Spiritual Gifts and Community Service

Spirit-Led or Purpose-Driven – Part 5       Spiritual Gifts and Community Service By Berit Kjos – July 2004 Skip down to assessing gifts and talents, “measurable results” and SHAPE See also American Youth Policy & Service Learning Creating Community (Part 2) through a New Way of Thinking Creating Community (Part 1) through Transformational Leadership

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 P.E.A.C.E. Plan

“The Church of the 21st
Century is reforming itself into a multi-faceted service operation.” Bob
Buford, founder of Leadership Network and founding president of the Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management.[1]

 

“More
and more social needs are being met by these private organizations
rather than large government bureaucracies….


Peter Drucker has called this private sector of social services the fastest growing segment of economies around the world.”[2]

“[Rick] Warren says, ‘I
read everything


Peter Drucker writes…. Long before words like ’empowerment’ became popular,
Peter was telling us that the secret of achieving results is to focus
on your strengths, and the strengths of those you work with, rather
than focusing on weaknesses.”[3]
“Community Connections“

“[God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient
for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.'” 2 Corinthians 12:9

---

“God has a unique role for you to
play in his family,” writes Pastor Warren. “This is called your ‘ministry,’
and God has gifted you for this assignment: ‘A spiritual gift is given to
each of us as a means of helping the entire church.‘
[1 Co 12:7-8, NLT]
Your local fellowship is the place God designed for you to discover, develop
and use your gifts.”  [4,
page 134] 

Yes, that’s partly true. God calls
each of us to specific roles in the Church. In his letter to the church at
Corinth,
Paul wrote,

“Now concerning spiritual gifts,
brethren, I do not want you to be ignorant…There are diversities of gifts,
but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same
Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who
works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each
one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through
the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge…. But one and the same Spirit
works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.”
1 Corinthians 12:4-11

Yet, His work through us isn’t limited
to “the local fellowship.” God will use the gifts He gives us wherever
He sends us. He will equip us for any assignment He gives us — when we hear
and follow Him. ”He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.”
[1 Thessalonians 5:24] 
While your service to Him may start at our local church, His true Church reaches
around the world. Pastor Warren points that out in a later section of His book.

Today’s popular church surveys and
“continual assessments” are misleading tools for discovering our spiritual gifts
and place of ministry. Yet they — along with peer opinions and personal “experimentation”
— are among the tools new members of Saddleback Church are encouraged to use
to “discover,” record, and develop their spiritual gifts and potential for service.
Though God doesn’t command us to “discover” our gifts, the man-made rules of
the new church-growth hierarchy do.

So do powerful globalist leaders
and management gurus. As


Peter Drucker tells pastors,

“The pastor, as manager, has to identify their
strengths and specialization, place them and equip them for service, and
enable them to work in the harmonious and productive whole known as the
body of Christ.”[5]

Peter Drucker’s vision of the global
management structure can be divided into three sectors: (1) the government sector,
(2) the private (business) sector, and (3) the social sector. In the last or
“third sector,” the key provider of social services would be churches. That’s
why his efforts in the last decades have focused on church management and the
leadership training needed to train church members to serve their communities.

Bob Buford, the founding chairman of the secular Drucker
Foundation for Nonprofit Management, also founded the
“Christian” Leadership Network, which helps pastors and church leaders build
“successful churches” based on Drucker’s management policies and
communitarian philosophy. The
Drucker-Buford success story now reaches
around the world, and the main trophies of his organizational talents are
the mega-churches in the United States. 

So why is that a problem? When the
world’s secular managers tutor church leaders in church management in order
to equip the “social sector” to fulfill the government’s vision for social welfare,
God’s ways and truths will be compromised. In partnerships between the
governmental and social sector, the former (which sets the standards and
helps fund the projects) will always rule.
[See Faith-Based
Compromise?] Notice the blend of truth and distortion
in Pastor Warren’s next statement:

“When we use our gifts together,
we all benefit. If others don’t use their gifts, you get cheated, and if
you don’t use your gifts, they get cheated. This is why we’re commanded
to discover and develop our spiritual gifts. Have you ever taken the
time to discover your spiritual gifts? An unopened gift is worthless.”

