Talent and Gift
Just before we move on to look at each of the five ministries,
it is important to consider an important distinction made in the New Testament:
natural talent v. Spiritual gift. For
some, there is no difference between the two except possibly in the intensity
or the significance of the ability being discussed. In general, I say to people that the main
difference becomes apparent during the exercise of the particular ability. I have a talent for administration: I’m good
at it and I do it well, with effectiveness and efficiency. That’s not just me talking; others say the
same. I could do administration day
after day for years and enjoy it and stay on top of my game and retire a happy
man. It’s one of my talents.
By Spiritual gift, I am a teacher-prophet. When I am operating in my Spiritual gift, I
find two significant things happen that don’t happen when I am operating in my
talents: 1) I experience these quite amazing surges of Spiritual energy, like
I’ve gone from 12 volts to 240 volts. I
experience high levels of Spiritual ‘discharge’ and, simultaneously, high
levels of reinvigoration, on the spot, while I am serving; 2) I can see
Spiritual change in the people I am serving right before my eyes. I try not to engage too deeply with them
while this is happening and let the Holy Spirit do what He needs to do. I find that I cannot continue indefinitely
working at that intensity with those amounts of Spiritual charge and discharge;
my body cannot keep up with my Spirit, so I need to have a break, and return to
the ministry after allowing my body to rejuvenate.
This is how, in my own experience, I distinguish
between talent and Spiritual gift on a practical level. And I say this here because, in my view, the
five ministries I talk about here are Spiritual gifts, not talents. I believe that everybody has a range of
talents; there are a few things that each of us is good at and we enjoy doing
them. Finding what they are and putting
them to use is a very satisfying and soul-building thing to do. They can also earn us a living.
When a person repents and turns toward God and trusts
in Jesus entirely for his/her righteousness, God forgives sin, adopts into his
family and gives His Holy Spirit to that person. Now I happen to believe that it is impossible
for the Holy Spirit to be resident in a person but be invisible or
unrecognisable. Generally what happens
to people who receive the Holy Spirit is that their lives are changed in
noticeable ways. One of those ways is in
what the bible calls the “fruit of the Spirit”: the love, joy, peace, patience,
etc. of God are ignited in our lives and we are changed. A second way the Spirit is visible and
recognisable in our lives is by what the bible calls Spiritual gifts. These are special endowments from our
heavenly Father that we bring to the Body of Christ for all to benefit from.
In a special category of Spiritual gift are the five I
am discussing here and we find them mentioned in Ephesians 4: apostle, prophet,
teacher, evangelist, shepherd. One
difference we note with these five is that they are gifts of people to the
Body. For these people to be recognised
and called by the Spirit and by other men and women, these abilities, I
believe, are given to them sovereignly by God, through the Holy Spirit. They may or may not be consistent with
talents the people have. For instance,
the ability God gave me as a teacher and prophet was, I thought, completely at
odds with my natural talents. My natural
inclination is to be quietly and efficiently working in the background to make
the lives of the front-line workers easier and more enjoyable. My Spiritual gifts put me on the front line
and I’m no loner the shy, retiring type.
God not only knows me and knows what is in me (because He put it there),
He knows what I am capable of in the power of the Holy Spirit.
These five ministry roles – apostle, prophet, teacher,
evangelist, shepherd – are gifts of abilities to people from God by the Holy
Spirit; but more particularly, they are gifts of people to the Body of Christ
in order to take her on to the maturity and the unity that measures up to Jesus
and is sufficient for the task of being his body in the world today, to reveal
His glory and advance His kingdom
Talent as a leader does not an apostle make; talent as
a public speaker does not a prophet make; talent as a school teacher does not a
teacher make; talent as salesman does not an evangelist make; talent as a
counsellor does not a shepherd make.
God, the bible says, takes the foolish things in this world and makes
them wise; He takes the lowly things and makes them shine. What is at play is not our talents, but the
glory and power of God in changing lives, and for this, God needs humble men
and women who seek first His kingdom and His way of righteousness. To these, almost as if regardless of talent,
He gives His power as He sees fit and the most unlikely become warriors for
Him.
But leadership within ecclesia comes
from these five Spiritual gifts to people and people to the Body, not just one
or two. To the extent that ‘church’ is
favouring one and rejecting others; to that extent it is illegitimate. To the extent that not less than 2 or 3 are
gathered under the authority of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit,
recognising these five foundational ministries; to that extent the kingdom of
God is present and ecclesia is being built.
That’s how God intends it; that’s how we need to do it – for His sake.Next we look at the 5 ministries themselves.
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