Spiritual Gifts

Growth group over the passed few weeks, unintentionally (from our human pov) the topic of Spiritual Gifts has come up multiple times, and how we should be using them for the church. God has given each of us at least one gift, and it is our responsibility to use it. I do believe this. However, I struggle to identify what my gift(s) are.

As an administrator you have the Spirit-given capacity and desire to serve God by organizing, administering, promoting, and leading the various affairs of the church. … You will put a plan on paper and start delegating responsibility. You may lean toward organizing things, events or programs, ... you usually organize details and have people carry them out. ... You are serious minded, highly motivated, intense, and have an accurate self-image. You tend to be more interested in the welfare of the group than your own desire. 


As a teacher you are one who communicates knowledge, guides, makes known or relays facts. You are likely more in-depth than the average Sunday school teacher. ... As a teacher you live to learn and teach (or perhaps write if you teach through the written medium). ... You love the Word, enjoy reading, may be a little shy of strangers, are creative and imaginative, and prefer teaching groups over individuals. You are generally confident, self-disciplined, and sometimes technical. You probably love charts, graphs, and lists. … The use of a verse out of context upsets you and you question the knowledge of those who teach you. You are organized and enjoy studying.
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When I was a teenager I used to attend Good News Crusade’s summer camp as part of their Maintenance Team (now called EdgeFest). I used to really enjoy working hard for God, whether it be erecting marquees, setting out chairs, tidying litter, helping in the kitchen, or my favourite job – operating the OHP screen. Not only do I love worship music, but at camp the worship would seamlessly flow as God’s presence became almost tangible amongst us, and the worship band would go off-course and sing songs that they didn’t plan to. My job, then, was to hurriedly look through the lever arch file of acetates with lyrics on them, and find the correct song, hopefully before the end of the first verse.

As the Holy Spirit was moving throughout us, many people were experiencing and enabling various gifts such as speaking in tongues, healing, prophesying etc. I don’t speak in tongues, and one year I cried out to God about it. I am authentic, and yes, I could have babbled “Lalala Alleluia Lala Rum Tum Tugger Alleluia” just to fit in, but that’s not me. And having heard people speak in tongues, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. Speaking in tongues is clearly a language, even if I can’t understand it, and is so beautiful. Anything I attempt to make up would fail in comparison.

So, I prayed to God. All things are possible with God. So, why couldn’t I?

Anyway, God answered my prayer. I spoke in tongues and couldn’t believe it. It was not me, I was simply letting the Holy Spirit speak through me. And then God said to me that all things are indeed possible for Him; however, speaking in tongues is not the gift he has chosen for me. I’ve not been able to recreate it since, but am happy to know that God is in charge.

One of the books I am currently reading recommended an online quiz that can help identify what your spiritual gifts are. I do enjoy a good quiz, whether it be “what colour nail varnish should you wear?”, “what My Little Pony are you?” or something a bit more serious like “what’s your IQ” or “how neurotypical are you?”. I finally got around to doing this quiz this morning. It was a lot quicker than I expected, helped that each question only had three options – yes, no and maybe. The quiz does ask for your email address, but it did email me my results. The quiz itself is totally free, but if you want to know more information or dig deeper into what the spiritual gifts are, then you would need to pay for that.

The quiz separates spiritual gifts into three categories: Miraculous Gifts, Enabling Gifts and Team Gifts; and is used to determine what Team Gifts you as an individual have – split into service, ministry, task-orientated and activity (such as teaching).

The website says:

Three categories of spiritual gifts exist 

CATEGORY ONE: The Miraculous Gifts, generally known today as Charismatic Gifts (apostles, tongues, interpretation of tongues, healing, and miracles). 

CATEGORY TWO: The Enabling Gifts, which all Christians have the ability to develop (faith, discernment, wisdom, and knowledge -- qualities possessed rather than activities performed). Many scholars combine these gifts with others, based on the similarity of these gift characteristics and the synonyms used by Paul to describe them in Scripture. For example, some scholars combine Discernment with Prophecy, Knowledge with Teaching, Wisdom with Exhortation, and Hospitality with Serving. 

CATEGORY THREE: the Team Gifts, which are service-, ministry-, task-oriented or are activities performed such as teaching. The Team Gifts are functional and involve speaking or ministering. Chances are, you have several of these gifts that vary in degrees and intensity. In many cases, spiritual gifts may complement your secular employment. The Spiritual Gifts Analysis you took identified your dominant TEAM GIFTS, which will help find your place on God's team in your church.

The results are scored according to the following categories so you can see which gift or gifts are dominant for you: Evangelism, Prophecy, Teaching, Exhortation, Shepherding, Showing Mercy, Serving, Giving, and Administration. Now, I don’t know anybody else who has completed the quiz, so I don’t know if it’s considered roughly accurate or not, but I thought I would share my results with you, so at least I now have a starting point.

My dominant gifts are Mercy Showing, Administration and Teaching. The results then give a long paragraph about each gift. I will quote snippets that I think do apply to me, though it may be that there is some sort of bias in the phraseology such that everybody can pick out bits that apply to themselves? I don’t know.

Mercy Showing

As a mercy-shower you have the Spirit-given capacity and desire to serve God by identifying with and comforting those who are in distress. You understand and comfort your fellow Christian. … As a mercy-shower you are willing to deal with and minister to people who have needs that most people feel very uncomfortable working with. You seem to say the right thing at the right time…. You are easy to talk to, responsive to people, a good listener, peaceable, and agreeable. … In your burden to comfort others, your heart goes out to the poor, the aged, the ill, the underprivileged, and so on.

Administration

As an administrator you have the Spirit-given capacity and desire to serve God by organizing, administering, promoting, and leading the various affairs of the church. … You will put a plan on paper and start delegating responsibility. You may lean toward organizing things, events or programs, ... you usually organize details and have people carry them out. ... You are serious minded, highly motivated, intense, and have an accurate self-image. You tend to be more interested in the welfare of the group than your own desire.

Teaching

As a teacher you are one who communicates knowledge, guides, makes known or relays facts. You are likely more in-depth than the average Sunday school teacher. ... As a teacher you live to learn and teach (or perhaps write if you teach through the written medium). ... You love the Word, enjoy reading, may be a little shy of strangers, are creative and imaginative, and prefer teaching groups over individuals. You are generally confident, self-disciplined, and sometimes technical. You probably love charts, graphs, and lists. … The use of a verse out of context upsets you and you question the knowledge of those who teach you. You are organized and enjoy studying. 

My heart does go out to others: I have been technically homeless as a child (we lived in a Women’s Refuge for 6 months), and have had little money, so I do pray for those less fortunate than myself, and give to the foodbank and charity shops when I can. I do love admin; organising events, groups, anything. At this very moment I am organising a residential trip for fellow home educators next year, I am sorting out (and will be purchasing) what people want to do with the vouchers we won for coming first place in Beat the Street, I volunteer for an online home education website that I co-founded; I am admin for multiple facebook groups and a yahoo group, and there’s probably more that I’ve forgotten. I do genuinely enjoy organising (especially if I get to organise other people). And teaching is something I always wanted to do as a child. As I grew up, I went into industry, and now I have gone back to my roots and have been a private tutor for nearly 10 years. Whilst I don’t feel like I’m qualified for teaching within the church (not least because I’m aware that some of my beliefs are not traditional), teaching “through the written medium” aka this blog, does make sense to me and my passions. And researching and studying? Love it!

So what am I going to do with this new found knowledge? I don’t know yet. I will pray some more, asking God for direction. I will also talk to my church leader about how best to use my skills for the benefit of the church, whatever form that takes.