The spiritual gifts define the very essence of the church for the Pauline corpus and beyond the New Testament. In order to exercise these gifts, church members need to recognize, affirm, test each other's exercising of the gifts in the arena's of Christ's body. This requires that we know one another. Therefore, the exercise of one's gifts will become more difficult the larger and more impersonal the church becomes. To facilitate largeness, however, we often try to administer systems to funnel people into their giftedness. We mass administer Myers-Briggs personality type and skill profile tests. Yet this misunderstands and changes the very functions of the gifts in community. Gifts are more then just one's inherent talent slots or personality traits best suited to a particular task. They are supernaturally endowed capacities to be discovered within a living body of Christ. The mass administration of trait analyses is one more capitulation to modernity by evangelicalism. This methodology subdues the Holy Spirit into a technique to mass administer what was intended for the community of Christ to manage. - David Fitch in "The Great Giveaway"
Coaster goes up (a little)
Unused photo from the Globe and Mail shoot. So, last night and all day today I was on the top floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Vancouver. Quite auspicious surroundings for church council/pastors meetings! there were stunning views of the North Shore mountains, Stanley Park and the downtown buildings. The meetings were lengthy, exhausting and a lot of work. Basically, FBC has been on a year long journey of crafting its vision statement and core values - we did it with the assistance of a coach from Outreach Canada. We are coming down the home stretch and needed to hammer out everything for presentation to the congregation. Today was the first day that I have begun to feel lighter and ready to resume the work. Although still feeling wounded from this whole mess, I'm ready to limp on. It's true: Sunday,Monday - elation at finally reaching a goal of holding a first@night service in a trendy nightclub - excitement at getting press coverage - even thoug...
Comments
I agree with Fitch's view and the premise that mass administering a place for Spiritual Gifts can impede to a large degree the work of the Holy Spirit. However I think that there are a few things that we need to consider.
I think I will take the time to respond to your post here:
http://lifesdirection.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/creating-an-enviroment-for-spiritual-gifts-to-be-discovered-taught-and-recognized/
Blessings.