I had planned on doing something else in this space today, but this troubled me and I can't let it go...
What role does spiritual gifting play in a Christian's life? And more importantly, what role should it play? I'm not saying I'm opposed to spiritual gifts, so please bear with me on this. I think we might, especially in the Pentecostal tradition, place too much emphasis on them. I'm getting ready to start baseball tryouts and a bunch of kids aren't going to make the team. It's just logistics. I have 40+ kids trying out and I can't realistically carry more than 16. Somebody has to not make it. This is based in large part to their physical gifts. There are kids who are less gifted that will make the team because of work ethic (either they have a great one or a more talented kid has a poor one). When it's over, it's a combination of gifting and talent that carries the day. I think we have a tendency to view our Christian lives through the same lens. We accomplish things because that is our area of gifting or we commit ourselves to some thing and work at it. In the choir there are people blessed with a wonderful singing voice and others who try really hard and various mixtures of those two extremes.
I don't necessarily think that's the way it's supposed to work. We play up spiritual gifts so much that many people won't do anything that isn't their "gift" or won't venture into anything at all because they are unsure of their "gift". Now, I know going in that there are also people that simply use those two cases to disguise their inactivity in church terms. I'm just wondering if maybe spiritual gifts is a more advanced concept than we consider. We find a new convert and immediately start talking up how to identify their gifts. Shouldn't that come much later? It feels like it's being treated more like trying out for a team. More dangerously, it's a built in excuse. We keep relying on the Holy Spirit to do everything. If any part of the Trinity is initiating whatever needs to be done and we are the tools to accomplish this work, what responsibilities do we have? Any thoughts?
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2 comments:
I like this idea! Speaking of cumbersome, here's my attempt at input to your thoughts on Aptitude testing for Spiritual gifts...
I believe you are on to something regarding our tendency to overemphasize spiritual gifting. In trying to understand God's design for the church body, we sometimes like the comfort of being able to give an ABC/123 approach to finding the "gifted" spot(s) for individuals in the body. Unfortunately (for our comfort level), God doesn't always use those most gifted in certain areas to accomplish his work. We can all name multiple examples in scripture where God worked in this way... David & Goliath, Gideon, The 12 Disciples, etc, etc. So when we have our "tryouts" to identify exact spiritual gifting, we sometimes miss out on where God really wanted to use that individual... or even worse discourage people from trying out at all.
So.. I guess what I'm trying to say in all of this babble is there has to be a balance in our approach to helping each other identify our spiritual gifting. On one hand, we need to teach new disciples what the bible is referring to when it talks about spiritual gifts and willingly/humbly working in LOVE as a part of the whole body. On the other we need to make sure we don't turn our teaching on spiritual gifts into a "tryout" for the church body team. We must remind ourselves that "God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be". Therefore, we must be willing to be used as any body part for the "common good of the body".
So….. after that wordy dissertation, I guess it still doesn't fully address the question. What should our responsibility be in this process?
Is the answer in Christ's model of discipleship? Are we pushing too hard to fast or are we missing a few/lot of the steps in growing new converts as parts of the body?
Just a quick note. We can always ask God for a gift. In fact, the Word encourages us to seek spiritual gifts. Therefore, in this case if someone wants to venture outside of their gifting, all they need to do is ask God for it. I feel God isn't stingy in the area of "gifting", because this is for the building up of His Church.
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