The Benefit of Spiritual Gifts Testing

For the last two days I’ve noted a potential pitfall to spiritual gifts testing.  (See here and here).  Though I think there are dangers to spiritual gifts testing I do believe they can be beneficial.  As I mentioned yesterday, our church does a 3 in 1 profile that considers personality as well as spiritual gifts.  Such tools can be helpful to the body in these ways:

• If a foot thinks it is a hand you’ve got problems.  Though I’d rather have two hands and a confused foot that thinks its a hand over zero hands, I’d much rather have hands and feet do what they were created to do.  Gifts testing can help hands realize that they are not feet.
• Empowering the timid.  Sometimes a person is convinced that they are of little use to the church.  Knowing that God has especially gifted them for service might empower them.  (Though I wouldn’t rely on that alone—there are gospel issues here that also need to be explored). 
• A chance to glorify God in his diversity.  Usually arms think of the world through the perspective of an arm.  Spiritual gifts testing and discussions afterwards can help arms (and other body parts) glory in the diversity and wisdom of God.
• A chance to realize who you are not and to rejoice in those that are.  For a guy like me that really stinks at organization it can be really wonderful to realize that some people actually thrive on such things. 
• It provides an opportunity for cruciform love.  The “more excellent way” is to use the gifts that the Lord has given us to love and serve the body.  Knowing what that looks like gives you an opportunity to at times “lay down” your gifts for the sake of love.  And other times to fully use your gifts for the sake of love. 

For these benefits to really see fruition they will need to be cultivated in a culture:

• where discipleship happens
• where humble service is cultivated
• where it is realized that these gifts test are not flawless, not a one time thing, and not defining (in other words—people change)
• where they are not used as an excuse to not do the things that you are not gifted in.

Conclusion:

The main point of this has been to say that whenever I look at the places in Scripture where spiritual gifts are discussed it is not primarily concerned with an attempt to figure out your giftedness or to help you figure out where to serve.  Spiritual gifts tests are helpful not necessarily to decide what ministry to be involved in but to help you will do the ministry that we’re all called to do. 

The Other Reason I’m Not a Huge Fan of Spiritual Gifts Testing

Yesterday I noted that one reason I’m not a huge fan of spiritual gifts testing is because the church at Rome did not have Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  That’s another way of saying that I do not think the early church did ministry according to perceived spiritual giftedness but instead their overarching paradigm was to be united servants of Jesus and that looked different for different people. 

Okay, so maybe spiritual gifts aren’t quite what the early church did.  They also didn’t have electricity, microphones, padded seats or VBS.  You won’t find those things in the Bible but the Lord tells us to use our brains.  And we do have the whole canon of Scripture so we do have a list of all the spiritual gifts.  So using our brains and the whole canon of Scripture we’ve come up with spiritual gifts testing.  No harm in that, right? 

Why They Aren’t Simply Innocent

Well maybe not.  But I’m not convinced that spiritual gifts are so innocent.  One of the dangers to spiritual gifts testing is that they can create a culture where entitlement and self-expression becomes the goal of spiritual gifts instead of service.  Or maybe it may be better to say that given the wrong climate spiritual gifts actually further a culture of entitlement and self-expression rather than a culture of humble service. 

Consider Bonnie.  She takes her test and finds that she is gifted in music (drums precisely), teaching (mostly adults), and handling snakes.  Yet, the church already has a guy that’s been joyously bangin’ away at the drums for years.  All the adult classes have teachers—but we could use a little help with someone to help the kindergarten class with crafts.  And that whole snake handlin’ thing hasn’t happened in our Baptist church since ol’ Jimmy decided to play a trick on Reverend Jenkins by putting a brood of baby water snakes in the baptistry. 

So what does she do?  The Holy Spirit has confirmed that her role is to teach, bang on drums, and rid the church of snakes.  Does she combine her snake handling gifts with her desire to be a drummer and scare the dickens out of the present drummer with an armful of vipers?  Does she sit on the sidelines until a teaching position comes open?  Does she move to a different church that will appreciate her gifts?  Would the Spirit really gift her with things and then place her in a church where she can’t use all these things that she does well?

Yeah, he might.  And you see that’s the big problem with spiritual gifts testing.  Most people don’t feel equipped to help out with preschool kids.  And then they take spiritual gifts tests which mostly uncover your passion and confirm things you are already doing.  So Bonnie never serves the church and the little kids because “God has not gifted her to do it”.  She’ll wait until the Lord opens doors for her giftedness.

The Way Out

Now consider Clyde.  Clyde really isn’t sure what his spiritual gifts are but he loves serving the Lord in whatever capacity he sees a need or wherever you ask him to.  He knows little about planting flowers in the church parking lot, but you give him a shovel and a time and he’ll be out there helping.  He probably wouldn’t pass a spiritual gifts test for teaching but he’s taught little Millie all about John 3:16 and how Jesus loves her.  She wouldn’t have thought so a few months ago when he volunteered but Clyde has been the best assistant this seasoned Kindergarten teacher has ever had. 

