THE TYPICAL CHURCH CONTEXT THAT HINDERS SPIRITUAL GIFTS

This article describes why the typical church does not see more of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit at work. There are many personal reasons why individuals do not move in spiritual gifts, and we can list some of them in later posts. But this is written to describe the general church atmosphere that hinders the hungry and willing individual.  ----Billy Long

HOW SPIRIT-FILLED CHURCHES HINDER THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Our expectation of the Lord’s active presence working among us is often disappointed because we tend to create an artificial context that does not allow people to “come forth” in their gifts reaching out to one another. 

The absence of relational interaction quenches the real moving of the Holy Spirit. The typical theater style spectator setting forces the congregation to sit as a passive audience focused on the stage up front as the Holy Spirit performs through the pastor, the worship team, and special gifted people. In this context most of the church subconsciously feel they must be super-stars or “special” to be able to “perform.” And so they sit passive and watch. Their active involvement is restricted to listening, congregational praise, prayer and song.  These are good, but  still missing is the individual's ability to actively participate and flow in the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

Christians need fellowship where they can get to know one another and communicate personally within the group. The Holy Spirit works where people are able to open their hearts and share their concerns, their problems, and their gifts. Churches need to include gatherings in which there is no agenda or curriculum that hedges participants into some fixed path of discussion that precludes their creative sharing and involvement around issues that concern them and one another. The “living room” setting best facilitates this. Not just a small group, but one that has (as Watchman Nee says) an unofficial air and the marks of real life without the stiff formality of an official meeting that causes people to “act differently” than when they are relaxed and sharing their thoughts about real life issues in a comfortable setting.

One other problem that prevents Christians from learning to move in the gifts of the Holy Spirit is that we tend to compartmentalize the gifts by isolating and analyzing them out of context. There is a place for the classroom, but an academic approach that teaches principles and methods without face to face interaction in a relational setting will give people intellectual knowledge without first-hand experience.

We should not divorce learning spiritual gifts from people. We learn the gifts in the context of reaching out to others and experiencing the gifts as they work through us to touch people to impart what the gifts provide. We don’t learn to move in the Holy Spirit by simply learning a technique; we learn by reaching out to others with compassion.