[4, page 237] Emphasis added

In the well-defined purpose-centered atmosphere
of the postmodern church, discovery and development depend more on human plans
and management formulas than on faith in God and the silent work of the Holy
Spirit. Perhaps that’s why Pastor Warren suggests,

“Begin
by assessing your gifts and abilities. Take a long, honest
look at what you are good at and what you’re not good
at. Ask other people. Paul advised, ‘Try to have a sane estimate of your
capabilities.’
[Romans 12:3b,


The Message] 


Make a list. Ask other people for their candid
opinion…. Spiritual gifts and natural abilities are always confirmed
by others.”



[4, page 250] 

They are? What if your spiritual
gift has nothing to do with your natural talents or personal preferences? What
if God gave you gifts that would show His exceeding greatness, not yours? In stark contrast
to Pastor Warren’s view of spiritual gifts, the apostle Paul said,

“I, brethren, when I came to
you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring
to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among
you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness,
in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were
not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the
Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of
men but in the power of God.”
1 Corinthians 2:1-5

Did you hear that? God uses weak
but faithful believers who will demonstrate His power, not their own talents.
In fact, our own talents are often the opposite of our spiritual gifts. History
shows us how some of God’s most powerful messengers served in total weakness,
all the more demonstrating the amazing power of the Holy Spirit.  Now as
then, many of His servants come to Him as quiet, shy introverts who would fear
speaking their name in a group and would shudder at the improbable thought of
ever speaking in front of a group.

That’s where I was years ago: shy,
avoiding groups and dreading attention. But when I surrendered my life to my
Lord Jesus Christ, He filled me with His Spirit and gave me the absolute assurance
that His strength was sufficient in my overwhelming weaknesses.[6]
Then, as I immersed myself in
His Word — trusting His promises and seeking His will — I found that every
time He gave me an impossible task, and I said yes (often after agonizing struggles
and sleepless nights), He provided the love needed to overcome my fears, the
words needed to counsel the needy, the courage to stand in front of a microphone,
and the message needed to encourage His people. It was all by the wonderful,
gracious gifts of my Lord and Shepherd! His life had filled this broken earthen
vessel to overflowing!

I still don’t know what my permanent
spiritual gift or gifts are. Different challenges in my life have called for
different gifts. None, other than perhaps service, matched my natural inclinations.
That’s why I chose to study nursing. But God had a different plan. He showed
me that to use His gifts, I just needed to keep my heart and mind fixed on Him,
not on myself — “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith”
(Hebrews 12:2). Then any assignment He would give me would be matched by the spiritual gift(s) and resources needed to triumph in Him. 

Notice that Pastor Warren used a
quote from

The Message to validate
his last point “Begin by
assessing your gifts and abilities.
Take a long, honest look at what you are good at and what you’re not good
at.” But the
corresponding verse
[Romans 12:3]
in any of the standard translations has nothing
to do with “assessing your gifts and abilities.” It simply reminds us “not
to think” of ourselves too highly — an important warning considering
today’s emphasis on self-esteem. It warns us to guard against pride and
inflated egos, and it complements the two preceding verses: “…present your
bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God…. And do not be
conformed to this world…”
(Romans 12:1-2).

In other words, when we, mere humans,
try to use business practices to measure and monitor what God is doing in the
spiritual realm (instead of trusting and obeying Him and leaving the results in His hands), we are likely
to get everything wrong. When ambitious visionaries reinvent God’s churches
according to their strategic goals, humanist psychology and sophisticated data
processing, they evade the Holy Spirit. Cloaking their own lofty plans and
vision in Biblical words and phrases doesn’t help. Instead, it deceives
open-minded people. And when today’s detailed management
strategies point the way, there’s little room for God’s intervention. In other
words, it’s hard to be Spirit-led if you are driven by organizational
purposes.

These organizational purposes include experimentation.
“In the living laboratory of Saddleback Church, we were able to experiment with
different ways to help people understand, apply, and live out the purposes of
God,” Pastor Warren wrote in Developing Your SHAPE to Serve Others.[7] Apparently,
Saddleback’s “laboratory” experiments involved assessing “measurable results”
against pre-planned outcomes (or purposes), which give little credit to what
God might do outside the boundaries of the manmade standards. As Warren
wrote in The Purpose-Driven Church:

“To remain effective as a church in an ever-changing
world you need to continually evaluate what you do. Build review and revision
into our process. Evaluate for excellence. In a purpose-driven church, your
purposes are the standard by which you evaluate effectiveness.