You don’t get “Clyde’s” in your church by handing out spiritual gifts tests.  “Clyde’s” happen through an ever-increasing love for Jesus and His church that comes through discipleship.  “Clyde’s” happen because somewhere along the way somebody kept serving him and pouring the gospel into his life.  And his infatuation with Jesus shaped a servants heart. 

The way out of a culture that views spiritual gifts as entitlement and a means to self-expression is to blow it up and in place cultivate a culture of humble service and faithful discipleship.  Encourage your faithful servants to also be disciplers.  Even if it means showing a teenager how to turn on the baptistry. 

Create a culture where people know that what is needed isn’t performance and talent but a servants heart that will give it 100%.  Allow people to totally blow it in certain areas.  “Whew, maybe we’ve discovered that Clyde shouldn’t be the one to make the spaghetti sauce”, as everyone laughs about it knowing that Clyde will probably try his hand at garlic bread next week. 

Bonnie, by the way is still loading up snakes and plotting her ascent through the drum line. 

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So spiritual gifts=the devil, right?  No. Not exactly.  In fact our church even uses them.  They can be helpful…come back tomorrow to find out how. 

One Reason I’m Not a Huge Fan of Spiritual Gifts Testing

Ready for it?

Here it is: The church at Rome did not have Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. 

Take a gander at the list in Romans 12:6-8.  Now look at 1 Corinthians 12:7-10 and 12:28.  Different list isn’t it?  Now we in the 21st century have the advantage of going through all of these various spiritual gifts listed by the apostles and in then compiling a handy list of all the spiritual gifts in the Bible.

Once you have the list of these gifts you ask people various questions to find out what they are passionate about and then you match their passions and experiences with the biblical lists of spiritual gifts.  And in all honesty it’s probably closer to say that a spiritual sounding personality test emerges.  Because let’s be honest an unbeliever could really like singing in church.  And a very moral unbeliever may really get his kicks from serving people.  Nonetheless…

Roll back to the church at Rome that receives Paul’s letter.  There are only eight things listed.  Nothing about discernment, wisdom, evangelism, miracles, healing, tongues, interpretation of tongues, faith, apostles, and some of the others that crop up on these inventories.  So what did the poor chap who has the gift of discernment do in Rome?  Did he move to Corinth where they’d really use, acknowledge, and appreciate his gift?  Did he just try to go with some of his secondary gifts like teaching? 

Is it possible that Romans 12:3-8 isn’t an encouragement to find your spiritual gift but it’s actually something else?  Is it possible that the early church did not run people through spiritual gifts inventories?

If Not Spiritual Gifts Testing, Then What? 

I don’t see the church of Rome sitting around taking tests trying to figure out where they are to serve in the local church.  Nor do I see Paul’s encouragement here in Romans to be about the business of assessing their spiritual gifts, find out which one or two of these they have and then do them.  I see it much less complicated.  Let me give you an example.

As I’m writing this one of my good friends, Jason, has a medical issue with his face.  Without giving away all of his medical history I will just say that it’s a very painful malady that will require him to get surgery later this month.  I love Jason dearly.  When I see that he is hurting my heart wells up within me to help him.  But here’s the deal.  I really really want to serve him but I’m going to do it really awkwardly because “acts of service” isn’t my spiritual bent. 

Yet there are other people in our church that when somebody like Jason is hurting they immediately know what to do to provide comfort and service.  Why?  Well, because that’s their spiritual gift.  Me?  When Jason is hurting I pray for him, I exhort him, I might lead others to help, or even somehow teach because that is where my spiritual giftedness lies. 

Let’s use Romans 12 to imagine Paul speaking to our church concerning Jason.  “Don’t think of yourselves more highly than you ought.  You know your level of faith.  Don’t try to pretend that you are a superhero in the faith and that you have all the answers to pain and suffering if you’ve only been saved for about 3 weeks.  But also if you’ve had an experience like this don’t pretend that you’re an idiot and can’t help.  You know what God has done in your life.  Respond accordingly.  We all have different gifts and roles in the body.  God makes it all move together in Christ.  Guys, we know that Jason really needs his church right now.  You know what to do…”

Now at this point when he says, “You know what to do” a different thing wells up inside of each of us.  For some they say, “ah, yes I’ll bake him a cake”.  For others, “oh, yes I’ll pray for him”.  For somebody else they say, “right I’ll organize a group of people to throw a benefit dinner”.  Another guy says, “ Janet, give me the check book”.  And yet one other person says, “I’m going to go hang out with Jason and give him some encouragement”.  And yet another guy writes an article about spiritual gifts and thinks that in some way it might help his buddy Jason. 

And that’s what Paul is saying in Romans 12:4-8.  When the hammer drops with a “you know what to do” we do it according to the way God has gifted us.  And we do it with a Spirit-motivated attitude. 

Serve the church.  Serve our community.  You know what to do…

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This will hopefully make even more sense tomorrow when we look at how spiritual gifts testing can actually be crippling to a church’s discipleship and service.