This talk was given by Kevin Ranaghan at the June, 1972, Conference on the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church. He talked about how the spiritual gifts are primarily meant to function in a community setting for the sake of the common good. He also talked about charisms as graced functions in the body of Christ.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
KEVIN: What I’m going to say is, in many ways, very basic to the charismatic renewal, but on the other hand it’s very, very essential for the charismatic renewal to function well. And beyond that, for all Christian life to function well. It’s very much at the heart of the key insight that has been moving in the Catholic charismatic renewal and has been leading to the building up of basic Christian communities like the People of Praise.
And that basic insight is—it comes from Saint Paul’s teaching on the spiritual gifts. And I want to run through some of Paul’s texts and show different aspects of his teaching. Basically, what Saint Paul says, in all his chief texts about spiritual gifts, is that spiritual gifts belong, first of all, to a community, to a body, to a local church, if you wish—“church,” in quotes—to a local expression of the body of Christ. First of all, it belongs to the body, and then they belong to the individuals and distributed among the individuals in that body.
These gifts are meant to function not in isolation from each other, but in community with each other, relating to each other. And that the spiritual gifts, as a matter of fact, are meant to function in a community setting and not just in anyone’s own individual life. And then, secondly, he basically says that these gifts function for the good of the body or for the love, for the building up, of the brethren.
Now, there are four texts that I’m going to be referring to back and forth—and the texts are so similar that it’s hard to tell which one I’m talking about at any given time, because the themes run through all four texts. You might want to jot down this: that there are four basic lists of spiritual gifts, or ministries, which Saint Paul gives in his epistles. There are two separate lists in 1 Corinthians 12—we’re all very familiar with that. There’s another list in Romans 12, and another list in Ephesians 4.
The first thing you notice about these lists is that Paul says that these spiritual gifts are, concretely and on a very gutsy level, workings, services, ministries. That is, jobs to be done or functions of the body of Christ. Very often, when we hear “spiritual gift,” we think of something kind of ethereal and flighty or something like that. And Paul is talking about work, work, hard work. And he gives such a broad variety of spiritual gifts. Some of them are—look kind of dramatic and some of them look kind of humdrum.
But he kind of talks about different types of jobs in the community. And what he basically says is that in just about any job you can think of in the body of Christ is a spiritual gift. All the workings, all the functions, all the jobs in the body of Christ are spiritual gifts. And every one of these spiritual gifts is from one and the same Spirit.
That is to say, the job of being a helper—which to me always sounds like someone carrying around the back end of a board [laughter]—the job of being a helper is just as much a spiritual gift as the job of being prophet. They are both spiritual gifts. They’re different, because the jobs are different, the functions are different. Some are dramatic, and some look, kind of—at first glance look kind of dull. But every single one of them is charismatic. That means, every single one of them is “graced.” Every single one of them has the power of the Holy Spirit to enable the person who has that job to do it.
Put another way, for absolutely every job that there is to be done in the body of Christ, there is a corresponding grace, or gift of the Holy Spirit, so that every single one of us must look first of all to the Holy Spirit as the source of power in order to do our job—whatever our job is. On the other side, everybody in the body has some job or jobs to do, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are available to us to do our jobs. We have to know and trust and count upon the fact that the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit are available to us for the tasks to which we have been appointed. Therefore, everyone in the church is meant to be charismatic. Look for just a second at that word, “charismatic.” The root is “charis,” and it means both “gift” and “grace.”
And a charism basically is a job which has the grace of God, given freely, that enables it to be done. It is a graced function. It is a gift. It is a job, the ability to do which has been given freely by the Holy Spirit. And it’s really important for us to realize that every job in the body of Christ and every job in every Christian community is a spiritual gift, and that the grace is there to do it, that we need not depend upon ourselves or our own effort alone, but on primarily to depend upon the grace of the Holy Spirit for the power to do our task.
Now, the next big point that Saint Paul makes in these texts is that all these gifts exist in the first place for the well-being of the body of Christ, for the building up and the edification of the church. And I’d like to point out that Saint Paul is not particularly talking so much about the universal church—he would probably mean that, too—but when he’s writing his letters he’s writing to concrete local communities, which were probably quite small, you know, a few hundred people at the most. He’s talking about a local body of Christ. And he’s saying that the spiritual gifts exist among you so that your brotherhood, your fellowship, your relationships with each other, which is the very fabric of your life, so that they can be built up and made strong.
Therefore, the spiritual gifts are never to be seen as personal powers, never to be seen as personal rewards, never to be seen as, oh, you know, “So-and-so has a gift of prophecy—” you know, “—isn’t that just so, so wonderful,” [laughter] as if they were such a wonderful or holy person. The gift is not to be seen as related to the person. The gift is to be seen as related to the person only insofar as the person is a member of a body and functioning as a member of the body, because the purpose of the gift functioning is for the well-being of the body and not particularly for the edification of the person who has that gift.
