Spiritual Gift Assessments
A friend recently asked me for my thoughts on spiritual gifts and particulary, on spiritual gift assessments. I had taken these assessments in the past and, though I found them interesting, found they had little impact on my life. I found that they just discovered the obvious (yes, I like to teach and no, I generally do not visit the elderly and widows). I had to admit, to my shame, that I had never taken time to study spiritual gifts and form a belief on what they are, how they are dispensed, and so on. In my defense, I had never even heard the term “spiritual gifts” until a couple of years ago because the Reformed churches I grew up in placed no emphasis on them.
As I began to research them I found one strange thing: it seems no one can agree about these gifts. It seems everyone has a different list of the gifts and even a different idea of how and when they are dispensed. One thing they all agree on is that these gifts are given by the Holy Spirit to believers after they become Christians. Some argue the gifts are given immediately and others believe they are given at baptism. The Bible lists only a few gifts (see 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 and 12:1-11) and some assessments list far more. The following is a typical list:
Administration: the gift that enables a believer to formulate, direct, and carry out plans necessary to fulfill a purpose. Biblical References: I Corinthians 12:28, Acts 14:23.
Artistry: the gift that gives the believer the skill of creating artistic expressions that produce a spiritual response of strength and inspiration. Biblical References: Exodus 31:1-11, Psalm 149:3a.
Discernment: the gift that motivates a believer to seek God’s will and purpose and apply that understanding to individual and congregational situations. Biblical References: John 16:6-15, Romans 9:1, I Corinthians 2:9-16.
Evangelism: the gift that moves believers to reach nonbelievers in such a way that they are baptized and become active members of the Christian community. Biblical References: Matthew 28:16-20, Ephesians 4:11- 16, Acts 2:36-40.
Exhortation: the gift that moves the believer to reach out with Christian love and presence to people in personal conflict of facing a spiritual void. Biblical References: John 14:1, II Timothy 1:16-18, III John 5-8.
Faith: the gift that gives a believer the eyes to see the Spirit at work and the ability to trust the Spirit’s leading without indication of where it all might lead. Biblical References: Genesis 12:1-4a, Mark 5:25-34, I Thessalonians 1:8-10.
Giving: the gift that enables a believer to recognize God’s blessings and to respond to those blessings by generously and sacrificially giving of one’s resources (time, talent, and treasure). Biblical References: II Corinthians 9:6-15, Luke 21:1-4.
Hospitality: the gift that causes a believer to joyfully welcome and receive guests and those in need of food and lodging. Biblical References: Romans 12:13, Romans 16:23a, Luke 10:38.
Intercession: the gift that enables a believer to pray with the certainty that prayer is heard and when requests are made, answers will come. Biblical References: Matthew 6:6-15, Luke 11:1-10, Ephesians 6:18.
Knowledge: the gift that drives a person to learn, analyze and uncover new insights with regard to the Bible and faith. Biblical References: I Corinthians 12:8; I Corinthians 14:6, Romans 12:2.
Leadership: the gift that gives a believer the confidence to step forward, give direction and provide motivation to fulfill a dream or complete a task. Biblical References: Romans 12:8, John 21:15-17, II Timothy 4:1-5.
Mercy: the gift that motivates a believer to feel deeply for those in physical, spiritual, or emotional need and then act to meet that need. Biblical References: Luke 7:12-15, Luke 10:30-37, Matthew 25:34-36.
Music—Vocal: the gift that gives a believer the capability and opportunity to present personal witness and inspiration to others through singing. Biblical References: Psalm 96:1-9, Psalm 100:1-2, Psalm 149:1-2.
Music—Instrumental: the gift that inspires a believer to express personal faith and provide inspiration and comfort through the playing of a musical instrument. Biblical References: Psalm 33:1-5, Psalm 150, I Samuel 16:14-23.
Pastoring (Shepherding): the gift that gives a believer the confidence, capability and compassion to provide spiritual leadership and direction for individuals or groups of believers. Biblical References: I Timothy 4:12-16, I Timothy 3:1-13, II Timothy 4:1-2.
Service (Helps): the gift that enables a believer to work gladly behind the scenes in order that God’s work is fulfilled. Biblical References: Luke 23:50-54, Romans 16:1-16, Philippians 2:19-23.
