What is the gift of helps and service?

Question 4088.

I have a real and settled fondness for the gift of helps, because it is the gift that the church most takes for granted and could least possibly do without. The gift of helps is a Spirit-given ability and gladness in practical, hands-on service, the quiet support of others that frees them for their own work and steadies the whole body of Christ in the process.

Paul slips it into his list almost without ceremony: helping, he says, is one of the things God has appointed in the church (1 Corinthians 12:28). No fanfare, no spotlight, no long explanation, just that one plain and unassuming word. And yet I have watched whole fellowships kept standing and functioning by people who quietly carry this gift. So let me give it the attention and the honour it actually deserves, because heaven values it far more highly than we usually do.

A real gift, not a consolation prize

Let me say this firmly and at once, because I have seen people made to feel the opposite. The gift of helps is not a lesser, second-class gift handed out as a consolation to those who did not get something more visible and impressive. It sits in exactly the same Spirit-given list as teaching, prophecy and leadership. The very same Spirit who gives one believer the platform gives another believer the gift of helps, and He values the two of them equally. There is no hierarchy of worth among His gifts.

Paul’s whole argument in 1 Corinthians 12 is precisely that the body needs every single part, and that the parts we are tempted to think less honourable are in fact indispensable. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you (1 Corinthians 12:21). So the one with the gift of helps is not somewhere out on the edge of the church’s life, hovering at the margins. They are load-bearing, holding up weight that the whole structure depends upon, whether anyone notices or not.

What the gift of helps looks like

This gift wears a thousand different ordinary faces, and most of them are easy to walk straight past. It is the person who quietly stacks the chairs after everyone else has gone home, who drives the elderly to church each Sunday, who fixes the broken boiler, who keeps the accounts straight, who cooks the meals for the grieving family, who sits through the long night with the frightened in the hospital, who answers the tedious emails that nobody else will touch. It is practical service rendered so that others can flourish, very often unseen and almost always unthanked.

The Greek word behind it carries the lovely sense of taking hold in order to support, of getting in underneath a heavy load so that another person can manage to carry it. That is the very heart of it. The person with the gift of helps instinctively reaches for the burden that is plainly crushing someone else and lifts their share of it onto their own shoulders, and, what is more, they are genuinely glad to do it. It is not grudging duty for them; it is where they come alive in the service of God and His people.

The dignity of hidden service

I want to lift up just how deeply honoured this hidden work is in the eyes of God, however the world rates it. Jesus said that whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is a disciple will by no means lose his reward (Matthew 10:42). He noticed the poor widow’s two small copper coins when the watching crowd noticed only the rich men’s heaps of gold. Heaven, you see, keeps a completely different set of books from the ones we are forever scribbling in down here.

So if you serve quietly and faithfully and feel entirely invisible while you do it, then hear this and hold on to it: you are not invisible to God, not for one second. The gift of helps is service offered as to the Lord and not to men (Colossians 3:23), and the Lord sees and records every single cup of cold water you have ever handed out. The applause you miss now, and you will miss it, is nothing at all beside the well done, good and faithful servant that you will most certainly hear on that day from the only mouth that matters.

How the gift of helps frees the rest of the body

There is a beautiful and God-given logic to this gift once you see it. When the very early church ran into a practical crisis over the daily distribution of food to the widows, the apostles wisely appointed others to handle that whole business so that they themselves could give their full attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word (Acts 6:1-4). Notice carefully: the helpers did not stop or rival the ministry of the Word; they actually made it possible. They shouldered the practical load so that the teachers were left free to teach.

That is precisely what the gift of helps still does in every healthy church today. Every teacher, every shepherd, every evangelist is quietly propped up and held aloft by people who handle the thousand practical things that would otherwise swallow him whole. Take away the helpers, and the whole visible ministry grinds slowly to a halt within weeks. This is why I tie this gift so closely to the wider pattern of how God deliberately fits us together as one body, which I describe in my answer on discovering and using your spiritual gift.

Guarding against two real dangers

There are two particular pitfalls that I want to warn the helper about plainly, because I have seen both do harm. The first is resentment, that slow, quiet sourness which creeps in over time when the service goes unnoticed and others seem to get all the thanks and the credit. The only real cure for it is to remember constantly who you are actually serving. If you are serving for the applause and gratitude of people, you will always, sooner or later, be disappointed and embittered. Serve for the Lord alone, and you are never once overlooked.

The second danger is plain burnout, because helpers very often find it almost impossible to say no, and a church will happily, thoughtlessly let a willing servant quietly carry absolutely everything until they break. Even here real wisdom is needed and is no failure of faith. Jesus Himself withdrew from the crowds to rest and to pray. The gift of helps is a gift to be carefully stewarded over a whole lifetime of usefulness, not spent recklessly in one short blaze and then burned out and extinguished long before its time.

The gift of helps and the joy of serving

I do not want to leave you with the impression that the gift of helps is all hard, thankless grind, because that would be a libel on it. There is a deep and particular joy in this gift that the spotlight can never give. The person who quietly meets a real need, who lifts a burden no one else noticed, tastes something of the gladness of Jesus Himself, who said it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). That blessedness is real, and the helper knows it.

So if God has given you the gift of helps, do not envy the up-front gifts for a moment. You have been handed a quiet stream of joy that the platform cannot supply, the joy of serving Jesus by serving His people in a hundred hidden ways. Serve it gladly, then, not as a martyr but as one who has found a treasure others walk straight past. The hidden life of service is not the church’s second-best; very often it is its truest worship.

So, now what?

If this is plainly your gift, then lift up your head and take heart. What you do is not small or marginal, it is load-bearing, and the Lord Himself sees and treasures every hidden act of it. Keep on serving as to Him and not to men, guard your own heart watchfully against creeping resentment, and pace yourself wisely for the long haul, because the church needs you steadily for years and decades, not just for a few intense weeks.

And if helps is not your particular gift, then open your eyes wide to the people who quietly hold your church together week by week, and go out of your way to thank them by name this very week. Better still, get in underneath a burden yourself now and then, even when it is not strictly your job. So whose heavy load could you actually take hold of and lift, even a little, before next Sunday comes around?

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” 1 Peter 4:10