What We Bring
Discussion Questions
- Read Ephesians 4:1-13. Then read the devotional, “What We Bring.”
- What do you understand God’s call to be in your life? How do you measure your response to God’s call?
- Pause to reflect on the writer’s statement: “The call is not to perfection; the call is to presence.” When have you felt pressured to perfection and by whom (or what)?
- What do humility, gentleness, and patience look like for a church community?
Therefore, as a prisoner for the Lord, I encourage you to live as people worthy of the call you received from God. Conduct yourselves with all humility, gentleness, and patience. Accept each other with love. – Ephesians 4:1-2 (CEB)
It’s not the resume. It’s not the credentials. It’s not the pulpit, the collar, the perfectly worded prayer, or the well-rehearsed theology. We’re not called to bring those things.
Humility. Gentleness. Patience. That’s the list.
There’s something wonderfully subversive about that, especially in a world where power and performance are often mistaken for purpose. Paul reminds us that God’s call to us isn’t about what we achieve or where we excel. It’s about how we show up, with softness, with steadiness, with space for each other’s humanity.
And that’s not just for Sunday mornings or ministry projects. That’s how we bring our whole selves into the daily, the messy, the mundane. That’s how we do community. That’s how we stay in the same room with people with whom we don’t agree and still believe in something bigger than ourselves.
The call is not to perfection. The call is to presence.
So when egos battle for airtime, we bring unrelenting humility. When the world insists on bravado, we bring audacious gentleness. When urgency tries to steal our calm, we bring imperfect patience. When division tempts us to cancel or cut off, we bring love that knows how to stay.
This isn’t passive. This is powerful. This isn’t convenience. This is the call.
Prayer
Holy One, quiet the noise that distracts us from what matters. Let humility, gentleness, and patience rise in us today. Teach us how to bring your kind of love with us wherever we go, even when it’s hard. Amen.

Phiwa Langeni creatively invites others into transformational liminal spaces between what has been and what is yet to be. They currently serve as the Associate Conference Minister for Equipping Leaders in the Southern California Nevada Conference UCC.