Four Pitfalls to Avoid
This is supposed to be a motivational book. My purpose is to get as many believers excited about spiritual gifts as I can. Naturally, I want to be as positive as possible. But at the same time, I am realistic enough to know that churches and believers who embrace biblical ideas of spiritual gifts can easily get sidetracked. Let’s not allow this to happen. Let’s understand the possible pitfalls.
Through the years, I have observed four significant areas in which dysfunctional ideas about spiritual gifts have been promulgated. While I would not categorize any of them as heresies, I would suggest that they are dangerous pathways that should be avoided. Let me list them first; then I will go into more detail. The four pitfalls that can reduce the effectiveness of ministry through spiritual gifts are these: (1) a short list of gifts, (2) the situational view of spiritual gifts, (3) gift exaltation and (4) gift projection.
GEORGE BARNA’S WAKE-UP CALL
I’m not an alarmist by nature, but I have become alarmed about trends concerning spiritual gifts. George Barna, lauded by many as the foremost researcher of the Christian Church today, has released some startling survey information. When I read it, it was a wake-up call for me. I must confess that during the decade of the 1990s, I had put teaching spiritual gifts on the back burner. But I no longer can do this. God used Barna’s research to speak to me clearly about teaching this subject much more. In fact, this book is one of the immediate outcomes. I must have thought that my first book on the subject, Your Spiritual Gifts Can Help Your Church Grow, would keep the Church moving in the right direction all by itself. When Barna’s report came out, I immediately saw how wrong I was.
First, and most disturbing, George Barna found that a remarkable number of born-again Christians who have heard of spiritual gifts do not think they themselves have been given any spiritual gifts at all. And unfortunately, this number is growing.
Here are the facts: In 1995 the percentage of born-again adults who did not think that they had a spiritual gift was 4 percent. Not too alarming, I would say. But by 2000 that number had risen to 21 percent! Very alarming! If this trend continues, we will soon have a dangerously sick Body on our hands!
Second, Barna found that too many Christians had bizarre ideas of what spiritual gifts really were. They thought that some of the gifts were, for example, a sense of humor or going to church or a good personality or the ability to write poetry or the ability to survive or friendliness or other things that were far from what the Bible teaches.1
THE STATE OF THE CHURCH
George Barna’s responsibility is to get the facts. Others of us are responsible for interpreting these facts and discovering what is going on. As I worked on processing Barna’s data, I came to some conclusions. I will be the first to admit that I may not see the full picture, but I do believe that it is important for me to share my thoughts, realizing that they might be a bit unpopular in certain circles.
Between 1995 and 2000, the churches belonging to what I call the New Apostolic Reformation became the fastest-growing group of churches in the United States.2 While these churches have tremendous strengths, unfortunately, with some exceptions, their teaching and practice designed to mobilize their church members to do the work of the ministry through spiritual gifts are surprisingly weak. If this observation is correct, it would explain, at least to a considerable extent, Barna’s conclusions.
Where does this weakness come from? The genealogy of the New Apostolic Reformation goes back to the independent charismatic movement. The genealogy of the independent charismatic movement goes back to classical Pentecostalism. We will be forever thankful for the role that classical Pentecostalism has played in surfacing the true biblical view of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity. The kingdom of God would never be where it is today if it weren’t for our Pentecostal pioneers in the early part of the last century.
However, while Pentecostals helped us become aware that spiritual gifts were for today, they also incorporated two serious errors concerning spiritual gifts in their teachings. These errors were perpetuated by many independent charismatic leaders and they have also carried over to many New Apostolic Reformation leaders. If we do not correct these two errors, which are the first two of the four pitfalls in this chapter, I believe that the Church will soon be on a downhill slide.
What are these two serious errors?
The Short List of Spiritual Gifts
Classical Pentecostalism teaches that there are nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, all found in the first part of 1 Corinthians 12. They would include wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues and interpretation of tongues. Pentecostal leaders encourage believers to use spiritual gifts, but their teaching and writing on spiritual gifts deal only with this short list, not with the 28 that I listed in the previous chapter.
While these nine gifts are essential for the saints to do the work of the ministry, there are many other functions of the Body of Christ that are also necessary for it to operate as God designed it. Believers who think that there are only nine gifts and who do not happen to minister regularly in any of them will likely be among Barna’s 21 percent who think they have no gift at all. They may actually be ministering in one or more of the other 19 gifts such as hospitality or administration or teaching or helps, but they have not been taught to recognize any of these as legitimate spiritual gifts. Consequently, when the interviewer says, “Do you have a spiritual gift?” they will say, “No, I don’t think so.”