Skilled Craft: the gift that enables a believer to create, build, maintain or repair items used within the church. Biblical References: Exodus 30:1-6, Exodus 31:3-5, Ezekiel 27:4-11.
Teaching: the gift that enables a believer to communicate a personal understanding of the Bible and faith in such a way that it becomes clear and understood by others. Biblical References: I Corinthians 12:28, Matthew 5:1-12, Acts 18:24-48.
Wisdom: the gift that allows the believer to sort through opinions, facts and thoughts in order to determine what solution would be best for the individual believer or the community of believers. Biblical References: I Corinthians 2:6-13, James 3:13-18, II Chronicles 1:7-11.
Writing: the gift that gives a believer the ability to
express truth in a written form; a form that can edify, instruct and strengthen the
community of believers. Biblical References: I John 2:1-6, 12-14, I Timothy 3:14-15,
Jude 3.
This list was taken from this assessment. I found it interesting that several of the gifts are only proof-texted by the Old Testament which was written before the Spirit was given to believers.
I took a couple of the surveys that are available online and found them quite similar to ones I have taken in the past. The general format is between 30 to 50 multiple choice questions, most of which can be answered on a scale of 1 to 4 (1 meaning the description does not fit me at all and 4 meaning it is exactly like me). For example, I took this test which tells me my primary spiritual gift is knowledge which it describes as follows:
The gift of knowledge allows people to automatically convert facts, data, and information into useful and important knowledge. People possessing this gift can learn in a variety of ways, retain what they learn, and understand how learning can be applied in meaningful and productive ways. Those gifted with knowledge have a voracious and insatiable desire to learn more, and they seek multiple avenues for deepening their understanding of God’s world, God’s will, and God’s people.
[For an example of this gift in popular media] See the good, the bad, and the ugly side of knowledge in Matt Damon’s character in the film Good Will Hunting.
Though I digress, I would like to point out an obvious conflict between gifts of the spirit and a movie like Good Will Hunting which, being full of swearing and sex, is hardly compatible with the Spirit.
A question I had to ask myself is this: Is there any Biblical model for searching for spiritual gifts? James Sundquist researched this and discovered the following:
I can’t find one single Scripture that says finding our gift was EVER a problem for the Church.
I can’t find one single Scripture that instructs us how to find our gift.
I can’t find any historical account that finding our gift was a problem for the Church.
I can’t find any historical account that finding our gift was a problem for Church Fathers.
Anything we do in Christ is not through our strengths, but is perfected in weakness.
I can’t find one single Scripture which uses a subjective balance of weighing our strengths and weaknesses to determine our Gift(s) of the Holy Spirit.
I can’t find one single Scripture that uses personality or personality theory to determine our course in Christ or in the Church.
I can’t find one single Scripture that instructs us to come up with a numerical value or rating system for the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
He also found that the vast majority of spiritual surveys are drawn from the teachings of Carl Jung who was about as anti-Christian as a person can be. This in itself should be cause for concern. Combined with the lack of Biblical model, this should be sufficient to raise a warning flag.
In the end, though, I think my greatest worry is that these tests can be completed successfully by both believers and unbelievers. If a spiritual gift assessment is truly assessing gifts given by the Holy Spirit, someone who is not a Christian should necessarily achieve a score of 0. However, this is simply not the case. There may be questions related to spiritual matters that an unbeliever can not answer, but many of the questions are generic in nature. For example “I enjoy pitching in on service projects in the church” could be as easily answered by an unbeliever as a believer. The same holds true for “People seem to respect me and follow my lead.” We need to ask, then, if these tests are truly measuring spiritual gifts or if they are simply examining personality. Or perhaps we are only given spiritual gifts that compliment our personalities so personality and gifts are one in the same. That would be completely unsatisfying, because I believe God can work through gifts that may contradict our personalities. Think of Moses and how God used him despite his obvious shyness and lack of eloquence. Had God only used Moses’ existing talents and personality He would not have had much to work with!
Am I ready to write-off spiritual gift assessments as a waste of time? No, I think that would be a kneejerk reaction. I see little basis, though, to believe that these truly measure the gifts of the Spirit. I am sure these tests can be valuable in assessing my talents and personality traits and can cause people to look more thoroughly at where they should use their talents to honor God. But unless gifts and personality are one and the same, I do not understand how these tests measure spiritual gifts.
