It has become popular in the last few decades of the American church to encourage Christians to discover their spiritual gifts. This trend, though generally positive, needs much clarification. This article seeks to delineate the various definitions of “spiritual gifts,” to outline what Scripture says on the matter, to describe the present models being used, and to offer another model that better adheres to what Scripture says about the nature of man.
What do we Mean by Spiritual Gifts?
Scripture gives a list of gifts or spiritual gifts in only four places. They are as follows:
Romans 12:6-9: “We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”
I Corinthians 2:8-10: “To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.”
I Corinthians 12:28-29: “And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having •gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues.”
Ephesians 4: I I -12: “It was He who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service.”
The Typical “Spiritual Gifts” Test
The typical spiritual gifts booklet will use all the seven gifts listed in Romans 12, and may or may not add several gifts from the Corinthian passages. Some may also include the category of “evangelist,” from Ephesians 4. A few booklets even add celibacy, hospitality, and martyrdom in their lists, since a verse may allude to one of these as gifts in a solitary instance.
To each category or gift, an extensive description or definition is given, each differing substantially from the others. Tests are developed in light of these definitions to see where people fit in the categories. While the names of the gifts themselves correspond directly to these Scriptural passages, the Biblical support generally stops there. The meat of these spiritual gifts tests are in the definitions of each gift, and for these definitions there is no real Scriptural support.
For example, the gift of teaching is defined by most booklets as a person who loves research, loves to understand systems, philosophy and theology and has a bent towards accuracy and precision. Apparently, someone with this gift may not necessarily be good at presenting these truths in front of a classroom. An excellent classroom teacher may be working from a basic gift of exhortation or prophecy.
These definitions are interesting theory, but there is no Biblical reason to define the gifts in these ways. Vastly different personality characteristics could be given for each gift listed in the Scriptures above. These definitions offered by the booklets are generally pulled from out of guesses based on the definition of the word in the passage, but guesses only the same.
Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Melancholy
Another popular model for understanding giftedness uses the Aristotelian categories of Choleric, Sanguine, Phlegmatic, and Melancholy. Again, definitions for these categories have been pulled from the air. The contrasts are indeed interesting, and portraits of various Biblical characters are provided as illustrations. But the categories and definitions are not taken directly from Scripture.
What about the Supernatural Gifts?
It is clear from the Scriptures cited that these lists are filled with supernatural gifts. Groups that are uncomfortable with these supernatural gifts usually stick with those listed in Romans 12, with perhaps a few other safe ones mixed in. Even this maneuver is difficult, seeing that the first gift in Romans 12 is “prophecy.” With shaky reasoning, this gift is defined as pertaining to those who are outspoken, compelled to proclaim God’s truth, and willing to confront injustice. Thus, prophecy is kept from necessarily implying supernatural involvement.
Other booklets are very open to the supernatural gifts listed in scripture and include them all in their tests. This is a more honest way to construct categories. However, the definitions of these gifts are still rather ambiguous. A problem larger than fear of the supernatural makes all these various models inadequate for identifying human giftedness.
Looking More Deeply at the Issue
Seeing that these various popular tests have so little Scriptural support for their content, why are they so popular? Because our culture is starving for anything that hints at exploring the uniqueness, depth, variety, and grandeur of the human personality made in the image of God.
Let me explain further. Spiritual gifts tests, no matter how simple, do begin to delineate differences in human beings. When you take one of these tests you find out you are like this, not that, and you are not like people in all these other categories. You are different! You are special. You are needed. And you also need people different from you to complement you in your weaknesses. Something deep from within us testifies that these ideas are true, and indeed they are. To the degree that spiritual gifts tests bring to light this idea of human uniqueness, they are very helpful and positive.
The Pervasive Darwin
The reason we are so starved to get this message of our specialness and uniqueness can be traced to modern culture’s view of man. None of us usually realizes it, but we often operate, unwittingly, from an evolutionary, behavioristic, reductionist view of man in society. It has taken a century or two, but Darwin’s ideas of evolution (slime+ time = man) have permeated most of our institutions. This explains the medical community’s inability to quickly eradicate abortion or euthanasia. Why get upset if it’s only an animal?
This same reductionistic view of man has crept into our ideas of work and management. We view everyone as generally alike, “manpower” available to further the ends of production. The institution and its categories of labor are devised first, and the people are fit into these categories later. While our culture does think in categories of skill differences -a builder, a thinker, an artist – the main differential is in terms of hierarchy. That means you are either a line worker, foreman, supervisor, middle manager, executive, etc.
Power is the main difference in these categories. The better the person, the higher the place in the hierarchy, the greater the power. This “survival of the fittest” mentality is Darwinian evolutionary thinking.
