Christ’s Gifts Beautifully Measured into Our Lives
By President Rich Gurgel
NWC ’81, WLS ’86
“Do the last two decades of my ministry still matter?”
It was a question on my mind in 2020 as I left behind 22 years at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (WLS) and began service at Martin Luther College (MLC). I sought to trust that God is the perfect steward of our entire lives. He wastes nothing. That assured me that 22 years at WLS—teaching homiletics (preaching) and Christian doctrine, and serving as WLS’s continuing education director—weren’t suddenly irrelevant to ministry on a different campus.
But it wasn’t immediately apparent what that relevance would be as I left Mequon and was swept up into the myriad details of being a full-time administrator at MLC in New Ulm. At times it seemed I’d entered an entirely new world. There were countless new acronyms to learn, from PELSB (Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board) to HLC (the Higher Learning Commission, MLC’s accrediting agency) to DIRE (the director of institutional research and effectiveness). Dorothy’s words in The Wizard of Oz came to mind: “We’re not in Kansas [Mequon] anymore, Toto!”
Yet, through the transition, I tried to remember the advice often given to basketball players partnering with a new team: “Don’t force any shots. Let the game come to you.”
Now, entering my fourth year, God has allowed the game to come to me in some wonderful ways!
- Encouragement in Devotional Life: I spent much of my last 10 years at seminary helping seniors and pastors find greater joy in approaching their devotional lives with a clear gospel focus. Well, I’ve now had the opportunity to provide that encouragement to over 300 MLC students—and some faculty and staff are asking when their presentation will be!
- Encouragement in Preaching: I spent 22 years teaching seminary students the beauty of Christ-centered preaching that draws insights on proclaiming law and gospel directly from the unique imagery the Spirit imbeds in each text. Now, in partnership with MLC’s new dean of chapel, I’ve had the privilege of offering those same encouragements to those who lead MLC’s morning chapel.
- Encouragement in Stewardship of Gifts: Here’s one I’d like to underline for this article. I spent 10 years at WLS using CliftonStrengths—an inventory 30 million people worldwide have taken to understand their strengths—to help seminary seniors, and some faculty and staff, to ponder how God uniquely wired them for I needed to become a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach. At MLC, I’ve had the opportunity to put that training to work with 70 (and counting) individual meetings with MLC faculty and staff. And this year, 75 education and staff ministry seniors have signed up for that same opportunity.
Those individual meetings have shown me repeatedly, very concretely, the beauty of God’s promise from Ephesians 4:7: “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.” The word translated apportioned literally means measured. Picture Jesus’ nail-marked hands measuring into your life—and into the life of every believer—the precise gifts he intended you to have. He knew from eternity the exact life callings he’d give each of us in his world, and his gifts help equip us for that service. His measuring was as purposeful as it was graceful!
Can any human inventory—such as CliftonStrengths— perfectly measure that? Certainly not. We’re far too “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14) by God for any human inventory to capture. But such an inventory can provide some insight into Jesus’ purposeful and graceful gifting.
That’s why, as we meet, I seek to help each MLC student, staff, or faculty member to see something bigger than the human inventory—to see their Savior’s nail-marked hands measuring into each of their lives gifts for service in his saving name. To use the wording of our MLC strategic plan, the meetings are intended to help each student, staff, and faculty member to ponder how their unique God-given gifts enable them, in each of their unique God-given vocations, to Pursue Excellence Under the Cross.
As you read the rest of this edition of InFocus, keep in mind that picture of Jesus’ nail-marked hands measuring into the lives of each one on our campus—and into your life off campus!—the precise set of gifts he intended us to have.
As you read each story, may I offer a tagline for each story? It’s this: Christ’s Gifts Beautifully Measured into Our Lives.