Comments (8) »
1. Shelley
March 26, 2004
10:02 AM
Discernment: the gift that motivates a believer to seek God’s will and purpose and apply that understanding to individual and congregational situations. Biblical References: John 16:6-15, Romans 9:1, I Corinthians 2:9-16.
More than that, I think it’s the ability to recognize when leaven has entered the lump of dough, and that it’s time clean the kitchen.
I’ve often heard the cliche ‘take the meat but leave the bones’ when doctrinely questionable things are discussed, but the Bible’s warning about leaven makes it pretty clear that practicing true discernment isn’t for the casual participant.
2. Tim
March 26, 2004
11:13 AM
Shelley,
I think your definition of discernment is good. It definitely involves applying Biblical standards to “real-life” applications.
You said “I’ve often heard the cliche ‘take the meat but leave the bones’ when doctrinely questionable things are discussed, but the Bible’s warning about leaven makes it pretty clear that practicing true discernment isn’t for the casual participant.”
Can you explain your last sentence a little more? I’m interested in what you say there…
3. Shelley
March 26, 2004
12:38 PM
Once leaven is mixed in with the dough, it’s quite impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins, unlike the relative ease of picking bones out of your food. If your intent was to make unleavened bread, you’d have to throw away the whole lump and start over, hence the Biblical injunction about avoiding all leaven/sinful false doctrine in the first place.
Discernment is something which every Christian should request of the Lord, especially in these latter days. Jesus uses the word ‘deceive’ four times in Matt 24. There is some argument over 24:24 whether the true elect can be deceived or not, but because the whole theme of the chapter is on being alert, watching and praying, that I’m inclined to think that the ‘if possible’ means that it MAY be possible if an individual lacks vigilance.
Immersing yourself in the whole written Word of God will make you able to recognize the signs of a puffed-up leavened lump. When it comes to knowing your Bible for the purposes of discernment, no Christian can afford to be only a casual participant.
4. Tim
March 26, 2004
12:54 PM
Great stuff, Shelley! Thanks for that. I certainly agree that Christians (or the church, anyways) can be, has been and will be, deceived!
5. Martin Turner
January 30, 2006
8:09 PM
Should we also avoid the use of guitars?
I know you are not suggesting anything of the kind, but someone did once tell me that I should not play the guitar because there were no guitars in Scripture (nor php based websites, as it happens).
Like you, I have taken many spiritual gift tests online and in seminars. Very clearly they reflect the particular gift theology of the person who put them together. Equally, I’ve never met anyone who claimed any inherent spirituality or value in them. They are simply tools, like sitting down with someone who asks you questions about yourself, and then gives you their advice based on their understanding of Scripture and the wisdom God has given them.
The biggest problem with gift tests — I would suggest — is the lack of knowledge people have about themselves, sometimes exacerbated by well-meaning teachers, preachers and leaders who emphasise the importance of one gift over another.
What worries me about your article is that you are moving towards (but are not in) a position where you begin to discount what the Bible does say about gifts, on the basis that there is no common understanding of it.
We should recognise that a simple study of Bible words will not help us: sometimes they are called charismata (grace gifts), sometimes they are called domata pneumatou (gifts of the spirit). Equally, there is a clear overlap between the lists of gifts in the New Testament and the lists of ministries - apostle, prophet, teacher, and so on, and the lists of gifts in the New Testament vary. It is perhaps unfortunate to criticise gift tests for not sharing the same lists of gifts when Paul did not always use the same list!
The problem is further compounded by the fact that almost all of the gifts are also Christian virtues (this depends slightly on how you understand gifts of tongues and miracles). We are not all evangelists, but we are all called to witness, we do not all have the gift or ministry of servanthood, but we are all called to serve, and so on.
I’ve been a Christian for thirty-three years, and I was an evangelical missionary for ten of them. On gift tests I tend to get high scores, because of having been put in positions where I had to fulfil a ministry because there was no-one else around, or just through trying to live the Christian life over so many years.