So when a test for spiritual gifts gets beyond power games and begins to explore what gifts and abilities are inherently in us by God’s design, that gets us excited! It touches a knowledge deep within us that we are unique and special, made in the image of God, “fearfully and wonderfully made” as it says in Psalm 139.
Today’s Tests are Reductionistic
For this same reason, the Spiritual Gifts tests as we know them are not adequate. If indeed we are made in the very image of God (Genesis 1 :28), if we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” if we are the crown and jewel of God’s created order, then certainly there is more splendor to the design of mankind’s personality than the present thinking allows for. Think of it-six billion people on earth, and only 20 or so categories to fit them in to! No, the categories for identifying and understanding the personality of a man necessarily need to be gigantic.
The typical spiritual gifts test used in today’s churches, while helpful to a degree and based in good intentions, are reductionistic. That is, they reduce the grandeur and splendor of God’s crown of creation, made in his image. Similar secular personality tests, from which many spiritual gifts tests are actually based, are also reductionist, behavioristic evolutionary models.
The Power of Naming
Every one of the six billion people on this earth is unique. Each has a unique set of fingerprints. Each has a unique tooth structure. Each face and every profile is distinctly different from everyone else’s. We believe (how could it not be so!) that every personality is glaringly unique as well.
But how do you go about identifying and understanding that uniqueness? This is where the fun part begins. When we identify the gifts and motivated abilities of our fellow human beings, we are doing the same thing Adam did when he named or classified the animals in the Garden of Eden. This ability to name is a distinctly human characteristic.
We use language to name things. In the English language we have over 20,000 words, plus all the combinations of those words in phrases and sentences. Each word, phrase, and sentence is a potential category. Now, finally, we have enough categories from which to begin to delineate and identify the absolutely unique personalities of our fellow human beings.
Introducing the Technology of the Doma Institute
The Doma Institute has developed a profiling technology that best reflects the Biblical uniqueness of humanity. It was founded by Ralph Mattson, author of several books including Finding a Job you can Love; Visions of Grandeur: Leadership that creates Positive Change; and Redeemed Ambition. Mattson’s clients for consulting in human resources range from Proctor & Gamble and Alcoa to Campus Crusade for Christ. He is considered by many to be the country’s premier expert on giftedness and management by design.
The Doma Group’s Individual Operating Style (IOS) profile consists of 65-100 words, prioritized and categorized in a way that demonstrates a person’s unique way of working and achieving. (Doma also has a more comprehensive profile called a MOTIF.)
By looking at the four examples, you can see how the profile is structured. These are profiles of three colleagues and myself in the mid-90s at the Chattanooga Resource Foundation. This organization conducted a leadership development program for several years where 50 rising leaders in the community—elected officials, businessmen, artists, educators, ministers, etc.—were annually exposed to a comprehensive biblical view of the community through various seminars and tours. Each graduate also received an Individual Operating Style profile and individual consulting on their calling and destiny for the community.
The “Role” at the top of each profile captures how a person goes about operating. The “Focus” section captures the material, subject matter, or “stuff’ the person tends to operate with.
The top line of Tony Souder’s profile says:
Relational, Supportive, Grower/Developer
The bold word in this top line is the key word. That means that if we only had one word in all the English language to describe Tony, we would have to use the word Developer. Fortunately, since we are not reductionistic and understand the need for more dynamic description for a man made in God’s image, we have more words to describe him. The phrase “Relational, Supportive, Grower/Developer” helps describe just what kind of developer he is.
Fortunately, again, we are not reduced to just this one phrase to profile Tony. We have four more below, in priority from top to bottom, to further clarify his operating style.
Relational, Supportive, Grower/Developer
Investigating, Focused, Practical, Attainer
“In the Action” Challenge Overcomer
Equipping, Innovative, Director/Coodinator
Encouraging Trainer
Notice Jonathan Rummel’s role. His key word is Leader. This sounds more like the typical human resource jargon we are familiar with. But you only have to go a line or two into his role before his uniqueness begins to unfold as well.
“In the Action,” Managing President Leader
Dean Arnold’s role captures an entirely different person. He is not managing and presiding nor growing and developing. He battles, lobbies, promotes, and impacts.
Conviction Driven Battler/Lobbyist/Promoter/Impactor
Doug Daugherty has still another interesting and unique way of operating. He solves problems by developing another conceptual initiative whose values help solve the original problem.
Overcoming Problem Solver by Development Rebuilding
to Implement Concept/Value
Can God make something so complex? Absolutely.
