of God is eternal life" follows immediately. Don't think too highly of yourself: you needed a Savior. Don't think too lowly of yourself: you are loved by the God of the universe, gifted, and needed by the body he's building.
Questions for Reflection
Where do you find yourself leaning — toward thinking you don't need the church, or toward thinking you have nothing to offer it?
What's one small, unglamorous way you could raise your hand this week instead of waiting for the perfect moment?
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "Ministry Engagement" by Dr. Kurt Bjorklund (Romans 12:3–8, July 18–19, 2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
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Paul David Tripp
"Delay is disobedience in a tuxedo. Delay gives you room to rebel against the authority of God while telling yourself that you have every intention to obey, and in doing so, you ease your conscience when it actually needs to be troubled."
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Good morning. It's great to be together around Pittsburgh and online as Orchard Hill. Today I want to take a moment and read the passage we're going to be looking at, Romans chapter 12, verses 3 through 8. It says this:
"For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophecy, then prophesy in accordance with your faith. If it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully."
This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray together.
God, as we're gathered, we ask that you would speak. Help us to grow in our understanding of you, our devotion to you, and our affection for you. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
One of the things that happens when I meet people I haven't met before is they'll often ask, "What do you do?" It's always an interesting moment, because if you're talking generally with somebody and then you say, "I'm a pastor, I'm a minister, I'm a reverend," whatever phrase you want to use, it connotes an image and changes the tenor of the conversation.
So sometimes, if you've been around, you've probably heard me say this: I'll play with it a little and just say, "Well, I'm a spiritual guide." That's always kind of funny, because people will say, "What is that? That sounds New Age." And if they're hooked, not assuming it's just a euphemism for pastor, they'll ask, "How does that work? How many people come?" I'll say, "Oh, there's thousands." And they're like, "What?" Then they'll ask, "Well, how often do they come?" And I'll say, "Some come every week. Some once in a lifetime. Some once a year. Some once a month." It just varies on the need of each person. We'll go back and forth like this until finally they say, "Oh wait, you're a pastor of a church. I get it."
The reason I tell you this is because the other thing that happens is people will say, "Well, you're a pastor, let me tell you about my spiritual experience." Usually what that means is, "Let me tell you about the God I don't believe in." They'll say, "I don't believe in a God," and then proceed to describe this God. I'll usually say, "Tell me about this God." And somewhere in the conversation I can say, "That's not actually the God I teach about. That's not the God of the Bible. The God you're describing is not the God revealed in the Bible."
The other thing people will sometimes say along the same lines is, "I went to church once, I tried church, and this is the church I left." I'll say basically the same thing: "Tell me about the church." And at some point I'll say, "That isn't the church that is talked about in the Bible. That isn't the church you've really walked away from." Maybe it was a real experience — I'm not saying it wasn't — but it isn't the experience of God's intent for each person.
I've probably shared this before, but there was a pastor who told this story. I don't know if it's entirely true, but he said he was on a plane and was asked what he did. He was tired of the same routine of saying "I'm a minister, I'm a pastor," so he said, "Well, I work for a global enterprise." His seatmate said, "Oh really? Tell me about it." He said, "Well, yes — we have outlets in nearly every country of the world, really every city." She asked, "Really? Have you?" He said, "Yes. We've got hospitals and hospices, homeless shelters. We do work in marriage. We help people redesign their self-image. We have orphanages, feeding programs, educational programs." She was like, "Wow," and you could tell she was searching her mind, thinking, "What is this global juggernaut I know nothing of?"
He said, "We have all sorts of justice and reconciliation programs. We help people from birth to death deal with every area of their lives." As she began to understand, he explained he was referring to the church. He realized, as he was talking, that what he was describing was something much greater than even he had recognized.
Now, I understand that wherever you come from, you may say, "Well, that hasn't been my experience. I was burned by somebody in the church. I went to a church that didn't feel global, didn't feel that impactful." I understand that, and you can hold all of that. But in Romans 12:3–8 we come to this idea of a body. To understand this, we need to understand a little about how the argument of Romans has developed up to this point. Then I want to give you one more analogy before we jump into the body analogy.
The argument of Romans has been that every person needs Jesus Christ as Savior, that we can't save ourselves, that nobody is righteous or good enough on their own. Therefore Jesus offers a free gift of grace. The experience of grace is sometimes challenging to grasp, because we can end up saying, "Well, if grace is a free gift, then it requires nothing of me," or we fall back into trying to manufacture our worth on our own. When we come to Romans 12, after Paul has dealt with all of that, we step into the question: now what? What are the implications?
Last week we talked about Romans 12:1–2, the implication that you are called to complete devotion to Jesus Christ. Today, in verses 3 through 8, we see that because of this grace, Paul calls people to engage in the life of the church — ministry engagement. And I get it. This is part of why some of us gathered here will say, "I don't do church," because we don't want to be asked to do anything. We'd prefer to be spiritual but not religious, to do our own thing. But again, this is Paul's argument, writing to the church in Rome: this is what I want.
