There’s a quiet assumption running through much of the Western church that goes something like this: spiritual gifts are for a certain kind of Christian. The upfront ones. The confident ones. The ones who seem to have a direct line to heaven. The rest of us? We just serve on the welcome team, give our tithe, and hope for the best.
But that assumption isn’t just unhelpful — it’s unbiblical.
In my book Empowered, I set out to challenge this idea head-on. Because the New Testament doesn’t present spiritual gifts as an optional add-on for the enthusiastic few. It presents them as the standard equipment for every follower of Jesus. And if we’ve lost sight of that, it’s worth asking why — and what it’s costing us.
The Gift That Comes With the Giver
Let’s start with what spiritual gifts actually are. At the simplest level, they are God-given abilities, distributed by the Holy Spirit, that empower us to serve others and advance God’s kingdom. They are not natural talents. They are not personality traits. They are not proof of spiritual maturity. They are something else entirely — supernatural tools God provides to accomplish what we cannot do on our own.
The apostle Paul puts it plainly in 1 Corinthians 12:4–7. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. Different kinds of service, but the same Lord. And then comes the line that should stop us in our tracks: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”
Each one. Not some. Not the elite. Each one.
Gordon Fee, in his landmark work God’s Empowering Presence, describes the Holy Spirit as the personal, empowering presence of God among His people. That’s a beautiful and theologically rich way to understand what’s happening when we talk about spiritual gifts. They aren’t abstract “things” we carry around in our pockets — they are expressions of God’s living presence in us.
Why So Many Have Given Up
If spiritual gifts are for everyone, why have so many believers quietly walked away from them?
The reasons are more layered than we often admit. Some people have grown disillusioned or confused. They don’t understand what the gifts are, and so they’ve never pursued them. Others have witnessed gifts being abused — used for personal gain, control, or manipulation — and that left a bad taste. For others, spiritual gifts just seem “weird” or out of place in our rational, post-enlightenment world.
And then there’s a subtler issue: many believers feel excluded. They see gifts being exercised on public platforms by high-profile leaders and quietly wonder, Do my gifts matter too?
All of these are real barriers. And they deserve honest answers, not dismissal.
But here’s what’s crucial: the New Testament response to misuse is never disuse — it’s right use. Paul spends an entire chapter (1 Corinthians 14) teaching the church how to use spiritual gifts properly, so they build up and encourage the body of Christ. And in 1 Corinthians 13, he reminds us that love must be the foundation for every spiritual gift. The answer to abuse isn’t abandonment. It’s maturity.
Jesus Is the Model
One of the most important theological foundations for spiritual gifts is often overlooked: Jesus himself modelled a life empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Though he was fully God, Philippians 2:6–7 tells us he chose not to exploit that equality with God for his own advantage. Instead, he lived as a fully human man, dependent on the Spirit to fulfil his mission on earth. From his baptism — when the Holy Spirit descended on him — to his ministry in the wilderness and beyond, Jesus shows us what it means to live in the power of the Spirit. He was continually filled by the Spirit, led by the Spirit, and empowered to perform miracles, heal the sick, and preach the good news of the Kingdom.
And then he made an extraordinary promise. In John 14:12, Jesus told his followers that whoever believes in him will do the works he has been doing — and even greater things. His ministry wasn’t meant to end with him. He empowered every believer through the Holy Spirit to continue his work.
If Jesus himself operated through the power of the Spirit, how much more do we need to?
Everyone Gets to Play
John Wimber, one of the great pioneers of renewal, was passionate about moving the gifts out of the hands of a few leaders and into the lives of ordinary believers. His famous phrase captures it perfectly: everyone gets to play. The Holy Spirit, Wimber argued, is an equal-opportunity employer. The gifts aren’t reserved for pastors, preachers, and platform personalities. They belong to the whole body.
Roger Stronstad, in his work on Luke’s charismatic theology, makes a similar case — that the Spirit doesn’t just anoint individuals here and there, but empowers the entire body to speak, serve, and demonstrate God’s kingdom. And Yonggi Cho, who led the largest church in the world in Seoul, South Korea, believed that releasing spiritual gifts into small groups was one of the key reasons for their explosive growth. When everyone is empowered, the whole church flourishes.
This is the picture the New Testament paints of normal church life. Not a performance by a few gifted leaders, but a community where every member knows their gifting and uses it to serve.
Faith: The Key to Activation
Here’s a tension we need to sit with: God gives the gifts, but we activate them by faith. Romans 12:6 tells us that we have different gifts according to the grace given to us — and if your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith.
Gifts don’t automatically operate just because we have them. We have to step out in faith, frequently in weakness and uncertainty. That’s uncomfortable. It’s messy. It involves risk and the very real possibility of getting it wrong.
Robert J. Clinton, in Unlocking Your Giftedness, teaches that discovering and developing your gifts involves testing, feedback, and risk. You can’t figure out your gifts in a vacuum — you discover them in the messy, beautiful process of trying, failing, learning, and growing.
As Wimber famously said: faith is spelled R-I-S-K.
What’s at Stake
So why does this matter? Why not just let sleeping gifts lie?
Because without the gifts, the church is merely human. With them, it becomes a living temple of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual gifts build up the church. They reveal God’s presence. They empower mission — healing, prophecy, evangelism, acts of mercy that extend God’s kingdom in the world. They unite and diversify the body. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”
Gordon Fee puts it powerfully: the church is a community of the Spirit, in-dwelt and gifted by the Spirit, as the present expression of the people of God.
That’s the kind of church I want to be part of. A community where spiritual gifts aren’t treated as optional extras for the super-spiritual, but as the normal, expected, beautiful way that Jesus continues to minister through his people today.
They are for you — not just pastors, not just extroverts, not just “special” Christians. They are God’s empowering presence made visible. They are signs that Jesus is alive and active in his people. And they are tools for mission, love, and transformation.
The only question is whether we’ll have the faith to step into what God has already placed inside us.
This post is drawn from the Introduction and Chapter 1 of Empowered: Discovering and Developing Your Spiritual Gifts by Paul Benger.
Paul Benger 