RIP Auntie Olive

After ten and a half weeks in hospital with a slow slow decline, my Auntie Olive has passed away. She looked after me as a small child and told me that she'd toilet trained me and used to also remind me that I ran around her home banging my spoon saying 'Da da da da'. (That was a long time ago!) Also Auntie Olive's family housed my mother with before getting married and she introduced my future godmother. She was an incredibly patient and gentle woman.

It is in loss we only really find what we value. Mentoring and having good role models is something frequently missing in our world. I will not forget Auntie Olive for the model of care she provided for me.

Spiritual gifts and materialism

...many of us encountered evangelical teaching on spiritual gifts in teaching that seemed heavily influenced by various kinds of secular personality theory, especially the identification of various personality characteristics as they pertained to work, relationships and self-understanding. The internetmonk.com

Certain sectors of Christianity assert that spiritual/charismatic gifts ceased in the apostolic era, i.e. ceased after the early church became established. It seems to me that we can generally assert it is a minority and though the absence of a definitive list is a problem, most mainline churches have space for them theologically. I came across Matthew J. Slick's argument again the cessationist position (here) and I find it probably better founded than my own. Most significantly the largest debate seems to be in the reformed community but has quietened down in recent years. (here for a list of links)

Church history right through the church fathers Tertullian and Origen, even supposedly Luther through the Azusa Street revival and 20th Century Charismatic Renewal has confirmed the continuance of charismatic gifts. C Peter Wagner and and others see a critical difference between natural talent and spiritual gifts. Though both might be attributed as gifts of God the latter are specifically given for service of the church and to be exercised accordingly. Thus someone with a natural talent for teaching may in fact be a teacher, however unless they have that as a spiritual gift they are very unlikely to be involved in church based teaching.

For myself to negate the presence of spiritual gifts in our world also frequently negates the activity of the Holy Spirit and is part of a slippery slope that reduces or removes the whole existence of a spiritual dimension to being human. My contact with those educated from Communist materialist countries is a heightened awareness that there is more to life. Yet I meet many Western Christians that can scarcely believe that God actually has something to say to them. (Here I am not giving license to those who claim that God has spoken to them, rather those in community and in discernment seek the voice of God into their lives.)

While I can agree with the internetmonk's recent post about the problem of being preoccupied with possessing a particular gift and failing to gift others in a particular moment, I do think it is the church's preoccupation with getting things done rather than with answering the call of God. I do not believe a need is a call, as ministries need to die sometimes. If the ministry is something God wants then something will eventually happen. What we need is an understanding of the world where God is active and vocal.