One of the areas of the Christian walk where we can gravitate to one side or the other is the area of character vs. gifting.
Pastor Cyrus Rod of Dominion Faith Church located in Kisaasi, a suburb of Kampala on Thursday called it sin when Pastors in Uganda fail to hold music ministers accountable for the way they live, as long as they can demonstrate their gifting in Church.
“If they collapse, we hire others to replace them and the cycle continues,” he said.
Rod expressed concern over the casual lack of concern about music ministers who come on the pulpits drunk, sleep around, and those whose families are falling apart.
“One sin we pastors in this generation have become guilty of, is the way we deal with these musicians in our churches. We hardly hold them accountable for the way they live,” he said.
“They do everything their counterparts in the world do, but we turn a blind eye as long as they do “their thing” in church to ensure our thing keeps running, that’s all we want,” he explained. “They have no character at all but who cares when they can demonstrate the gifting to draw crowds?”
Pastor Rod revealed that character and gifting are different. He went on and urged that when God bestows great gifts to a believer, he/she has all the more responsibility to walk in the character of Christ.
“If we love our brethren who sing in our churches, it is high time we considered their character above their gifting. Otherwise we are using them and not loving them. If I rebuke him in my church, you shall run to hire him without a blink. Hating the musicians must stop yesterday,” he said.
Jake Kail, a renown Christian author defines Character as Christ’s nature being formed in a believer by the fruit of the Spirit and, gifting as God’s power being released through an individual by the gifts of the Spirit.
On his article on Character and Gifting, Jake believes Church leaders should not choose one or the other; “we should pursue both. It is not a matter of choosing either character or gifting.”
“Here is the tricky thing about character and gifting: a gift can be received in an instant, but fruit takes a long time to produce. As a result, it is possible to have great spiritual gifting, but be lacking in godly character. If this pattern continues in a person’s life, they can easily fall into sin and deception,” Jake says.
“When God bestows great gifts to us, we have all the more responsibility to walk in the character of Christ; for the gifting will draw people to look to us. The greater the gifting, the greater the responsibility. The greater the gifting, the greater the level of character that is needed to carry the gift for the long haul,” he adds.
2 Peter 1:5-7 says “supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”
