Patricia Johnson
Dear Friends,
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Reading for SWEEP 13:
Lloyd Lee Wilson, “Community Stewardship of our Spiritual Gifts”
from “Essays on the Quaker Vision of Gospel Order’ (Quaker Press, 1993), pp13,14.
The responsibilities that accompany spiritual giftedness are numerous, and each must be assumed and carried out in order for the full benefit of the gift to be felt in the faith community.
For the individual, the responsibilities of giftedness include naming and accepting the gift and offering it to the faith community in God’s service.
For the faith community, the responsibilities include helping the individual name and develop the gift, and accepting its exercise within the community – agreeing to be ministered to.
If these responsibilities are shirked on either side, the gift will not grow into its maturity and the faith community will not be nurtured as it needs. Not only the specific individual will be affected, but also other “infant ministers” or persons with other spiritual gifts who, seeing how a more seasoned Friend has fared, will not take the risks of ministry on themselves as they should.
When these responsibilities are acknowledged and carried out, however, the benefits to the faith community are great. The community receives just those gifts that it needs in order to carry out God’s will and therefore knows the joys of growing spiritual maturity and of being in harmony with the divine intent.
Individuals receive and exercise those gifts that are best suited to their condition, and become more nearly the persons God yearns for them to be.
Let us resolve then, as faith communities to be good stewards of the spiritual gifts that have been bestowed on us, that we might also hear the Master’s Voice, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”
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ELDERING AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS – an incomplete list
Love
Deep acceptance
Patience and capacity to wait
Willingness to pray
Prayerful use of intuition
Listening
Concern and feeling for quality of worship
Holding the meeting in spiritual space
Vocal ministry
Groundedness
Spiritual presence
Ability to recognise and name gifts in others
Ability to prompt others to trust and grow their gifts
Responsive to That of God in the Other
Teaching/ministry and opening understanding for others
Open heart
Open mind
Focused attention
Capacity to read body language of self and others
Trusting in God’s leadings
Help others to test leadings
Discernment of the sense of the Meeting
Love and nurture for the Meeting community
Provide spiritual hospitality
Faithfulness
Willing to speak truth in love, even hard truths
Know when and how to call others to account
Know when you/others are outrunning the Guide and need to stop and
listen