I wouldn’t recommend a gift test to a new Christian (although I don’t agree that a non-Christian would score highly on questions like ‘I enjoy praying for the sick’ or ‘I believe that proclaiming the Gospel is the most important thing’), because they haven’t built up a picture yet of what God is doing in their lives. On the other hand, I’ve just been through two gift tests with a young man who has been a believer for five years. The tests pointed out what I (and others) had already seen in him — that he had the gift no-one wants, of servanthood.
Someone who doesn’t believe in gifts (or perhaps just not in gift tests) could argue that he has a particularly godly attitude in the area of humility, or that his personality led him to want to help people. I wouldn’t really want to argue the toss about that. But the tests did help to ‘convict him out of his own mouth’ that he had something which was particularly valuable to offer the church, even though he would have perhaps preferred something more glamourous.
Is there a difference between gifts and ministries? I couldn’t say with certainty. Are gifts a supernatural empowering by the Spirit to minister, or are they just God developing a particular virtue or fruit of the Spirit in a person? I’m not sure that that question has any real meaning. Does a gift-test help someone recognise what strengths they currently have? I would argue, within the limits of the theology of the question-setter, and the self-knowledge of the responder, that they can.
God bless
Martin Turner http://www.stechfordbaptist.org.uk
6. Martin Turner
February 24, 2006
12:44 PM
I’ve been thinking about your comments for several weeks, well as some of the weaknesses of gifts tests in general.
One of them seems to be that gifts tests appear to be for larger churches — the Willow Creek list gives more gifts than we have church members!
We’ve therefore constructed our own gift test, aimed at small churches, and only referencing the gifts which are named as gifts in the New Testament. Also, unlike other tests, we’ve actually weighted it, so that “I’d quite like to perform miracles” doesn’t get as much weight as “I’ve performed quite a few miracles” (we didn’t actually use either of those questions).
If you’d like to have a look, please go to: http://www.stechfordbaptist.org.uk/You%20and%20God/Growing/SpiritualGifts.html
7. Andrew Ellis
April 13, 2007
11:06 PM
Hi, A few months ago I met a new group of people at my school that I had never really got to know before, me being a freshman, and them being seniors. I met this girl thats was a Christian, and was very smart in the Word, but she had never heard of Spiritual Gifts before. I saw this as an opurtunity and started researching. I would come home after shcool everyday, get my work done, and start looking up bible verses and looking through the Spiritual Gifts test, and I probably went through 50 of them, but I never could get enough information on them. I have told her everything I know about them, and she’s very interested now. The only problem is, she is not the brightest crayola in the box, and is not very good at looking up information, and I don’t know where else to look. Are there any sites, verses, or advice anyone could give me, I’m stuck…..
8. Gary Halstead
December 18, 2007
4:22 PM
Your blog and the resulting comments take us to an important question, is there a difference between the grace given Spiritual gifts that are given specific individuals during their lifetime and specific talents that are given individuals as a natural part of their personalities? These are both gifts of the Spirit. However, one is thought the work of the spirit in creation and the other through the gifts of grace during one’s lifetime. Given that we are all God’s children through our creation we all receive certain gifts/talents through the spirit as a part of the gift of our personality. These can have a significant impact on the type of ministry position that we find fulfilling and where we can be the most effective. I have experienced may a frustrated parishioner over the years who was volunteering in an ill-fitting ministry. This often led to burnout and the lack of desire to try again in a different ministry area. It is true that God has often used people to do tasks in the bible where it did not seems to fit their personality, i.e. Moses. However, this leads us to the second gifting of the Holy Spirit where God’s grace provides a gifting beyond the natural gifts of the individual.
This second set of gifts, which tends to be focused on in the 1 Corinthians 12:1-14 passage, includes the primary gift of grace through the Spirit, which is faith, and others which are seen as special gifts including, tongues, prophecy, interpretation of tongues, miracles and etc. Also, included here would be the special calling that we occasionally get that calls us outside of our comfort zone. Discernment is needed here, a gift in and of itself, to be sure that God is doing the calling. However, with that established, there needs to be faith that God “will not challenge us beyond our capacities” and that God will gift the capacities needed, note again here Moses, Isaiah, and Paul.
Given all this, I often suggest to people who are wondering what God it calling them to do to carefully consider their spiritual gifts and God given talents, with the understanding that God created them the way they are with something in mind. With that as a starting point their discernment process is well underway.
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