Before we get to the body analogy, I want to point out another analogy the Bible uses routinely to describe the relationship between Jesus Christ and the church. This is Revelation 19:7 and following: "Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear. Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God's holy people. Then the angel said to me, 'Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!' And he added, 'These are the true words of God.'"
One of the pictures used throughout the Old Testament, the New Testament, and all the way to the end of Revelation is this image of a wedding — the church as the bride of Christ. This is God's big plan for how he interacts with the world. We won't take time to look at it, but if you go back into the prophets in the Old Testament, this image is used many times, and it isn't always presented as beautiful — it's the picture of spiritual adultery, and God still loving. It's as if the picture says, "You have not been a faithful bride, but I will still love and be committed to you," because it's not about your behavior — it's about God's radical grace.
So the question, when we come to Romans 12 and this body analogy, is: what is this saying to you and to me today? Verse 4 says, "For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us." So here's the body analogy: you have been given a gift that you are to use in the church. It's like your hand — this echoes First Corinthians — just as your hand or foot has a function and your body is incomplete without it, the same is true for followers of Jesus. Without you participating in the body, you're incomplete, and the body is incomplete.
Here's his exhortation, verse 3: "For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment." Why does he start with this exhortation rather than simply saying, "You have a gift, you're important to the body, the body's important to you, you need the body"? He says, "Don't think more highly of yourself," and I think the reason he starts here is what we'll focus on today — don't think more highly of yourself, have sober judgment — and then apply it to the rest of the passage.
I think there's a tendency to think too highly of ourselves. A lot of times we say, "I don't need the body, the church. I can spiritually navigate life on my own. I can make a bigger contribution if I'm not constrained by a church, its policies, and its red tape. I can just go out and do good without having to intertwine it with a bunch of other people." And to be fair, there's some truth in that. But what isn't fair is this: if you participate with a body, it may take longer, it may be harder to accomplish, but what you build will actually be more sustainable, because it isn't driven by just you — it's driven by a group of people.
Have you ever seen a strike at a business — maybe service workers at a hotel? When they go on strike, they're basically saying, "If we don't clean the rooms, nobody can stay here." What happens when you try to do something on your own — even if you say, "I'm going to fund this, I'm going to make this happen, I'm going to start my own nonprofit"? You're creating something outside the church, and therefore you're not leaning into the parts of the body that can help make something sustainable. The other thing that happens is we limit the impact. We may even hog the credit — "This is about me" — rather than being part of the church and letting the church get the credit, wanting our own name on it somehow.
I don't know if you saw this, but this past week Sam Neill, the actor from Jurassic Park, died. Alec Baldwin, who had acted with him, went online to give a tribute — and he's been lampooned for it quite a bit. What he basically did was say, "Sam Neill died. I got a chance to work with Sam Neill," and then went on to talk about the movie The Hunt for Red October — what a great crew, what a great experience it was for him. He didn't mention Sam again until three or four minutes in, then came back and said, "Oh yeah, and Sam — he was great," and that was it. His tribute to Sam ended up being about himself and his own experience on Hunt for Red October. To be fair, maybe that was genuinely his encounter and he just started talking without thinking about it, and somebody should have told him it didn't end up being about Sam.
But my point is this: sometimes we want things to be about us rather than simply saying, "I participate." Here Paul says don't think too highly of yourself — you need the church. It models interdependency. I would go so far as to say this, and it may agitate a few of you: if you find somebody who feels they don't need church, or who is always above a church, always switching churches because they're always finding something wrong, you should be suspicious of that person's Christian leadership and Christian life.
Here's why I say this. The bride is intended to be one with the bridegroom. If you said to a friend, "I love you, I love hanging out with you, just don't bring your spouse to dinner," they'd probably say, "You're crazy — there's no way I'm coming to dinner without my spouse." But sometimes we say, "I'll take you, Jesus, but not the bride." Imperfect as it is, even though you have chosen to love the bride, we say, "I don't love the bride, I'm above the bride, I don't need the bride, I don't need anything to do with it."
So when you find somebody whose mindset is, "There's no good church, I can't find a church that has anything good," that's a person you can rightly be suspicious of. Now if that's you, can I encourage you: there are no perfect churches, and it would be healthier for you, personally and spiritually, not to think so highly of yourself that you say, "I don't need church," but instead to say, "I need to be part of the body somewhere."
If you're around Orchard Hill and you're thinking, "There are some things I don't like at Orchard Hill," I would say, go find a different church where there's something you can support. But having been around church a long time, I can tell you: if that's your general demeanor — and I'm not saying there's never a time to make a change — what will happen is you'll eventually tire of the next church too, because churches are filled with people, and people do things that annoy us, irritate us, and don't live up to our expectations. But this is where God says, "I want you to be committed. You have received grace — now participate in the life of the body."
