Contrasting Healthy And Unhealthy Ways Of Viewing Spiritual Gifts

Unhealthy Views of Spiritual Gifts

* Useful for gaining popularity, status and power

* Useful for helping one stand out from the crowd

* Useful for self-aggrandizement (Increasing one’s power, rank or wealth)

* Useful for protecting oneself from other’s accusations about worthlessness

* Useful for manipulating others into doing what you want them to do

* Useful for dividing one group against another

* Useful for ranking each person in an order of importance

* Useful for creating divisions according to the more visible and public gifts

* Useful for helping everyone feel that we cannot control our future since certain gifts are lacking in our portfolio

* Useful for keeping certain people under control

* Useful for being an individual with no accountability to the body of Christ

* Useful for imposing socialism on the body of Christ since no one can be considered better than anybody else

* Useful for teaching everyone that they must submit themselves to one model of practicing spiritual gifts

* Useful for manipulating others to do what the preachers and teachers want

* Useful for keeping other feeling inferior to the main gifts of leadership and administration

* Useful for giving greater weight to certain people’s gifts because of their so-called success

* Useful for showing that certain people in the Bible were more important

* Useful for demonstrating that some people have many gifts and others have few making them less in status

* Useful for certain interests become our obsessions

* Useful for concentrating on tasks above people

* Useful for focusing our attention on the gifts that contribute to the quantitative growth of the church

* Useful for more introspection

Healthy Views of Spiritual Gifts

* Useful for giving God great glory and honor

* Useful for helping everyone feel that they are making a valuable contribution to God

* Useful to keep one humble realizing that we have freely been given so we are to freely give

* Useful for complementing others in the body of Christ with their particular gifts

* Useful for serving others in ways that are necessary for the body of Christ to function

* Useful for unifying the body of Christ by emphasizing our unity through diversity

* Useful for helping us all realize that God is giver of every gift according to His wisdom

* Useful for creating synchronization in the body according to the mutual inter-working of people

* Useful for helping everyone feel that we need to rely on certain people for gifts that can help us maximize our potential

* Useful for allowing each person to exercise their God given gift in a way that please the Lord

* Useful for showing how inter-dependent we are in the body of Christ for one another

* Useful for bearing one another’s burdens and thus fulfilling the law of Christ

* Useful for demonstrating that spiritual gifts can be exercised through a variety of organizations and situations

* Useful for helping every person recognize that God’s word and Spirit have more voice in our direction that any spiritual gift

* Useful for helping everyone have a good appreciation for organizational gifts

* Useful for giving everyone full assurance that God will reward us on the basis of our trust, obedience, and attention to His will

* Useful for showing that without all people in the scriptures, God’s message would lack something

* Useful for demonstrating that the number of gifts given to certain people makes realize that to whom is entrusted much, much is required

* Useful for realizing that no one gift or idea should become an obsession outside of Christ

* Useful for concentrating on a balance between tasks and people

* Useful for focusing our attention on the balance of the qualitative and the quantitative growth of the church

* Useful for thanksgiving for other’s gifts

The following questions are from Rick Warren and he solely deserves the credit:

"Here are the twelve questions we ask at Saddleback:

1. What does God expect from members of his church?

2. What do we expect from our members right now?

3. What kinds of people already make up our congregation?

4. How will that change in the next 5 to 10 years?

5. What do our members value?

6. What are new members’ greatest needs?

7. What are our long-term members’ greatest needs?

8. How can we make membership more meaningful?

9. How can we insure that members feel loved and cared for?

10. What do we owe our members?

11. What resources or services could we offer our members?

12. How could we add value to what we already offer?" - Rick Warren