This week's episode is part one of a two-part series on spiritual gifts in the marketplace. Welcome back to Theology of Business, the show that helps marketplace leaders to partner with God in business to make a greater impact in society and in eternity. If you want to learn more about how to do business for the glory of God, this show is for you. This is a podcast by Christian business leaders for Christian business leaders. I'm your host, Darren Schear, author of the book Marketing Like Jesus, and founder of Highbridge Books. If you're interested in publishing a book to spread your ideas, I want to share two free author training videos that I created for you. One is titled How to Write a Great Nonfiction Book, and the other is 12 Ways to Sell More Books. You can get the links to view both of these videos by requesting them at highbridgebooks.com forward slash videos. On this week and next week, I'll be doing a two-part series, as I mentioned just a second ago. It's going to be a series on the theme of spiritual gifts in the marketplace. And this week I'll explain kind of an introduction of why spiritual gifts are relevant for us as Christians in the marketplace and kind of how spiritual gifts apply in a business setting. And then next week you're going to hear my interview with a successful entrepreneur named Paul Williams about how he personally uses one of his spiritual gifts, actually, a couple of his spiritual gifts on a regular basis in the cybersecurity industry. Are Christians supposed to be doing business in the marketplace with natural abilities or with spiritual gifts? Or should it be a combination? Or what should the ratio be of how much of my abilities that I use in business should be natural abilities and what percentage should be spiritual gifts? Should it be mostly one or the other? Or is there even a distinction? Should we even be making a distinction between natural abilities and spiritual gifts? Most of us would agree that non-Christians can't operate with the gift of healing or with the gift of miracles. And these are both spiritual gifts that the Apostle Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. But at the same time, few of us would say that non-Christians can't operate with the gift of administration or the gift of leadership, which are also listed as spiritual gifts in the Bible. And the reason why we wouldn't say that is because we know that many of the Fortune 500 companies out there are being run by non-Christians that possess extraordinary administrative and leadership abilities. The Apostle Paul wrote, Now, about the gifts of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. So, what did Paul mean by spiritual gift? I'm going to try to move us a little bit closer to a working definition of spiritual gifts that works also for Christians in the marketplace, not just for Christians in the local church. I'm going to try to get us a little bit closer to that working definition by explaining four things that they are not. So, four things that spiritual gifts are not. Here we go. Number one is that spiritual gifts are not natural abilities. Have you noticed that most of today's professional growth coaching tends to focus on helping people to identify their strengths rather than their gifts? So it's a subtle uh change in terminology that's happened. Why is the term strength now preferred over the term gift? Because it wasn't always that way. And it's it's kind of the same way in the way that we've gone from talking about our vocation, which is come comes from the Latin word vocare, which means to call. It's a calling it, a God-given assignment, to now we're talking about career, which comes from a French word meaning racetrack, and it's the idea of sort of going around in circles. But we've gone from talking about uh a vocation and a calling to now talking about career. Similarly, we've gone from talking about one's gifts to now just emphasizing their strengths. I believe it's because most of our society would prefer to remain unaccountable to the divine giver, to God, for how they use their God-given abilities. So if we call it a strength, we don't necessarily have to go with the term gift that really presupposes that if there's a gift, there's a giver. So I think that has a little bit to do at least with why this change in terminology, yes, we might be using the terms strengths and gifts interchangeably and synonymously, but this vocabulary shift, I think, is worth noting, especially considering that our society kind of has this nasty habit of using vocabulary changes to distort the truth. The world teaches us to think of our natural abilities as your competitive advantage, or one that's popular now is what is your unfair advantage, etc. But the potency of a strength is always relative. No matter how strong I might think my strength is, there are still countless other people whose version or model of that particular strength is is seems to be stronger than mine. But from a God-given, from a from God's perspective, our strengths really aren't very strong at all. An ability only becomes truly strong when it becomes surrendered to the Holy Spirit. When we surrender those abilities to the Holy Spirit, and then in turn the Holy Spirit gives that ability to the church, and when I say church, I mean big church, like universal church, not just the local church, as a supernaturally empowered spiritual gift. But until then it remains a weakness, and and by weakness I mean that it's unable to produce anything of eternal value. The Bible teaches us as God's people to think of our abilities as grace gifts. It comes from the Greek word uh charismata. Charis means grace. So these are grace gifts for from God for what? For the building up of the church. These aren't merely strengths that are common to all people, believers and unbelievers alike. Although we tend to take the same assessments, Christians take the same assessments as unbelievers, and and we we can kind of get lulled into this idea that spiritual gifts just aren't, they're just not relevant to, because if it doesn't work for unbelievers, uh then it it must not work for believers. But I have good news that spiritual gifts are available to Christians, they transcend natural abilities, and they are available not just for use in your local church, but for use in the marketplace where you spend the bulk of your time as a business person. The second thing I want to point out here is that spiritual gifts are not character traits or spiritual fruits. Spiritual gifts are received from the Holy Spirit. These gifts include administration, leadership, teaching, discernment, and there are many others that Christians bring to the marketplace each day. But unlike spiritual gifts, a spiritual fruit, on the other hand, is cultivated, not given, but cultivated in partnership with the Holy Spirit. This fruit is the Christian character that each of us must develop over time. So when we talk about our Christian business ethics and values that we need to be bringing to the marketplace each day, we're talking in terms of spiritual fruit, not spiritual gifts. Because somebody can have a spiritual gift and have a lack of spiritual fruit. God's still not going to take away that spiritual gift, even though they don't have the character to go along with it. The Bible says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. A