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TC.com Reports on Spiritual Gift Awareness
This is a report regarding an early February, 2009 Barna Group survey which revealed the spiritual gifts that Christians say they have.
The Bible teaches that every Christian has received from the Holy Spirit at least one spiritual gift. It is not at all uncommon to learn that Christians are not aware of these gifts, or at least not aware where or how they have received them. More are aware of the term “spiritual gifts” than are aware of the gifts themselves. This lack of awareness by Christians is the direct result of having a challenged understanding of discipleship.
The Barna study claims, “Awareness of spiritual gifts was most common among self-described Christians who live in the South (75%) and West (71%), and least common among those living in the Midwest (63%) and Northeast (58%).”
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.
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Comments on this Entry:
In more than 30 years in mainline churches, I have never heard one teaching on spiritual gifts. I have heard some mention of spiritual gifts relating to talents and training. In my jaundiced eye, it appears that there is great reluctance to talk about the Holy Spirit except in very general terms. Why is that? Does He not exist coequal with the Father and the Son? We continually claim solo scriptura but demonstrate great ignorance of what is actually contained in scripture.
Do I have gifts? Sure I do. And I know, in part, what they are. But, I can assure you, if I were to tell folks what they are, I would be accused of arrogance or I would just get a blank look. You are right..there needs to be good exegesis here. The Body of Christ is starved for the gifts, kinda like sitting at a banquet table covered with good food, and perishing from hunger.
Posted by: Joe M. at March 2, 2009 07:09 PM
How true it is, Joe. I would never presume to suggest that I am typical, but I was ordained 45 years ago and for the first at least 15 years I was a Lutheran pastor about only description/explanation I could give for the Holy Spirit was to quote Luther's meaning to the third article of the creed. I was aware that God was at work in my life, but I had no perception that was the Holy Spirit. I hope you got to check out the url's that appear in the report; they lead to other significant articles regarding these concerns. Another significant article to check out would be: http://www.transformingchurch.com/resourcetoolbox/2005/10/trust_part_3_re.php
On the matter of spiritual gifts, urgently needed transformation today leaves the church little choice but to move from membership to discipleship. That will never comprehensively happen without discerning which of the twenty biblical spiritual gifts one has received from the Holy Spirit. The complement of gifts in the congregation should shape its ministry. Again, shamefully I was a pastor those fifteen or so years before I ever made a connection that these biblically identified gifts had anything to do with Christ's mission and ministry today.
Posted by: Roger Ganzel at March 2, 2009 10:05 PM
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