One thing you have to face up to immediately in any Christian community situation is that there is no room either for false humility, nor is there any room for envy or jealousy. But the spiritual gifts are distributed by the Spirit among the members of the body for the common good, and do not make a person in any way super-special or highly honored or holy, because he or she operates that gift of the Spirit from the Lord. It’s important for us to see that whenever Saint Paul talks about the spiritual gifts, he always talks about community.
Whenever he gives a list of the spiritual gifts, he then turns right around and talks about the mystery of the church or the mystery of the body of Christ. And he always says that these gifts are meant to function in a body situation. He never isolates the gifts from community. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that what he says is this: the community, the grouping of believers, that’s the primary dwelling place of the Spirit. The Spirit fills the body, and the body is meant to be joined together under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is Lord of all our lives as individuals, but he is Lord of our lives as individuals to the extent that we are part of his body, because his primary function, his primary relationship to us is as head of a body, and we are called to be members of his body and to relate to him not as if we by ourselves were a whole body, with him as our head, but we are called to relate to him as a member of a larger body of which he is a head.
So he is the head and we are the members of the body. And inasmuch as we are yielded to him as members of a body, that much we receive of the Spirit who has been poured out principally on that community or that body. That’s why, you know, for example, Paul says, for example, that one member of the body can’t say, “You know, I’m a foot, and I have all the spiritual gifts for being a foot, and I say we’re going to go this way.” And the whole rest of the body wants to go in this direction. And the whole teaching ministry of the community and the whole inclination, discernment of the community says, “We go this way.” “But by gum, I’ve got the Spirit to be a foot and, and my foot says, ’Go this way.’”
What he’s—what he’s criticizing there is a kind of spiritual individualism, which sees individuals related to the Lord kind of directly, without being plugged into the body of which they must be members, and he’s really critical of that. He says, you can’t do that. You can’t say you don’t need the other members of the body in order to function fully as a member of the body of Christ.
So this is a really key point with him. And I try to express it this way. He sees us first of all, not as individuals, but as a group, as a community, under the headship of one Lord, all sharing in one Spirit together. And then, once that unity and sharing is established, then the different ministries and jobs are distributed among the members by the Lord, so that all the jobs and all the needs of that local community, that local body of Christ, can exist. But no spiritual gift exists in and for itself, by itself. Spiritual gifts only exist as part of a team of spiritual gifts, a whole collage of spiritual gifts, which must, in fact, function together, function harmoniously, live and work together with each other and serve each other according to their functions.
There’s one text in Ephesians 4 [v.12-13] which brings that out very strongly. He’s talking about different spiritual gifts and then he says that the reason for these gifts is for the “equipment of the saints and for the work of ministry and for the building up of the body until we all attain the unity of faith in the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure and stature to the fullness of Christ.”
And a little further on [v.15], he says, “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love,” and that text kind of expresses it very clearly.
The gifts are meant as joints. Each of us gifted, each of us with our own function, each of us with our own role to play in a community like the People of Praise, is called upon to exercise his role, his function, in harmony, and in unity, and in an overall coordinated way together under the headship of Christ. And when that happens, it makes for bodily growth and makes for being built up in love.
Ah, just another word here: the Lord has been teaching us, in the People of Praise, very, very much, to accept and rejoice at the different gifts he is giving us. He is letting us see very clearly that, if I am a teacher, or I am a helper, or I’m a prophet, or I am an administrator, I have that gift so that my brothers and sisters can be stronger. The reason I have a gift is for the good of my brothers and sisters. The reason I have a gift is so that they can be built up.
And therefore, what everyone really tends to seek is how to love each other according to the gifts that we have. Who we are in the body of Christ is very much a question of our relationships with our brothers and sisters in our community, who are the other members of the body of Christ we are in closest contact with. And the way we are primarily meant to relate to one another is to serve each other according to the function that we have, according to the spiritual gift that has been given to us. And our primary kind of goal, a kind of a way we kind of see whether we’re in the Lord’s will, if we’re right in the middle of the Lord’s anointing on our life, is to see if, in fact, if we are serving the brethren according to the spiritual gift that we have, and if we are accepting the ministry from them according to the spiritual gifts that they have. And then what you have in that kind of situation is a series of relationships, based upon the different spiritual gifts that we have, all working together and all working harmoniously for the common good.
Now, there is a provision in the body of Christ to see that that doesn’t just—that to see that that is not just chaotic and not just a hodgepodge of everybody running around to each other saying, “How am I supposed to relate to you?” [laughter] And, you know, “What gift do I have in place as far as you go?” And “Do I have a different gift for you?” There are, in fact, certain gifts in the body, certain ministries in the body, which we call “foundational gifts.” And here I would call your attention particularly to the fourth chapter of Ephesians. Since all the gifted members of the community, since all the graced members of the community are meant to be one body in which each of us performs our own function and loves each other according to the office or the gift we have been given, therefore, there are some gifts which have, as their basic purpose, the holding together of the rest of the body. There’s a series of gifts that have as their primary purpose holding together—“coordinating” might be a word—keeping together, joining together, all the rest of the members of the body with their gifts. These are sometimes called “leadership gifts,” or they’re sometimes called “headship gifts.” And since Jesus is our head by being laid out completely for us to be “built on,” they can also be called “foundational gifts.”