     “Having a purpose without
any practical way to review results would be like NASA planning a moon shot
without a tracking system. You’ll be unable to make midcourse corrections
and will probably never hit your target.”
[8, 151-152]

“Just start serving, experimenting with different
ministries and then you’ll discover your gifts,” said Pastor Warren in The Purpose-Driven
Life. “…I urge you never to stop experimenting…. I know a woman in her
nineties who runs and wins 10K races and didn’t discover that she enjoyed running
until she was seventy-eight!”
 [4,
page 251]

 

So she discovered that she enjoys running races.
But what does a new hobby or physical exercise have to do with discovering
spiritual gifts? Pastor Warren’s next statement doesn’t help answer that question:

“Paul advised, ‘Make
a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and
then sink yourself into that.'”
[Gal 6:4b, The Message]
Again, it helps to get feedback from those who know you best. [Perhaps a
reference to the small group each church member must attend.]

    “Ask yourself questions:
What do I really enjoy doing most? When do I feel the most fully alive?
What am I doing when I lose track of time? Do I like routine or variety?
Do I prefer serving with a team or by myself? Am I more introverted or extroverted? 
Am I more of a thinker or a feeler? Which do I enjoy more–competing or
cooperating?

    “Examine your experiences
and extract the lessons you have learned. Review your life and think about
how it has shaped you. Moses told the Israelites,
‘Remember today what you have learned about the Lord through your experiences
with him.”
[Deut
11:2 TEV]


[4, page 251-252]

When you compare Pastor Warren’s
Bible references with standard Bible versions (we included the NIV even though
it, too, presents some dubious interpretations), you see how they change the
essential message.[9]
The first of the two verses quoted by Pastor Warren, Galatians 6:3-4 may seem
a bit confusing, but the word “prove” or “examine” is used repeatedly in the
New Testament
with reference to examining your heart and walk with God — and has nothing
to do with discovering your spiritual gifts.

For example, 2 Corinthians 13:5
says: “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.
Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are
disqualified.” It’s a warning to those who think they are Christian but were
never really “born of the Spirit.” But such translations are unacceptable to
postmodern church leaders who view all unbelievers as potential church members
or “pre-Christians” just waiting to be caught up in the Church Growth Movement
(CGM) by their marketing strategies.

According to the old Hebrew manuscripts,
Deuteronomy 11:2 (the second Scripture in the quote above) emphasized the significance
of actual eyewitness reports of facts: what the people knew to be true
because they (unlike their children) were eyewitnesses to what God had
done. In contrast to learning “about the Lord through your experiences,” their
understanding was based on the objective fact of what they had actually seen
with their own eyes, not on second-hand information or subjective, feeling-based
experience. This emphasis continues in the New Testament. So to validate the
gospel he recorded, Luke pointed to “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses
and ministers of the word….” Luke 1:2

KJV: “And know ye this day: for
I speak not with your children which have not known, and which have
not seen the chastisement of the LORD your God, his greatness, his
mighty hand, and his stretched out arm.” Deut 11:1-2

NKJV: “Know today that I do not
speak with your children, who have not known and who have not
seen the chastening of the Lord your God, His greatness and His mighty
hand and His outstretched arm.” Deut 11:1-2

NIV: “Remember today that your children
were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of
the LORD your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm;”
Deut 11:2

TEV: Remember today what you have
learned about the Lord through your experiences with him.”


[4, page 151-152]
 

Led by Moses,
God’s people had seen the amazing miracles of the sovereign God of heaven and
earth. They had faced His disciplines and knew the consequences of putting “common
sense” or human intuition above the commands of their Lord. “Yet they did not
obey or incline their ear, but everyone followed the dictates of his evil heart,”
wrote a grieving prophet centuries later (Jeremiah 11:8).

Trusting their
own inclinations, the people turned a deaf ear to God’s directions until their
foolish choices and self-focused ways had blinded them to His goodness and devastated
their land. “As I live,” God warned them, “surely with a mighty hand, with
an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, I will rule over you.” Ezekiel
20:33

The church’s
place in the 21st Century community

Why would God’s churches implement the world’s management system?
To grow and be successful? To make an impact on the community? To gain more
control? To win fame in the Christian community? To find acceptance in the
world?

