Spiritual Gifts

by John Ortberg, circa 1994

Over the past 25 years or so, there has been a proliferation of materials on spiritual gifts. It turns out that the main reason it has been so hard to get people to volunteer for church work all these years is that people have been trying to work "outside their area of giftedness" (as if, for example, Michael Jordan should try to be a baseball player).

So, diagnosing your ministry potential has become a cottage industry. It started with a few simple inventories. Then the process got finessed and nuanced until today a small battery of trained consultants, theologians, and licensed mental health practitioners are required to help you identify your spiritual gift(s), personality temperament, passion, charismatic/non-charismatic tendencies, primary dysfunction in family of origin, and most flattering colors (winter, spring, summer, or fall) before you can sign up to serve donuts at the coffee hour. It requires more time and study than acquiring a D.Min. degree (although that places it in a broad and fertile category that would include getting a driver's license, getting a fishing license, and skimming the "Humor in Uniform" section in Reader's Digest).

Generally, I believe this emphasis on spiritual gift inventories to be a positive development. Just imagine what Augustine or Luther or St. Vitus ("creative communication") could have done if they'd have known their ministry profile.

But there are a few bugs that still need to be worked out. For one thing, the scoring has gotten too complicated. In fact, this led to a big argument at our church when the test was taken by a recovery group for Survivors of Ritual Abuse with Multiple Personality Disorder, and they wanted a separate temperament analysis for each personality.

The main problem is that people can go through this whole process and still not actually get involved. It is an attempt to get people to serve without resorting to guilt. This is a fundamental mistake. Guilt is the pastor's friend. If people weren't supposed to feel guilty, Hallmark wouldn't have invented Mother's Day.

But help is on the way. A thorough examination of the relevant Greek texts using redaction criticism, the partitive genitive, and the hortatory subjunctive reveals that there are really only seven main gifts listed in the New Testament.

Based on this research, you'll be glad to know, I have developed the Houts-Wagner Irretrievably Modified Gifts Inventory Color Me Beautiful Questionnaire. The primary advantage of this instrument is that finally we have gifts listed in categories that are practical for the contemporary church. Here they are:

7 TRUE SPIRITUAL GIFTS FOR TODAY'S CHURCH

1. Nursery Worker. This is based on Mark 10:14, "Suffer the little children to come to me." Anyone who believes this verse is or should be in the Bible has nursery-worker for his or her dominant gift.

2. Giving. This is the dominant gift for anybody who makes more money than I do. Michael Jordan, for example, would fit in this category if he came to my church. In fact, he's thinking about coming to my church, so he's asked me to tell everybody else's church to get off his back about it.

3. Criticism. Although not actually mentioned in the text, this is in fact the most widely practiced spiritual gift in the church today, so the academy has finally voted that it be officially recognized.

(A pastor friend was complaining that his church went through a long, exhausting process to draft a two-pronged vision statement "to reach the unchurched and build up believers" but kept maintaining traditions and services that didn't fit the vision statement in order to avoid criticism. I told him they just needed to add a third prong to their statement: "Placate the cranks." I offer this as a free, general suggestion. If you find yourself doing things that don't fit in your church's vision statement, just add the phrase "and placate the cranks" to the end of the document. You'll find that these words provide a rationale for pretty much everything your current vision statement doesn't cover. I'm thinking about becoming a church consultant.)

4. Amway. Discretion forbids me to say more.

5. Wedding Hostess. You don't really need the inventory for this one, since anyone with this gift could be identified blindfolded. These are people who in other life circumstances would have grown up to be General Patton or Turkish prison guards. In churches that are truly gift-based, the wedding hostess actually functions as senior pastor.

6. Kitchen Hostess. This is to wedding hostess what minor leagues are to the majors: a place where promising rookies can get experience and fading veterans can enjoy a last fling at playing the game before it's time to hang up the spikes.

7. Helping People Discover Their Spiritual Gifts.