How can a church honour the Spirit’s gifts while avoiding charismatic excess?

Question 9109.

How does a church honour spiritual gifts without sliding into charismatic excess? That question has followed me through my whole ministry, because I am persuaded that both errors are real and that most congregations have only ever been warned about one of them. Some churches have quietly buried the gifts under a layer of respectability. Others have handed the meeting to whoever feels most strongly, and called the resulting chaos freedom.

I am a continuationist. I believe the spiritual gifts described in the New Testament remain operative and that God gives them as He wills for the building up of the body. I am also wary of a great deal of what passes for spiritual power in the wider church, and I think 1 Corinthians 12 to 14 gives us everything we need to be both open and careful.

The governing purpose of spiritual gifts

Paul states the purpose without ambiguity. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7). Not for the individual’s reputation, not for the demonstration of spirituality, not for atmosphere. The common good is the measure, and it is a measure anyone can apply on a Sunday morning without specialist knowledge.

That single sentence rules out a great deal. If an exercise of spiritual gifts leaves the congregation impressed with a person rather than built up in Jesus, something has gone wrong regardless of how genuine the experience felt. Paul is quite willing to tell the Corinthians that their meetings did more harm than good, and he says it about a church that was not lacking in any gift.

The Greek word charisma means a gift of grace. Everything in the vocabulary points away from achievement and towards receipt. A church that treats spiritual gifts as evidence of spiritual attainment has already misunderstood the word before it has misapplied the practice.

The priority of intelligibility

Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 14 turns on whether people can understand what is happening. He would rather speak five words with his mind than ten thousand words in a tongue, so that he might instruct others. The whole chapter measures spiritual gifts by whether an outsider walking in could follow what was going on and be convicted.

This is where a good deal of charismatic practice comes unstuck, and it comes unstuck on Paul’s own terms rather than on a cessationist’s. If there is no interpreter, the tongue-speaker is to keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God (1 Corinthians 14:28). That is not a restriction imposed by nervous traditionalists. It is apostolic instruction, and churches that ignore it are being disorderly by the standard of the very chapter they appeal to.

Intelligibility also protects the congregation from manipulation. Where nobody can evaluate what is said because nobody can follow it, the most confident voice wins by default. Requiring plain speech is a form of pastoral care.

The requirement of order

God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints (1 Corinthians 14:33). Paul then gives practical limits: two or at most three tongue-speakers, one at a time, with an interpreter; two or three prophets, with the others weighing what is said; and if a revelation comes to someone seated, the first should stop speaking.

Notice that these are limits on the exercise of genuine spiritual gifts. Paul is not regulating counterfeit activity; he is regulating the real thing. The idea that the Spirit cannot be constrained by order is refuted by the plain statement that the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. Loss of self-control is not evidence of the Spirit, and a meeting nobody is governing is not thereby more spiritual.

I would put it bluntly. A congregation that cannot say what would happen if something disorderly occurred has no order, only a habit that has not yet been tested. Decide in advance who will intervene and how, and let the church know.

Accountability and discernment

Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21). Both halves are commanded together. A church that only obeys the first half will believe anything; a church that only obeys the second will quench what God is doing and congratulate itself for discernment.

Practical discernment asks whether a contribution agrees with Scripture, whether it builds up, whether the person bringing it lives a life the church can respect, and whether they hold it humbly. It also asks whether the direction of the ministry is towards Jesus or towards the minister. Where spiritual gifts are gathering a following around an individual, the trajectory is wrong even when the doctrine is still orthodox.

The elders carry particular responsibility here, and they should be willing to say publicly and gently that something does not fit. If a congregation never hears its leaders weigh anything, it will assume nothing is being weighed.

Where charismatic excess actually comes from

In my experience it rarely begins with bad doctrine. It begins with a hunger for something more than the ordinary means of grace seem to be delivering, and that hunger is often honest. People are tired of meetings where nothing happens, and they are right to want more than that. The error is in where they go looking.

It then hardens when experience becomes the authority. Once a church accepts that a vivid encounter settles a question, Scripture becomes a resource rather than a judge, and there is no longer any mechanism for correction. That is the road that runs towards the New Apostolic Reformation, with its restored apostles claiming governmental authority over churches, and I regard that movement as a serious departure rather than an excess of enthusiasm.

Money and status usually appear at some point along the way. Where the exercise of spiritual gifts becomes a platform, and the platform becomes an income, the pressure to produce results is enormous and honesty is the first casualty. See whether the gifts are for today and the pneumatology of Bethel Church for related discussion.

Where the opposite error comes from

The cessationist instinct in many evangelical churches also has an honest origin. Having seen abuse, leaders conclude that the safest course is to shut the whole thing down, and they build a theology to justify the decision. I understand the impulse and I think it costs the church a great deal.

The trouble is that a congregation which has written spiritual gifts out of its life still has needs those gifts were given to meet. People still need encouragement, consolation, and words that land at the right moment. When the church cannot supply those, believers go looking elsewhere, often to exactly the ministries their leaders warned them about.

So the answer to excess is not absence. It is teaching, order, and the courage to correct in public what has gone wrong in public. That is more work than a blanket prohibition, and it is what Paul actually asks of us.

What a healthy church looks like

It teaches the gift passages rather than avoiding them. It makes space for contributions and makes the framework explicit, so everyone knows what will be weighed and by whom. It refuses to rank believers by experience, since the same Spirit apportions to each one individually as He wills. It expects God to work, and it is not embarrassed when He does.

It also keeps the ordinary means central. The preaching of the word, prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper are the settled diet of the church, and spiritual gifts serve that diet rather than replacing it. Where the exceptional becomes the staple, disappointment is only a matter of time. Further reading: discovering and using your gifts and whether gifts can be misused.

Teaching a congregation to be discerning

Discernment is learned rather than inherited, and it is learned mostly by watching leaders do it out loud. When a well-known ministry is in the news, say something. When a book is circulating in the congregation, read it and comment on it honestly. When a claim is made that cannot be verified, say so kindly and explain why it matters.

The alternative is a congregation that has strong instincts and no categories. Such a church will accept or reject a ministry on the basis of atmosphere, which is exactly the criterion Paul refuses to allow. Test everything, he says, and testing requires that people know what the tests are.

Teach the gift passages as ordinary Scripture, in sequence, rather than as a special subject requiring a special series. Spiritual gifts belong in the flow of church life, and treating them as a controversy to be managed teaches the congregation that they are dangerous.

So, now what?

If your church never mentions the gifts, ask your elders why, and ask it kindly rather than as a challenge. If your church exercises them freely, ask how weighing actually happens and what has been corrected in the last two years. A church that has never corrected anything is not being careful; it is not looking.

And examine your own appetite. Do you want spiritual gifts because you want the body built up, or because you want an experience that settles your doubts? Paul says earnestly desire the higher gifts, and then shows a still more excellent way in a chapter about love. That order was not an accident, and it is still the test.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

1 Corinthians 12:7, ESV