James Wibberding

Science tells us that, in nature, things tend toward disorder–that time spawns chaos. In the church, I suspect the opposite is true. We take simple things and make them complex. This is certainly true of spiritual gifts. We read texts like 1 Corinthians 12 and make seminars, sophisticated gifts assessment inventories, and committees to direct spiritual gift development. No doubt these tools have served some people well but what the apostle Paul really meant to say was quite simple: God made you who you are for a purpose. In the Corinthian church, they had certainly noticed their unique approaches to life (There is evidence in the fact that Paul spends much of his letter telling them how to work together in spite of differences). The same is true for most of us. We don’t need spiritual gifts inventories or the like to tell us what excites us and what we’re good at. We just need to employ creativity in finding ways to use our gifts to serve him. It’s quite simple.