Hard Hats in the Church

In this space, we’ve written about the struggles that churches are having in filling ministry roles. Exactly one year ago, our executive director, Carson Reed, encouraged us to develop a new generation of ministers and to train up bi-vocational ministers. Indeed, many observers of Christianity and the church suggest that a significant number of ministers in future decades will have come from a career outside the church.

But in the spirit of our movement, it may be worthwhile to ask: do we see this in Scripture? Where do we see God raising up folks for ministry in non-traditional ways?

Of course, we automatically think of someone like Paul, a man who had a trade that he practiced alongside his ministry. Or Jesus may come to mind: a craftsman before entering into the period of his ministry. But are there others? I would submit that there is one particular story that might prove compelling for us—and for a variety of reasons.

Bible trivia time. Who is the first person in Scripture to be described as being filled with the Spirit of God? 

Is it Adam, into whose nostrils God breathed the breath of life? Nope. Maybe Abraham, the one God chose, the one whose faith was reckoned as righteousness, the one from whom God made a great nation? No. What about Moses, God’s chosen leader for bringing the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness? No again—but you’re getting closer.

It’s a guy named Bezalel. You might be thinking, “Who’s that? I don’t remember him!” Well, you’re not alone. He’s not terribly well known, and he didn’t make the “Faith Hall of Fame” in Hebrews 11. Bezalel was a man who appears at the beginning of Exodus 31, the craftsman who God set aside to be the lead “maker” of all the things associated with the tabernacle. Notice these words from Exodus 31:1-5:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have chosen Bezalel, son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.” (NIV)

Now, you’ll notice that my trivia question didn’t ask about being filled with “the Holy Spirit.” That is New Testament language that doesn’t precisely appear in the Old Testament. There, the idea of “the spirit of God” is really another way of describing God’s special presence with God’s people. Sometimes the spirit of God enables people to prophesy, as in multiple places in 1 Samuel and 2 Chronicles. Sometimes the spirit of God seems to represent the presence of God, pure and simple, as in Job 33 where “spirit of God” appears in parallel to “the breath of the Almighty” in the act of creation. Our text in Exodus represents a third way this phrase is used, namely, as a way of talking about being gifted by God with special abilities. Joseph is described in this way in Genesis 41 in regard to his ability to interpret dreams, and Bezalel has a similar level of extraordinary ability, but in his case, it has to do with wisdom, intelligence, and craft to create things with his hands.

It is this last part that is so intriguing to me. This first person described as being “filled with the spirit of God” wasn’t someone we would probably identify as a “leader.” Rather, it was someone that we might consider a bit less, well, spectacular. A craftsman. Maybe someone we would call “an artist”—but certainly what we would call a blue-collar worker. Bezalel was a man who seems to have earned his living with his hands, not by means of his words or having a magnetic personality. Why does that matter for thinking about the next generation of leadership? I think it does for two reasons.

First, it reminds me that we always need to be mindful of the assumptions we make about others, especially in terms of spiritual maturity and leadership capability. I once heard someone remark that not many elders are plumbers. We often see people in church who are leaders in the rest of life, and we assume that they will be good leaders in spiritual matters—even though there’s plenty of evidence that shows there isn’t necessarily a strong correlation that way. The converse is also true, unfortunately: if people are not leaders in the rest of life, it may not occur to us that they have great wisdom to share and leadership capability to exercise. 

Of course, this goes directly against what we know from church history; plenty of “regular folks,” like Brother Lawrence or Thérèse of Lisieux, have had a huge influence on the church through their spiritual writings, even though they were not exalted to high positions of authority in their earthly lives. It goes against the example of Jesus; he chose fishermen and a tax collector to be among his disciples, the very ones who would later lead the evangelization of the world in the first century of Christianity! I bet it goes against stories you know of godly men and women who were not “exalted” in the church or in the eyes of the world. And it definitely goes against the story of Bezalel, the man God filled with the spirit of God for divine purposes.

Second, we need to remember the purpose of Bezalel’s being filled with the spirit of God. It was to facilitate the worship of God by the people of God. Bezalel wasn’t a “worship leader” in the traditional sense of the term, but he was definitely what we might call a “ministry leader.” He, his partner Oholiab, and their associates were to make all the furniture and utensils for the tabernacle. They were to make the vestments for the priests and the oil and incense for the holy place. In short, they made the tabernacle and all that was in it! Without Bezalel, the people would not have been able to worship in the ways God had been commanding! 

I think this insight is crucial as we think about leadership and ministry. Sometimes we “eagerly desire” people that have the “greater gifts” (1 Cor. 12:31)—in other words, people who are obviously talented or capable in leadership. Sometimes we exalt others for their skill in ministry, whether as great preachers or talented musicians or wonderful prayer leaders, but we end up exalting the person rather than remembering to give thanks to the God who gave those gifts. We must remember that God gives all sorts of gifts, and we may want to keep our eyes open not just for those who are obvious leaders, but also those who have shown a willingness to serve and work for the sake of others rather than for themselves. There might just be divine gifts lurking there.

May God continue to raise up Bezalels among us, to give us the eyes to see them, and to help us to equip them for deeper service and ministry in God’s kingdom and in the church. 

David