Transforming Church

This awareness also varied between the various Christian communities, (very) highest among evangelicals and much lower among mainlines, Roman Catholics being the lowest. Mainlines also had the largest percentage (37%) who did not believe they even had such a gift.

Three new trends appeared in the data from the last 14-15 years: (1) as one might have anticipated with the emerging importance of mentoring, the percentage claiming the gift of encouragement has been growing steadily. (2) the percentage of those not even knowing their gift(s) is rising rather than declining. (3) over this same period, with reason to be alarmed, the percentage of those claiming the gift of evangelism has declined by 75%. Whatever brought about the latter two trends needs to be identified and addressed; they pointedly reflect the stalled numerical growth for Christ in post-modern America.

The survey also revealed that those introducing other than the biblically identified twenty spiritual gifts have added confusion rather than help to spiritual gift discovery. We at TC.com have been concerned about that for years. The result is 20+% of the “gifts” being claimed by respondents are talents or abilities that are not really a part of the spiritual gift profile.

Between those who are oblivious to having a gift and those claiming “gifts” not biblical, nearly two-thirds of all Christians have not been able to accurately relate to their gifts. Unless we are able to change that, the church will never make the necessary transition from membership to discipleship.

The specific set of gifts often identified as charismatic are clearly least claimed by those belonging to mainline churches, much more likely to be named by those belonging to evangelical churches. The data the Barna Group gathered also suggested, according to them, a similar connection with the number of Christians who claim the gift of teaching. In this case, however, instead of suggesting the gift of teaching more frequently appears amongst evangelicals, it says a lot more about the weaker spiritual awareness currently experienced by those in mainline churches.

Those claiming the two spiritual gifts that relate to leadership revealed that people often feel torn between their natural talent and training, and God’s gifting to empower their leadership. Exposre to good exegesis of these gifts, like that provided by Kenneth Haugk, should increase awareness and easily settle that confusion.