Toby Keva
What is the difference between gifts and spiritual gifts? Is the difference only that the first isn’t preceded by the word ‘spiritual’ while the later is? What makes one gift spiritual and the other not?
Let’s take for example Tiger Woods. Even after the shocking allegations of his prolific sexual behaviour, people still think that he is a great golfer; the best in our time, if not of all time. Nobody could doubt his ‘giftedness’ in playing golf. But would anyone call his gift in playing golf as spiritual? I wouldn’t (although I would call it a ‘miracle’, but that’s another issue).
So how come a great gift like Tiger Wood’s gift in playing golf isn’t called as a spiritual gift? I think it all depends whether the gift is used for other people’s sake or only for personal gain.
If the gift is used to nurture the wellbeing of other human beings, it’s spiritual; if it is not, I would be ashamed to call it spiritual.
A similar understanding is found in one of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 12). When Paul talked about spiritual gifts, he talked about them in the context of the Body of Christ. Within the Christian community, gifts are only considered as spiritual if they are used to nurture the Body of Christ — that is, the Christian community itself.
Spiritual gifts are called spiritual because they are given by the Spirit of God, are manifestations of God’s Spirit, and are not intended to be inward-looking, introverted gifts; they are given by the Spirit of God to nurture the people within the church (1 Corinthians 12:7 says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”).
However, I believe that the goal of any spiritual gift doesn’t stop within the church; it goes beyond to society as the manifestation of the Kingdom of God. These spiritual gifts are not restricted to ordained people; they are freely given to everyone within the Body of Christ.
The Uniting Church’s founding document, the Basis of Union (point 13) acknowledges the varieties of spiritual gifts within the church. It even pledges to mold the church’s structure to fit the manifestation of the Spirit of God within the spiritual gifts of its member. It says that:
“there is no gift without its corresponding services: all ministries have a part in the ministry of Christ. … The Uniting Church … will order its life in response to God’s call to enter more fully into mission.”
Sadly the church’s structure has often limited, even sometimes ‘killed’, the spiritual gifts of it’s members.
When this happens it is not only the church that suffers; the society itself suffers because the existence of the Body of Christ in the world is to serve the world.
Therefore a change of mindset needs to occur within the church today. Not that spiritual gifts are to be defined and filtered by the church’s structure (or regulation or law), but that the church’s structure (or regulation or law) itself are to be defined and designed by the spiritual gifts of its members. By embracing this bottom-up model of ministry, the church, the Uniting Church in particular, can be true to its conviction in the New Testament and the Basis of Union.
By following this model, the church can be attentive to the Spirit who gives birth and owns the church.
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