These may all be true, but you see
a more obscure reason when you look at the larger picture. Behind all the lofty promises and seductive promotion
hides a purpose that has little to do with truth and God. It has everything
to do with the structure of global governance for the 21st century.
[See

Reinventing the World]  And,
as you saw in earlier parts, it’s grounded in the pragmatic policies of


Peter Drucker
(“the world’s pre-eminent management thinker”)
and his vision for a “healthy community.”
In his mind, the “pastoral mega-churches
are surely the most important social phenomenon in American society in the
past thirty years.”[10] 

Bob Buford echoed that belief in a book titled, The Community of the
Future. In his chapter of the book, “How Boomers, Churches and
Entrepreneurs Can Transform Society,” he wrote:

“Religious organizations are already far and away
the most dominant part of the social sector….

Therefore, in
terms of both money and volunteers, churches are already in a
position to play a leading role in the years ahead. But because of
its innovative organization, which affords it the size and scale to
do things that have real community impact, the Next Church holds
perhaps the greatest promise of converting good intentions into real
results.”[11]

The “real results” are not simply success in caring for the needs of the
community. The goal is to create a new kind of humanity — the global
citizen, the group thinker and willing worker needed for the global
village. Bob Buford goes on to say:

“The social entrepreneur transforms a process in the social sector,
also with a view toward extracting a higher yield. Here however, the
‘product ‘ is neither a good nor a service (as in business) nor a
regulation (as in government), but a changed human being. In June
1996, I hosted a gathering of people who fit this profile. They were
all people who had excelled in their careers as entrepreneurs,
having started or built successful, innovative businesses. Now they
were innovating in the social sector….

Whatever the issue, the attraction for them was not the need per se,
but the prospect of getting results, of actually bringing about a
change in human lives and circumstances. This is a distinguishing
feature of social entrepreneurs, they do not engage in charity, but
in transformation. They ask, ‘Are people actually different
as a result of my efforts?’

This result orientation is a new paradigm for social sector work.
Traditional philanthropy, including the welfare state, has tended to
apply resources to problems without much accountability for
near-term, measurable results. Indeed, many in the nonprofit
world balk at the very idea of measuring results and performance….

Who are the models of innovative social entrepreneurs? They include
Millard and Linda Fuller of Habitat for Humanity…. Eugene Lang of
the I Have a Dream Foundation (a
secular organization partnering with globalist education leaders
such as iEARN), and
Kenneth Cooper of the Aerobics Center in Dallas…..

The questions, according to Peter Drucker, are What are we doing to
encourage them? and What are we doing to make them effective? …
What we need is a changed society, a revitalized community, and
nothing less than a civilized city.”[11]

Neither the coveted “transformation,” nor the “measurable results,” nor
“new paradigm for social sector work” have anything to do with Jesus
Christ, our Lord, nor with the cross that makes us one with Him. If
people call themselves Christian, as in the mega-churches, that’s fine
as long as their faith doesn’t hinder the social transformation. In
other words, if Christianity can be molded to fit the new view of
Christianity as “helpful energy,” it can be useful. But the Holy Spirit
cannot be permitted to interfere with the measurable social goals of
tolerance, unity, and participation in the dialectic process. 

Bob Buford left the secular Drucker Foundation to
found the “Christian” Leadership Network, which helped pastors
and church leaders build “successful churches” based on Drucker’s
management policies and communitarian philosophy. Buford’s success story now reaches
around the world, and the main trophies of his organizational talents are
the mega-churches in the United States. 

Do you wonder why Ducker’s disciple would focus his time and talents on
the development of “large churches”?
Like his famed tutor, he sees the church as an essential provider for
“leadership training and “service learning”
in the “social sector” of the envisioned community. He
knows that “the government sector” will be incapable of providing all the services needed
for the envisioned global welfare system. Nor can the “private sector”
(business) accomplish the job. The burden must be shifted from a government
sector to the social sector, and the strongest and most organized institution
within the social sector is the large, multi-faceted church. No other institution
has the human, financial and motivational resources to train leaders and
servers that can accomplish the job. To accomplish the task — leadership
training, service-learning and actual community service — the large “pastoral
churches” around the world must be brought into
“faith-based partnerships”
with the governmental and business sectors.