The Situational View of Spiritual Gifts
Classical Pentecostalism has taught that all of the spiritual gifts (all nine, that is) are available to all believers depending on the immediate situation. The hypothesis is that, if you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you will have all the gifts available, since the Holy Spirit has all the gifts. If a situation should arise when prophecy or healing or wisdom or any other gift would be useful, God will activate that gift in any believer. But when that situation passes, the believer might not use the same gift ever again or they might get it only occasionally. This is known as the situational view.
A quick review of the last couple of chapters will show that the situational view is not biblical. The biblical teaching is that our spiritual gifts are like members of our human body. Members of the body such as ears or necks or stomachs or vocal chords are not ears or necks or stomachs or vocal chords for a one-time use or to be used only occasionally. They are constitutionally parts of the body as long as the body is healthy. The view that I am teaching in this book is the constitutional view of spiritual gifts as opposed to the situational view.
I think I can explain quite briefly how this pitfall crept into classical Pentecostalism years ago. Once Pentecostals started believing in and teaching the baptism in the Holy Spirit, many believers began speaking in tongues. History shows that the early Pentecostal leaders were typically not among those who cared to spend much time in biblical exegesis or theologizing. They knew that tongues was called a spiritual gift, so they assumed that everyone who spoke in tongues must have the gift of tongues. Not a few Pentecostal believers, in fact, ended up speaking in tongues only once in their lives. So the conclusion was that they must have received the gift of tongues for only that one situation. This situational view was subsequently applied to the other eight gifts on the list as well. When later generations produced Pentecostal biblical scholars, they searched and found arguments to justify the position of their predecessors, and the idea became entrenched.
The situational view of spiritual gifts could easily have been avoided if Pentecostal leaders had understood the important distinction between spiritual gifts and Christian roles. I will detail this in the next chapter as a much better way to explain why some believers speak in tongues all the time (the gift) and others perhaps only once (the role).
The situational approach to spiritual gifts, especially when applied to only nine of the gifts, will weaken the Church internally. I remember hearing from a new apostolic leader a sermon entitled “How to Flow in the Nine Gifts of the Holy Spirit.” This sermon, judging by its title, combined the two errors of classical Pentecostalism that have been perpetuated in much of the New Apostolic Reformation today: that there are only nine gifts and that every Spirit-filled believer has them and should use them. If you are a believer who does not prophesy or discern spirits or speak in tongues or do miracles, you would probably tell a Barna researcher that you do not think that you have a spiritual gift.
Fortunately, George Barna has brought to the public eye some of the disturbing effects of this teaching—in time for it to be corrected, I hope.
SPIRITUAL GIFTS: LIFETIME POSSESSIONS
The situational view of spiritual gifts begs the question of how long we keep a spiritual gift once God gives it to us.
In my opinion, once a person is given a bona fide spiritual gift, it is a lifetime possession. This is the constitutional view. I derive it from Romans 12:4, where, once again, Paul gives us the analogy of the physical body as the hermeneutical key for understanding spiritual gifts. If spiritual gifts are to the Body of Christ as, let’s say, spinal columns or skin or other members are to the physical body, there is little question in my mind that once we know what our gift is, we can depend on keeping it. For example, I do not go to bed at night having any worry whatsoever that tomorrow my hand might wake up being a kidney. Both the development of the spiritual gifts in the life of an individual Christian and the smooth operation of the Body of Christ as a whole need to depend on similar confidence—confidence that you and I have, and will continue to have, our God-given spiritual gifts.
However, this does not mean that the gifts we have today will necessarily be the sum total of the gifts we have the rest of our lives. God gives us our initial gifts when we are born again. But later in life we might discover that we have and are using gifts that we never used before. There are two ways to explain this. Either we always had the gift and it just surfaced, or God decided to give us a new gift. I personally think that both of these things are likely to happen. For example, I know that I now have the gifts of healing, giving and apostle, but 20 years ago I had no awareness of possessing any of these three gifts.
My point is that we should always be open to moving in new areas of ministry as God determines. We should never become stuck in the mud, so to speak.
DOMINANT AND SUBORDINATE GIFTS
Multigifted people may find that during certain seasons of their ministry, some of their gifts will be dominant and others subordinate. This ranking order might vary over the years as circumstances change. In my opinion, however, this does not mean that a gift has been lost along the way. I know that I have the gift of missionary, for example; but, while it was dominant during my 16 years as a missionary to Bolivia, it has been relatively dormant ever since.