Each of these men do their role (top line, etc.) constantly. That means Doug Daugherty routinely solves problems via values projects when he is at home, at work, doing ministry, or at hobbies. He did it when he was young. He’ll do it when he is old. This is the way God made him to be.
Every person has an absolutely unique way of operating like this. This is God’s tremendous handiwork. Your particular unique design is what Ralph Mattson calls your “genius.”
What is the profiling process?
The method of the Doma technology involves capturing actual historical accomplishments in the person’s life where two things were true. One, the person enjoyed the accomplishment and, two, the person felt like he or she did an excellent job.
After analyzing and processing several stories of this type, a pattern emerges that reflects the unique, God-given operating style for that person.
The Doma Group has developed and refined this process on a professional level to meet the needs of corporations and of individuals seeking fine-tuned analysis of their gifts.
But the process itself is certainly not out of reach for the ordinary person. In fact, any of us can begin to evaluate people on this level by merely observing and appreciating what they do and how they go about doing it.
It is this very fact that gives credence to the authenticity of this model of human giftedness. Why would God make the tools for understanding our exquisite design unavailable until the 21st century? He hasn’t.
In a similar vein, the “Biblical support” for viewing human giftedness through the Doma model is much larger than the four sets of verses cited earlier. In fact, the Bible is inundated with support—because the Scriptures are filled from cover to cover with stories … of people!
The Bible outlines portrait after portrait of interesting characters, all different from the rest. Abraham is quiet and resolved. Jacob is deceptive yet maturing, Joseph is idealistic. Worldly-smart Moses is disillusioned, but gains the wisdom of the ages. Samson is volatile, fearless, and unfaithful. The list could go on and on, as could the descriptions of each character.
The accuracy of the Doma profile is strengthened by the fact that all information is taken from actual, historical events from the person’s life, not from an abstract, theoretical question on a test. A person’s identity is wrapped up in their history.
We even know God this way. He first identifies himself as the one who created the heavens and the earth. From Exodus to Malachi, he is the God who “brought you up out of Egypt.” In the New Testament, he is the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died and rose again in history.
God has created a vast cosmic drama. Within that larger story he plants all sorts of individual stories in the form of human lives. The drama for each life revolves around the quest of each man to reach toward and fulfill the destiny God gave him based on the intricate mix of gifts designed for him at the start. Certainly, each of us could go through life and never quite tap into our unique design. It happens all the time. But those of “royal” status will reach forward to find their destiny:
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.
It is the glory of kings to search it out. (Proverbs 25 :2)
So What was Paul Saying?
The verses quoted at the beginning of this article need to be considered now in light of the understanding of human design and giftedness which have been outlined in this treatment.
This writer’s opinion is that the body of Christ works through created motivational gifts along with supernatural gifts laid over top.
In other words, we first need to work at understanding who we are in terms of the giftedness design given to us early on as humans. This concept in itself could revolutionize Christian ministry and our culture around us. The complexity of a human body —DNA, cell structures, immunities, balance and aesthetics, etc. – is analogous to the complexity involved in our aspiring as a corporate entity to appreciate and act upon our glorious, complex designs as individuals.
There is a world, a millennium, of worthy activity and challenge, in just tackling a working model of the body of Christ based on these motivational-design gifts. It may be that in Romans 12 Paul is listing mostly motivational gifts and being descriptive, not exhaustive, when he lists them. In other words, he was basically encouraging the church to work together as a body and meant, to paraphrase, “Do whatever your gift is, and I’ll name a few so you’ll get the idea.”
The other scriptures (and possibly Romans 12 as well) point to a supernatural type of gifting that the Holy Spirit gives to his people to build each other up in the faith. I believe these gifts are distributed “overtop” the motivational-design gifts. Certainly the two types of gifts can work strategically together, through God’s providential wisdom—a more incarnational model. And certainly, the complexity of these supernatural gifts may reach that of the other gifts we have outlined.
Although I am a believer in the supernatural gifts of the Spirit for today, the scope of this article does not allow me to pursue the many further questions regarding their usage.
Having said that, I think the bride of Christ has a great deal of maturing to do in both areas of giftedness—motivational-design gifts and supernatural gifts. This article is a charge to grow and mature in the practice of the motivational-design gifts. They have been given to us by God to help us work together as a body.
Whatever the focus, be sure to enjoy the Lord and his exciting plan of giftedness as you go. ■
Dean Arnold served as Director of Public Policy and Communications at the Chattanooga Resource Foundation in Tennessee. He was also an associate with the Doma Institute and oversaw the profiling of rising Christian leaders in politics, business, education, and ministry through the foundation’s bi-annual Leadership Development Program.