Here's the second thing. He says, don't think too highly of yourself, but instead think of yourself with sober judgment. Sober judgment here, in some ways, simply means seeing yourself accurately. Then he launches into this statement about the body. In a way, he's saying: don't have too high an opinion of yourself, but think accurately about yourself. Sometimes the flip side of thinking too highly of ourselves is thinking too lowly of ourselves. If thinking too highly of ourselves leads to "I don't need the church," thinking too lowly of ourselves leads to "I don't have anything to offer the church. There's nothing I have that's good for the church."
As this passage walks through some of these gifts, I saw something a while back about how the gifts show up differently in a scenario — a church bus that broke down. This actually happened at our Wexford campus recently. We had about 150 or 170 middle school kids on a couple of buses, and as one of the buses was pulling off our campus before the trip even began, it broke down. Here's how spiritual gifts interact with a bus breakdown.
The gift of prophecy — mentioned here, and it can be a controversial gift; we're referring to it as truth-telling — looks at the broken-down engine and says, "I knew this was going to happen. We didn't do scheduled maintenance last month, and now we're reaping exactly what we sowed. We need to face the facts of our poor planning." In other words: I'm going to speak truth, even if it's a little inconvenient.
The gift of serving: before anyone can reply, this person has already popped open the luggage compartment, grabbed the cooler, and started handing out water bottles. They pop open a few lawn chairs and say, "Let's sit down, let's rest, let's get some shade, let's enjoy the moment before we get there."
The gift of teaching is the person who looks at the manual, gathers a few people around, and says, "You see, this is a vapor lock, this is how the cooling system works, and this is why this thing overheated today."
The person with the gift of encouragement walks around saying, "Look at the bright side. God has a plan for this delay. Maybe we're meant to meet someone right here, or maybe this is a great time for us to bond as a group."
The gift of giving is the person who says, "I can help cover the cost of the repair," or, "Let's all get together and give a little something to help make this happen."
The gift of leadership says, "All right, everyone, listen up. We need some people to walk a quarter mile back to where we came from and get to the nearest repair shop to see what we can do."
And the gift of mercy is the person who says, "How's the bus driver doing? Is he okay? Let's make sure we put our arms around this person."
That's just a lighthearted way to think about it, but here's the point: you have a spiritual gift. You have something to offer the church you're part of. If you've received the grace gift of Jesus Christ, the implication is that you participate in extending that grace gift to other people. That's what Romans 12 is talking about, and here we get these gifts.
He says, "If your gift is prophecy, then prophesy in accordance with your faith." Again, prophecy can be somewhat controversial, but it's a speaking gift — speaking truth before people, not necessarily foretelling. He says, "If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is to teach, then teach." These are all speaking gifts, and the idea is: if you have a speaking gift, speak faithfully. That means you don't just speak your own truth, but you speak the truth of the Word of God into every situation. Even in encouragement or prophecy, the idea isn't to come up with something yourself, but to always be applying the Word of God to the situation.
One of the things I hope is true for Orchard Hill — when I speak, and when our other pastors speak at our campuses — is that our teaching is rooted so thoroughly in the Bible that you never walk away thinking, "That was a cool idea, but I don't see where they got that." Instead you'd always be able to say, "When Kurt talked today, he said don't think too highly of yourself — it was right in the text. Have sober judgment. And he took that to mean, don't think too lowly of yourself either. Then he exhorted us about these gifts, and here they are." The point is to be faithful.
If you're speaking, be faithful. If you're serving — he says, "If it is to serve, then serve" — I'd say serve humbly. If you are somebody with the gift of participating, serving, helping, jumping in, do it humbly. We're in the middle of Kids Fest right now at our Wexford campus; Butler campus had Kids Fest this past week as well. So many people have jumped in and said, "I will serve, I will help." That's a humbling job — to stand and hold a hose all day in sweltering heat, to do arts and crafts, to volunteer to clean up. It's a humble task, but he says we need people to do the things the body needs to move forward.
Then he says, "If it is giving, then give generously." Some of you will have a giving gift. Everyone is commanded to give on some level, but some of you have an extra gift for it — he says, do it generously. I remember talking with someone some time ago who was at a stage of life where they had accumulated enough that they didn't need to earn any more. They had hit their retirement goals and exceeded them by quite a margin. They came in and we talked for a while, and they said, "I feel like maybe I could quit my job and volunteer for the church — what do you need?" As we talked, they got to the point of saying, "I love what I do. I think I'm pretty good at it. I think it serves a need in the community, but I don't need the money — it feels kind of pointless in that sense. But I don't want to retire and just improve my pickleball game." What they came to was this: "I'm going to reverse tithe." Meaning, for the next few years while they were working, since they didn't need the money, their act of service would be to direct nearly all their time and income into funding what God is doing. That was their way.