At the same time, there is a danger that some gifts may become dormant contrary to God’s will. You may have a gift that you are supposed to be using but are not. This seemed to be what Paul had in mind when he had to keep exhorting Timothy: “Do not neglect the gift” (1 Tim. 4:14) and “stir up the gift” (2 Tim. 1:6) and “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim. 4:5), on the obvious assumption that one of Timothy’s spiritual gifts was the gift of evangelist. Allowing gifts to become dormant is one of the ways we are in danger of “quench[ing] the Spirit” (1 Thess. 5:19), and we need to avoid that at all costs.
We need to face the unfortunate fact that spiritual gifts can be abused. In a short book like this, I will not attempt to catalog and comment on all the abuses of spiritual gifts common today. We have already discussed the pitfalls of a short list of gifts and the situational view of spiritual gifts, but I also want to name and comment on two of them that I consider to be especially widespread and counterproductive in the Church. These are pitfalls three and four.
Gift Exaltation
The third pitfall is gift exaltation. In some circles, it is popular to exalt one gift over the others. Having a certain gift seems to constitute a spiritual status symbol in some groups. First-class citizens tend to be separated from second-class citizens on the basis of exercising a certain gift or a certain combination of gifts.
When this happens, gifts can easily become ends in themselves rather than means to an end. They can glorify the user rather than the giver. They can benefit the individual more than the Body. They can produce pride and self-indulgence.
A prominent biblical example was the Corinthian church, which had fallen into this trap. They had been exalting the gift of tongues, a very common practice in some churches today. Paul actually writes 1 Corinthians 12—14 in an attempt to scold them and to straighten them out. Their enthusiasm over tongues had caused them to neglect prophecy. The details are not necessary to repeat, but the lesson is that all of us need to take fair warning and avoid gift exaltation.
The Syndrome of Gift Projection
The fourth pitfall is gift projection.
Most Christians who have biographies written about themselves have accomplished extraordinary things during their lifetimes. What gave them the ability to turn in the kind of lifetime performance that would justify a biography? It has to be that God had given them a spiritual gift or a gift-mix in an unusual degree, that they developed their gifts conscientiously and that they used them to the glory of God and for the benefit of the Body of Christ in a notable way.
Few biographers, however, and few heroes of their biographies have been people who are sensitive to the biblical teaching on spiritual gifts. Rarely do biographers attribute the feats of their heroes to the fact that God had simply gifted them in an unusual way. This has caused them to take another approach toward explaining the cause of their hero’s accomplishments. What frequently happens is that readers are led to believe that so-and-so accomplished extraordinary things simply because that person loved God so much and was so obedient. What does this mean? It means that if you only loved God that much, dear reader, and if you only decided to obey Him, you could do the same thing. If you fall short, you now know the reason why. Something must be deficient in your relationship with God.
However, many Christians who read these biographies are, in fact, totally consecrated to God. They are not suffering from spiritual deficiencies. Because of this, they are often the ones who feel the most frustrated, guilty and defeated when they learn about these giants of the faith. To make matters worse, when the heroes of the biographies are ignorant of spiritual gifts, they sometimes engage in what I call gift projection. They seem to say, “Look, I’m just an ordinary Christian, no different from anyone else. Here’s what I do, and God blesses it. Consequently, if you just do what I do, God will bless you in the same way.” What they rarely say, unfortunately, is “I can do what I do because God has given me a certain gift or gift-mix. If you discover that God has given you the same, join me in this. If not, I don’t expect you to be like me. You do what God has equipped you to do, and we will love and support each other as different members of the Body.”
People caught up in the syndrome of gift projection seem to want the whole body to be an eye. They unwittingly impose guilt and shame on fellow Christians who are not like them. They tend to make feet say, “Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body” (1 Cor. 12:15). They usually have little idea of how devastating gift projection can be for those who have different gifts. They would be like the steward in the parable who came back with 10 talents saying to the one who came back with 4, “If you only loved the master more, you would have come back with 10 also,” without mentioning that the master gave him 5 talents to start with but gave the other only 2 (see Matt. 25:14-30).
Today, more than ever before, we need a healthy, biblical view of spiritual gifts. Let’s begin by avoiding the common pitfalls and moving strongly ahead according to God’s design for the Body of Christ.
Making It Personal
Notes
1. Barna Research Group, “Awareness of Spiritual Gifts Is Changing,” news release, February 5, 2001, pp. 1-2.
2. For details on the New Apostolic Reformation, see my books The New Apostolic Churches (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1998), Churchquake! (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1999) and Changing Church (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2004).