very familiar passage from the Galatians 5. God expects us to ask for spiritual fruits, and then he expects us to produce spiritual fruit. So we ask for the spiritual gifts and we produce the spiritual fruit through our partnership with the Holy Spirit. So fruit is cultivated, spiritual gifts are given and received. So spiritual gifts are not character traits and they're not spiritual fruits. The third thing that spiritual gifts are not is that they are not titles or positions in a local church. A person might have a spiritual gift without an official title or position, and then another person might have the title and the position without the spiritual gift that's necessary for effectively fulfilling that assignment, fulfilling that role. A person's spiritual gift might result in that person receiving a specific title or position in the church. But usually this is only true in the local church or what C. Peter Wagner talks about as the nuclear church. But in the extended church, as uh Peter Wagner calls it, that's the church in the marketplace, which is a place where church structure is almost non-existent. So as a result, because there isn't a church government outside of a local church, there's not a church government in the marketplace where there's 85% of Christians operating. Um, because of this, Christians in the marketplace often don't understand what their roles are in the church. And when I say church here, I'm talking about uh church with the capital C, the universal church, not just the local church. Although the the big church usually universal church, big C, usually only affirms spiritual gifts that are linked with a title in the local church, such as uh pastor or worship leader or greeter. And if you've taken any of the the modern spiritual gifts assessments in in local churches these days, often those will be the the the types of gifts that are affirmed are, for example, if you have a gift of hospitality, okay, you have the gift of hospitality. We need you to be a greeter in the church, you know, which is which is awesome, but it's certainly not limited. I mean, that would be just a fraction of the way that the gift of hospitality should be used in that person's life. The lack of a title in a local church, despite this, it doesn't lessen the potential impact of that spiritual gift that you have. Approximately 85% of Christians work in a for-profit company. That's where we spend our time for most of us. So, because all of these born-again Christians have spiritual gifts, it seems logical that 85% of the church's spiritual gifts are intended to be used primarily in the marketplace. That's where the Christians are. I mean, that's where 85% of the Christians are, and that's where the lost people are. Which brings us to our next point that spiritual gifts are not only for serving Christians. In fact, they're not even primarily for serving Christians, they are for the building up of the church. But but I'm going to get into this in just a second. The point of this should be fairly obvious that spiritual gifts are not only for serving Christians, because consider that one of the spiritual gifts is the gift of evangelism. And by definition, that gift must operate among non-believers. But unfortunately, the church has had a difficult time understanding that spiritual gifts are intended primarily for use among believers in the marketplace, not only for helping out at church on Sunday. I mean, absolutely help out your church on Sunday or Wednesday night or whenever you're uh you typically get involved with your local church. I mean, there's incredible work that's being done through our local churches, but most of our time is spent in the marketplace in that business setting. If uh if you're working in business, you might be working in a nonprofit, but wherever it is, that is where we're supposed to be using our spiritual gifts. Through his Holy Spirit, God has graciously given his spiritual gifts to every born-again Christian for accomplishing the purpose of the church. What is that purpose of the church? Jesus said in Matthew 28, 19 that the Great Commission is to make disciples of all nations. So, in other words, our spiritual gifts have been given by God to help the people influenced by our businesses, such as our customers, our clients, our vendors, co-workers, bosses, board members, shareholders, you name it, to help all of these people that are being influenced by our businesses to become more like Jesus Christ. That is the goal. And according to the Great Commission, the ultimate goal is for entire nations to become like Jesus. That was the Great Commission to make disciples of nations, not just individuals. And making disciples of businesses is uh a key part, I believe, in what God is doing in the world today and the way that the marketplace is being used as a as a tool for leading people into the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. It doesn't mean that we go into our workplaces and and be Bible beaters and and take time uh from our employer to have lengthy theological conversations about the origin of the origins of the universe and this, that, and the other thing. But it what it does mean is that we're to live our lives in a way that we are ready to give a reason for the hope that's within us and to live in such a way that it would actually provoke that question, that people would be so curious about how we do business, about how we conduct ourselves in the marketplace, that they would want to know what is the reason why you do what you do? And people ask that question in in many different ways, but there should be something that is different about our life that provokes somebody to wanna know what's behind, what is the driving force behind your life and the way that you conduct business. Question of the week for this week is how have you personally used your spiritual gifts in a business setting? I want to also let you know that I'm currently developing an ebook which will have an assessment that's gonna help you to identify your spiritual gifts and specifically how God can use those spiritual gifts for building his church in the marketplace, for uh for making disciples in the marketplace. So this is a spiritual gifts assessment that really works for the 85% of Christians that spend most of their time in the marketplace. So I'm looking for stories from Christians who have already identified their spiritual gifts and have used those spiritual gifts for making disciples specifically in a business setting. So if you have a story to share, uh by all means please contact me at Darren at hybridbooks.com. I would love to hear uh what God has been doing in your life and how you've been using those spiritual gifts in a business setting. That's all for this week. You can comment on this episode and respond to our question of the week and also get more information about how to partner with God in your business at theologyofbusiness.com. And as a reminder, next week you're gonna hear part two of this two-part series on spiritual gifts in the marketplace. You're gonna hear my interview with a successful entrepreneur named Paul Williams about how he uses one of his spiritual gifts on a regular basis in the cybersecurity industry. So it's gonna be an incredible interview. You don't want to miss it. Thanks for listening and keep partnering with God in your business.