Now, I mentioned earlier that sometimes people say, "I could give more, but I'm unhappy with things at the church — it's got problems, it doesn't do what it should," and so on. I've been around long enough to have heard this kind of thing. This year's T-shirt color for Kids Fest is green, and I remember years ago — not this iteration of green, we've cycled through different shades — somebody said, "I think the church is wrong to have green T-shirts." I said, "What? What could possibly be wrong with green T-shirts?" They said, "Well, it's a well-known fact that green M&M's connote something, and I think you're trying to send a subliminal message." By the way, this person probably didn't attend the church, and if they did, probably not for long. "Green T-shirts — bad. I can't support a church that does green T-shirts."
My point is just this: when that becomes your default way of thinking, you stop looking for ways to be generous and start looking for ways to be critical — an excuse not to participate in the mission of God. I say this all the time: if you're around Orchard Hill and you say, "I'm called to give, but I don't want to because I don't like something at the church," then give somewhere else — but don't give less because of something you don't like at the church. Because that can become an excuse to say, "I'm not doing what God has called me to do." And as I said earlier, if you're honest with yourself, you'll find a reason not to give at the next church, or at any organization, at some point — because nothing is perfect.
Then he says, "If you lead, do it diligently." Lead fervently — whatever God has given you to do, do it to the best of your ability. And then, "If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully." This is about how easy it is, especially with difficult people in the body, to think, "I'm tired of that person, I'm tired of talking to him, I'm tired of caring for them." He says, but if that's your gift, do it cheerfully, because you are representing Christ in this part of the community.
The issue here is that Paul wants you to understand you have a role to play. Have sober judgment. You matter to the church, but don't think too highly of yourself — the church matters to you too.
Paul David Tripp once wrote — not expressly about this issue, but it applies — "Delay is disobedience in a tuxedo. Delay gives you room to rebel against the authority of God while telling yourself that you have every intention to obey, and in doing so, you ease your conscience when it actually needs to be troubled."
How does that apply here? Do you know what a lot of people probably say about church, about body engagement — this is Romans 12, part of everything else Romans says? A lot of people say, "You know what, it's not my season. The kids are little, I've got a lot going on. I'm not sure I can do this right now, but I will someday." That's delay. You wait for the perfect thing, the perfect time, the perfect group, the perfect ministry to fit your gifts, and instead of moving forward, you do nothing.
Maybe today is just a call to say, don't wait for the perfect time, the perfect church, the perfect scenario — say, "I'll do something." For some of us that can simply mean raising a hand and saying, "I'll volunteer somewhere there's a need." Every campus, any church, anywhere, has opportunity. For some, maybe it's just being part of a group, saying, "I'm going to bring my gift of encouragement, my gift of mercy, my gift of leadership to a group in some context." For some, maybe it's simply saying, "I'm going to try to faithfully attend — I haven't even done that, and maybe that's my first step." But delay, saying "someday," is really a way to avoid obedience while easing the conscience. This is a non-negotiable for the people of God: being engaged in the life and work and ministry of a local church.
One last thing. The point here — don't think too highly of yourself, but have sober judgment, don't think too lowly of yourself — really mirrors the heart of the Christian message, the gospel. The gospel is the announcement of good news. We have this simple idea: you're a sinner and you deserve punishment. Romans has taught this. Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death." So the idea is: don't think too highly of yourself — you need Jesus Christ. But also have sober judgment — don't think too little of yourself. You are loved by the God of the universe.
Romans 6:23 doesn't stop with the person who has committed sin — "the wages of sin is death" — it continues, "but the gift of God is eternal life." You have been so loved by the God of the universe that Jesus has provided a way for you to have eternal life. Romans 10 says that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, that God raised him from the dead, you will have eternal life.
Don't think too highly of yourself. Don't think too little of yourself. Paul takes that argument and applies it to the church. Don't think too highly of yourself and say, "I don't need it." But don't think too little of yourself and say, "They don't need me." He wants you to merge those ideas and be part of the body of Jesus Christ. The body analogy — the church — is where some of your needs can be met and you can meet the needs of others. It will be imperfect, but it is a model of the love and the grace of God. And it's something you're called to, and I'm called to.
Let's pray together. God, today we ask that you would help us not just to see the church as a checklist item or an obligation, but as an opportunity to live out the communal value of your grace — that the implication of receiving the gift of grace is to say, "I want to be part of a community that declares and proclaims your wonder and your beauty, and lives out what that looks like in this world." And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.
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This transcript was cleaned up and formatted with the assistance of AI. While efforts were made to preserve the speaker's original words and meaning, it may contain errors or omissions and should not be considered a verbatim or official record.
