Discernment

No Room for Prophets: When Your Church Rejects Your Spiritual Gift

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Spirit, WordI don’t think a stranger tradition exists in evangelical churches than the use of spiritual gift inventories. Churches hand constituents a booklet on the gifts of the Spirit and task them with selecting (based on a set of questions in the booklet linked to specific personality traits) the spiritual gifts they possess. The only thing stranger is letting people self-identify their personal spiritual gifts WITHOUT a booklet.

So much for leaders mentoring their charges in a way that helps them discover their gifts.

What mystifies me is that all of the popular spiritual gift inventories that I have encountered in my life include the charismatic gifts that bother a large number of Christians. I wonder what happens when Joe Average, a relatively new believer and new member of the church, fills out his spiritual gift inventory and discovers that his gifts are as a prophet and a healer.

I know what happens in most churches: Joe’s prophetic gift is treated by leaders as “well, Joe, about that gift…,” while the healing gift relegates Joe to visitation ministries, where he’s supposed to make chit-chat with shut-ins and the “lightly” hospitalized.

What pastor really wants any of his people to score that spiritual gift inventory and come up with a prophetic gift high on the results? Prophetic gifts in most churches get forced into being considered good for one of the following three uses: only preaching, only nice “crystal ball readings” to reassure people, or for no good use at all.

Does Pastor Bob want Joe Average to use his prophetic gift to supplant him in the pulpit? Must I even ask that question?

Does Pastor Bob want Joe Average doing anything “weird,” like forecasting people’s futures or warning the church of its errors? (Even if the forecasts are for sunshine and blue skies only? Even if the warnings are more like Hallmark greeting card text? Or especially because of those possible outcomes?)

And then there are words of knowledge and words of wisdom. Even the gift of faith gives some leaders the willies when they think how their people might consider its use.

It seems like half the list of spiritual gifts is a minefield, and it may be why some church leaders look at spiritual gift inventories as a necessary evil. (Unless, of course, everyone has the pastor’s favorite gift: administration.)

Given how poorly we deal with spiritual gifts, if we deal with them at all, is it any wonder the typical modern evangelical church shambles along in its mission like some B-movie monster?

Want a church that uses spiritual gifts properly?

1. Everyone, stop with the fear—and the discrediting of the Lord. When churches and their leaders descend into fear over gifts, they discredit the Lord. Who is the giver of gifts? How can we NOT believe The Lord knows best what our church needs? If Joe Average has a prophetic gift or a healing gift, consider yourselves blessed, and let Joe—with wise counsel—use his gift! If you do, it’s guaranteed that God will do more in your church, and not less, because of Joe’s Spirit-endowed contribution. Trust God, folks!

2. Leaders, stop the vanity. If you don’t see yourselves as replaceable, then you’ve made yourselves royalty, and that’s not how the Bible teaches you should lead. Enable the gifts in your people; don’t stymie them because they seem a threat to the perfect church kingdom you’ve erected. “He must increase and I must decrease” may apply not only to your relationship with Christ, but also to your standing among your brothers and sisters in Christ in your church. Don’t be the cork in the bottle of what God wants to do in your midst because you lack the humility to let others do what God can do through them. As someone wise once noted in Acts, when you constantly rein-in your people, you just may find yourself opposing the work of God.

3. Nonleaders, stop the vanity. Nothing ruins a church faster than people who desperately want to be seen as possessing a particular gift yet who in no way offer evidence of its God-driven operation in their lives. The number of unqualified—yet self-proclaimed—teachers I’ve witnessed “teaching” in churches could fill a stadium. And no one does more damage than a proud, deluded dispenser of words of knowledge or prophecy. Leaders are partially responsible for creating these disastrous disciples, which means they need to reboot their gift ID process, so…

4. Leaders, get rid of the spiritual gift inventories and identify gifts God’s way. Paul drew alongside Timothy and helped his charge grow into his giftings. He didn’t hand Timothy a spiritual gift inventory booklet and tell him, “Have at it!” No, Paul worked with the young man and mentored him in such a way that Timothy knew what his gifts were because Paul affirmed them. Leaders, I believe your number one task is to personally commit to helping each person in your church not only identify his or her spiritual gifts, but also…

5. Leaders, fan the flames of your people’s gifts. Read #2 above. Once you’ve gotten out of the way and done your own personal gut check about your motivations, enable the gifts in your people. There NEVER should be an environment in a church where there is no room for this gift or that. Don’t step on the embers, leaders, but do all you can to make them into a roaring fire.

6. Everyone, use the gifts or lose them. I can’t point to a verse that claims specifically that unused spiritual gifts will vanish, but the parable of the talents sure seems to validate that idea. Wonder why your church limps along? Perhaps you’ve squandered your gifts. Perhaps repentance and wailing before the throne will get them back. Or perhaps not. The warning is not to diss those gifts in the first place. Just don’t go there.

