1971
It's a simple enough idea, and it's right there in the Bible. Every Christian has a gift, something to offer the rest of the church, something that works together with other people's gifts to build up the church and glorify God. It's an energizing idea. Imagine: {167} Everybody in your church using some God-given ability to help everyone else. Each person is a minister!
Yet throughout most of church history, this idea was virtually ignored. There were blips of attention here and there, but in America at least, no one paid much mind to spiritual gifts until the late 1960s. It may have come out of the charismatic movement, but the new craze quickly caught on with mainstream evangelicals. ״Find Your Spiritual Gift!" it had a pm-micky appeal, something like those self-discovery tests you'd take in McCall's or Good Housekeeping. Answer a few questions and discover what God wants you to do with your life!
Throughout the seventies it was the hot topic in Christian education, perfectly tailored for this "Me Decade." People were finding out about themselves but then plugging that info back into the church. Everybody won!
Early in this movement, the book Eighth Day of Creation came out of The Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. It was a cutting-edge church, pioneering efforts in church fellowship and urban ministry (one of a dozen or so experimental urban churches of that time). Elizabeth O'Connor was on staff at the church.
God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh; the eighth day is ours. He has given us gifts to use creatively. In fact, this book is saying, he has given us gifts for the purpose of creating. This takes commitment and courage. We also need an environment that encourages us to discover and use our gifts.
You might expect O'Connor to give us an outline of the strate-
gies of The Church of the Saviour. She doesn't. Instead, it’s a pep talk, an inspirational discussion of the issues underlying the use of our gifts.
Adding inspiration to insight, the last half of the book contains lengthy quotations about creativity and giftedness from a variety of sources—Maslow, Nietszche, Thomas Merton, Martin Buber, among many others. Critics might object to the vagueness of the book. It never lists the spiritual gifts of Scripture. It doesn't offer ״Seven Steps to Discovering Your Gift." It just charges you up, points you in a certain direction, gives you a bunch of quotes to munch on, and pushes you out into the wilderness. And yes, that's sort of the point. It's your creativity. What are you going to do with it?
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This book became an important antidote to some of the excesses of the spiritual gifts movement that followed. While some tried to pigeonhole Christians into the seventeen or twenty gifts mentioned in Scripture, O'Connor ignored those restrictions. (Wouldn't a creative God give us ever new ways of creating?) While many used spiritual gifts as a popular method of self-discovery, O'Connor kept the focus on ministry. (It's not what gifts you have, but what gifts you use.) And while some tried to harness spiritual gifts for church growth or church fellowship, O'Connor broadened the picture with her theology of creativity. We are carrying on God's mission, she was saying, not just redeeming or sanctifying, but creating.