There’s a wonderful paradox in the body of Christ, you know, that the Lord, the Lord got on top by being first of all, totally on the bottom. And that works very much in the body of Christ. Leadership in the body of Christ, headship in the body of Christ, is very much a question of laying down your life completely for the brethren, being a foundation which can hold the other members of the body together.
Now, there are a series of foundational gifts which are listed in Ephesians 4. They are apostle, pastor, prophet, teacher and evangelist. And these are often referred to, in basic Christian communities that are developing, as “foundational gifts” or as the “five-fold foundational anointing.” And these seem to be basic fundamental body gifts, which a community must expect the Lord to give and to develop so that the community can have order, so that the community can have direction, so that the community can have purpose, and so that each member of the community can come to know with certainty where he or she fits, who he or she is in the body, and how to relate in a powerful and effective way with the brethren according to the will of the Lord. These five gifts, or this five-fold anointing, serves the purpose of providing a foundation which in fact reveals and makes clear God’s will for the local church, God’s will for the local community, God’s will for the covenant community. And as they operate, they provide a framework which supports the other members of the body.
Thus, for example, a person with an apostolic anointing, or who has a gift of apostleship, very often is a person whom the Lord calls to, in fact, found a community. It may be one person—it may be several persons, as a matter of fact—to whom the Lord gives the vision of the community, the overall plan of the community and what the order or lifestyle of the community ought basically to be like.
And a person who has an apostolic gift is not just a person who, you know, runs into a place and founds a community and runs away, but is a person who stays there and seems to really lay down his life in order that the vision of the community, the order of the community, the purpose of the community can be built up and be matured. So the apostolic gift is related very much to the foundation and the order and the purpose of the community.
A pastoral gift, in comparison, is very much a gift of leading all the members of the community to the cross, of leading the individuals in the community to the face of Jesus, so that they can see and hear and experience and find Jesus’ call upon their life. A person with a pastoral gift in a community kind of supports the members of the body and keeps them faithful to the call of Jesus upon their individual lives.
The gift of being prophet is different from just having occasionally a prophetic utterance. A prophet is a member of a community and who participates in this five-fold anointing by being a person who really sees and expresses, both in his or her words and in his and her style of life, a person who is really on the cutting edge of what the Lord is doing, a person who really sees and “points out” in a prophetic sense, to what the Lord is calling the community and combined with that is a continual prophetic utterance which continually reveals to the people the plan of God that God has for the community.
Teacher. Obviously the role of teacher is that of really giving an ongoing explanation and indoctrination to the members of the community in the revelation that God is giving to the body. The teacher is continually explaining, making clear, and making understood, at every level of the community, what the revelation is, what the plan is that God is giving to the community.
And the evangelist continually confronts the body as a whole and the members of it with a whole panoply of the good news, continually preaching and speaking about Jesus, calling, let’s say, the members of the community to continual repentance. You’ve got to have that kind of a gift too. You’ve got to have a person continually calling us to repentance, because only as we are continually repentant, so much are we continually open to the continuing outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Now, this five-fold anointing may exist in a small group of people, or it may be spread out in a large group of people in the community, but this five-fold function which works very, very closely together–apostle, pastor, prophet, teacher and evangelist–really provides the foundation for the development of a basic Christian community. And that kind of a call is really a call to lay down life completely and to give oneself over completely to the service of the brothers and sisters. It’s a real call to love, and it is something that the Lord has revealed to us, and is revealing to other communities across the country, as being really key for the development of community.
Now, one last thing before a trap door opens. [Laughter.] Well, these old buildings, you know!
Let’s make it clear, just one more time. Paul always says, in all of his texts, after he finishes talking about the gifts of the Spirit and the body, he always starts talking about love.
That’s really clear in 1 Corinthians 13, you know, when he follows with that whole beautiful thing on love. But it’s also clear in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4. He always starts talking about the results of the gifts—the results of relating to each other according to our functions—as being, in fact, building us all up in the love of Jesus. So that when we love each other and when we serve each other according to the spiritual gifts that we have been given, we, in fact, make it more possible for Jesus to love us. And we, in fact, come more and more and grow more and more into his love. And we relate to him more and more with his love and we, we really become built up much, much more into his life.
So clearly the operation of all these different gifts is not simply to have a smoothly working machine in which everybody, you know, moves along and just does their part. But the end result is for building up the life of the Spirit, building up divine life among us, building up real love in which we are able to lay down our lives for one another, and give ourselves over completely to one another and be Christ to one another in different ways. So the love and the life of Christ can just fill every part of our day and every part of our being. And then, in that way, the community as a whole becomes the love of Christ manifested to the society around it. But that only really happens when the body is together according to the spiritual gifts, and when the foundational gifts are beginning to grow, holding together the rest of the body.
Copyright © 2022 People of Praise, Inc.