7. Everyone, rejoice. The gifts are given for the edification of the Church and for the completion of the mission tasked to us by the Lord. Eagerly pursue the gifts and rejoice in their use. Or to quote a song, “Forget your troubles, come on get happy.” Nothing beats a smiling, grateful countenance on someone employing a spiritual gift for the benefit of the Body of Christ. That’s real church, and it’s exactly how each of us should function as part of that Body.

 

A Powerful Delusion

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The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
—2 Thessalonians 2:9-12 ESV

After an evening of gaming at our friendly, local game store with my son and his friend, we did the mandatory munchies run. Unable to cope with the odd collection of rambunctious folks inhabiting the dining room of the nearby McDonald’s at 10 p.m., I decided we would eat in the bed of my pickup out in the parking lot. A fair, lovely, clear night…why not? Overhead, a half moon blazed brightly, but the night sky was a curiously empty canvas of unrelenting black.

Where were the stars?

From the corner of my eye, I could barely make out Mars, but Venus was nowhere to be seen. One expects those two planets to be visible, but the emptiness of the sky was still startling. I live in the countryside, and even though southwest Ohio is one of the worst spots in the nation for stargazing, I still get a decent view of the night sky at home, with the Milky Way band clearly visible.

Still, nothing here compares with the overhead view I witnessed in northern Ontario in the early ’80s. I was on a lake so remote, I think the human population density was about a dozen people per 10 square miles. The stars there? Well, you could read by them. They were that bright. And the reflection of that star-laden heavens in the lake surface was simply glorious. Wow.

But sitting in a McDonald’s parking lot 25 miles from my house, near a shopping mall flooded with unnatural light, the manmade daytime overwhelmed the celestial story intended by God to speak His praises.

The Holy Spirit nudged me then, and I could not escape the words of 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12.

If I had never been to northern Ontario, never lived in the country, if my home had always been somewhere near this shopping mall ablaze with electric light, I would have no idea that in that murky blackness overhead, billions of suns burned with fusion’s fire. The heavens that declare the glory of God would be silenced, a dark cloth stretched across the expanse of sky, save for the solitary punctuation of the moon.

How would anyone know that stars lay beyond the cloak of artificial darkness? Unless all the manmade lights were quenched, one never would.

How would you convince someone that anything bright existed in that unremitting blackness? Don’t the eyes alone reveal the truth?

A powerful delusion.

People in the grip of a powerful delusion do not know any better. They cannot understand anything beyond what that deception allows. It informs all parts of their personal experience.

“Pinpoints of light so widespread and bright that you can read a book by them? In the night sky? Nah!” And someone laughs at your stupidity and fanciful imaginings.

I offer some thoughts and questions following. Nothing fully formed. I’m not sure that all of them are worthwhile. I simply offer them.

I wonder sometimes if even “church folks,” people like you and me, are caught in the powerful delusion. I wonder if we are seeing clearly, if the figurative stars are visible, or whether we are creating our own unnatural light to compensate and making matters worse.

The star-filled nighttime sky in Ontario was more than bright enough for me to go about my business after dark. Reflected in the lake, it was even more powerful. The night was aglow.

Are our efforts to be light in this world manmade? Artificial? Unnatural? Are we reflecting the true, natural light? Or are we creating a fake alternative that only serves to wash out the true, natural light, effectively replacing the heavens that shout the glory of God with an empty canvas?

Are we contributing to the powerful delusion?

Should we partner with God to enhance the delusion He has sent? Or is our task to do what He asks and keep telling people that there is more to this life than they can see?

Can people caught in the delusion ever break free of it? Or are they doomed to an empty night sky, devoid of the praises of God?

What of “church folks” who receive perpetual doses of artificial light? Does it blind them to the natural light? Will they ever see the natural light amid the washout created by all the fake spotlights we throw up in an effort to draw attention to what we think is genuine, but which may not be?

What if you and I are caught in part of the delusion, even a bit? Would we know? The passage in 2 Thessalonians says the delusion will look remarkably like the genuine. Would we be wise enough to discern that there is more than what we are seeing? And that our own efforts to recreate the light may in fact be blinding us to the real thing?

Somewhere overhead, there are stars burning in the void. And their message is that of the angels. More than anything, God, please, help us to see and hear only that which is of you, and which persists eternally beautiful, filled with the One True Light.

A Major Denomination Gets It Right–Will Yours?

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A hat tip to Rick Ianniello for the following lead on a video released by The Foursquare Church (a good, old-fashioned Azusa Street revival descendant):

This is Discipling from The Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

You don’t change churches to adapt to the spirit of the age. You don’t turn them into sources of entertainment to draw people. And you certainly don’t dumb them down and alter their function to make them more appealing to unbelievers.

No, you do the opposite: You make them intense sources for the most meaty teaching possible, the toughest training conceivable, the most spiritually deep wells imaginable, then you send out your fully equipped people to go do the work of the Church outside the four walls of the meeting place.

Period. End of story.

It is worth seeing if The Foursquare Church as a whole is able to make this concept work. Honestly, it’s the biblical model, so it’s the way it and every church on the planet SHOULD be doing evangelism and discipleship.

God help us if we don’t get this right.