In
The 21st Century Church,
Dr. Robert Klenck summarized this new network of systems with a quote
from the Leadership Network’s Compass
Magazine. Its May, 1995, article titled  “After Church Growth, What?” stated:

“The
next movement will grow partnerships, not properties.  Partnerships, alliances and collaboration will become the norm, rather
than the exception, and the relationships will be built on new loyalties and a new common
mission. … The next movement will grow people, not parking lots. … These same
people are in the congregations of the 21st century and they are going to be
the ‘point people’ for the partnerships and alliances that will achieve the vision
beyond the property line.”

“The
Church of the 21st Century is reforming itself into
a multi-faceted service operation.”[1]
Bob Buford

As Dr. Klenck points out, these large
service-oriented churches
“’sanitize’ their surroundings of religious symbols ostensibly to keep from offending
unbelievers… but that this ‘sanitization’ also ‘happens’ to bring them into
compliance with partnership agreements with the government.  There are
approximately 100,000 schools entering into these partnerships with religious
groups.”[12]

In
The Pied
Pipers of Purpose, Lynn and Sarah Leslie together with Susan Conway
bring a warning we need to remember:

“Many advocates of government-funded
faith-based charities believe that the end justifies the means, and will
point to the ‘results’ as evidence of a good work being done. These
good-intentioned people probably don’t realize that their activities
further the political goals of communitarian societal transformation.
These folks may not understand the long-term negative repercussions of
cooperating with this new system of governance. In a communitarian
worldview any truly private entity (family, charity, church and small
Christian school) poses a direct challenge to the ‘common good.’ In the
future, the luxury of granting special “rights” to a group of people who
profess and practice biblical separation will no longer be tolerated by
communitarians. Separatist practices and beliefs do not align with the
‘common good.’”[13]

Since God calls us to serve the poor, the imprisoned, the broken and the lame,
community service makes sense. But genuine Christian service also involves the
freedom to share the whole gospel, not a message watered down by politically
correct guidelines and dialectic consensus. Any
partnership with the government sector or the business sector will involve
accountability to politically correct standards and guidelines that should
be unacceptable to those who love God’s Word and cannot condone politically
correct limitations on their freedom to share the gospel as the Spirit
leads. No matter how great a person’s “felt needs,” the greatest needs are
spiritual. And only Jesus Christ — through His Word and Spirit — can meet
those needs. That’s true both for the server and those who are served.

“Beware of anything that competes with loyalty to Jesus
Christ,” wrote Oswald Chambers. “The greatest competitor of devotion to
Jesus is service for Him…. Are we being more
devoted to service than to Jesus Christ?”

[14] 

If so, we have lost our first love….

In the new global
management system, service is considered successful if it is based on
measurable standards that are met. But how do you measure the secret work of
God’s Spirit in the hearts of the needy? Only God can measure the success of
His work in a man, for –

“no one knows the
things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the
spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might
know the things that have been freely given to us by God…. But the
natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they
are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are
spiritually discerned.” 

(1 Corinthians 2:11-14)

Rom 14:17-18

Luke 10:38-41?
She was commended for sitting at the feet of Jesus, while Martha prepared
their food. You might be able to measure the results of the meal, but how do
you measure Mary’s love for Jesus? No man can. Nor does God approve of man’s
measures for comparing human performance. Remember how God disciplined his
people because David measured the size of his army! [1 Chronicles 21:3-22]

God

sets the standard for our work
in Him. He provides the resources, and He will give the rewards. He is our
beacon, our strength, or guide and our beloved! Him we must obey and Him we
will serve. 

“Bondservants,
be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh,
with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ;
not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of
Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill
doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that
whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord,
whether he is a slave or free.”
Eph 6:5-7

Spirit-Led or Purpose-Driven,
Part 1

–

–


Part 4

Spirit-Led or Purpose-Driven?

10.

http://www.wesleymission.org.au/ministry/sermons/21church.asp 

11. “How Boomers,
Churches and Entrepreneurs
Can Transform Society,” The Community of the
Future, page 44,

44-46.