The Via Sabaste was a Roman road that cut through the heart of Asia Minor, bringing traffic of all sorts through the small town of Lystra. Well-formed routes such as this enabled the rapid expansion of the church in the first century. Despite the ease of travel, Paul’s first visit to Lystra could not have gone worse. When Paul and Barnabas healed a crippled man, the locals insisted that they were Zeus and Hermes (Acts 14:12), offending the two missionaries and inciting the local Jewish population to stone Paul (Acts 14:19). Undeterred, they continued to preach the gospel, making many disciples amongst those in Lystra and the surrounding communities.
On his return to Lystra during his second missionary tour, Paul had his eye on a potential companion to work alongside him. Previously, Paul had worked closely with Barnabas, but had parted ways at the outset of his second journey. Even though he had brought Silas along with him, a vacancy remained. So when he arrived at Lystra, he identified a young man full of faith to join in this gospel ministry. Timothy represents in many ways the central point of the book of Acts. The Jerusalem council had just met to delineate exactly how to blend new gentile believers into the church comprised mostly of Jewish believers (Acts 15). Timothy was of mixed parentage. His father was Greek. His mother was a Jewish believer (Acts 16:1). Raised in the faith of his mother and grandmother, Timothy would have already been familiar with the scriptures of the Old Testament. As one of the disciples from Paul’s previous visit to Lystra, what Paul found upon his return was a young man of profound faith. We cannot know for certain his age, but it seems likely that Timothy was still only a boy, around sixteen or seventeen years old.
Timothy joined Paul and Silas on their journeys, traveling throughout Macedonia and Greece. At times, Paul entrusted Timothy with the care of local churches, such as at Berea or Thessalonica. We can picture, though, that Paul valued Timothy as a close companion, referring to him as his “true child in the faith” (1 Tim. 1:2). At various points, Paul commends Timothy to various churches, such as when Timothy was sent to minister at Corinth (1 Cor. 4:17 and later 16:10), or when he was sent to minister at Philippi (Phil 2:18-23). Timothy was included as a co-author of several of Paul’s letters, including 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. From all of this we gather that Timothy was a gifted and capable companion, even during his earliest days traveling with Paul.
What Timothy exemplifies is a young person exhibiting spiritual gifting in a powerful way. Later in his life, even after many years accompanying Paul, he was still a young man when Paul advised him to “let no one despise you for your youth” (1 Tim. 4:12). The point I am making here is that spiritual gifting can be evident and powerfully expressed by young people. Therefore, I believe that we can begin exploring gifting during the high school years, enabling students to begin a process of discernment and practice that will put feet to their faith in powerful ways.
Learning about Spiritual Gifts
In this year’s Bible class taught to freshmen, we walked through 1 Corinthians 12-14. Here we get one of several lists of gifts in the New Testament. Compare, for instance, the list in 1 Cor. 12:7-11 with that in 12:28-30 as well as with those in Romans 12:4-8, Ephesians 4:11 and 1 Peter 4:9-11. Each list contains different gifts. This means that no single list is comprehensive or exhaustive. So the first lesson to learn about gifts is that they can be tricky to pin down and define with exactitude. This points to the need for discernment and dependence. By discernment, I mean the process of continually asking the Lord for clarity as to how he desires to work through someone to edify the people of God. And by dependence, I mean that the gift itself is not actually the most consequential part of what we are learning. Instead, using a God-given gift is really the training ground for prayerfully and faithfully connecting ourselves to his work in and through us. 1 Corinthians 13 shows us that the gift itself will pass away (13:8-10). It is the love that is expressed through the gift that will endure forever.
Walking through the three chapters of 1 Corinthians 12-14, we are presented with three major ideas. First, we learn the nature of spiritual gifts in chapter 12. Here we get a couple listings of the gifts, but also ideas such as the unity of the body of Christ and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. In chapter 13, we learn about spiritual gifts as the “homework” we receive to practice loving one another. Paul anticipates that we will one day see our Lord face to face, so our current practice should be a training ground for learning how to live a serving and sacrificial love towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. Then in chapter 14, Paul teaches about how gifts ought to be exercised in an orderly and considerate way. Here we get the principle that gifts are meant to build the church up (14:12).
There are challenging points of discussion that accompany these passages. It can be difficult to walk through these chapters without tackling one or two of the controversies contained in them. For instance, we encounter topics such as the availability of all gifts today (some Christian traditions view the miraculous gifts such as tongues and prophecy as no longer available). There are topics pertaining to authority in the church, which can erupt into differences in church polities in a multi-denominational setting. Perhaps the most difficult controversy to tackle is the roles of women in the church. A teacher resource I found to be extremely helpful is D.A. Carson’s Showing the Spirit. He carefully lays out different theological positions and proposes reasonable solutions to thorny issues.
Learning to Own One’s Faith
One of the chief goals in learning about spiritual gifts is to help students make the connection between their emerging biblical faith and the practical outworking of that faith in their lives. To accomplish this, it is imperative to lay a strong biblical foundation. One must know what one believes. Some students will have a very detailed and robust knowledge of the Bible and theology, while others will have less knowledge. So, I advise a program whereby students come away with a good grasp of the storyline of the Bible and the essentials of the faith. As high schoolers, students can be entrusted to read on their own and begin practicing disciplines such as daily prayer, regular Bible reading, and so forth. Learning about spiritual gifts, then, gives them further ownership of their faith and new avenues to put feet to their faith.
Having students take a few spiritual gifts tests is the next step in their learning. After laying a strong foundation in the biblical text, we then have them explore by way of tests some potential giftings the Lord may have bestowed upon them. Here are two tests I found online. The website Spiritual Gifts Test is run by the ministry of Jeff Carver. I like this site because it has a test geared towards youth. To take this test and receive results, students must create an account. I found that this site has really solid definitions of the gifts for students to learn about their personal gifting and connect that to solid biblical teachings. Another site is giftstest.com, a free online tool produced by the Rock Church in San Diego. There are other tests available out there, but these are two good examples of questionnaires aimed at elucidating an individual’s possible gifting. I want to emphasize the word “possible,” because no single test can definitively tell a person what the Holy Spirit is accomplishing within a believer.
This is why we need to spend time reflecting. Once students have taken a couple tests, they have some results to read and digest. They now begin a process of writing up what they think their gifting is by listing the top results and using scripture to clearly define their gifting as best as they can discern. For students who may not have had much opportunity to serve in any ministry context, it is important to consider moments when they have experienced genuine joy, or times when others have commented on their potential gifting. I also spend time working one-on-one with them in order to hear their thoughts and provide my own insights.
I also have students write up plans they can make now that they have discern one, two or three possible giftings. These plans might be along the lines of learning more about spiritual gifts, or speaking with a youth pastor about spiritual gifts. They might consider opportunities to use spiritual gifts in a ministry at church, or to join a missions trip. In other words, having considered what the Lord is doing through them, they should now follow Paul’s teaching that these gifts are for the edification of the church.
Learning about Life’s Mission
Having spent the better part of a decade providing college guidance, the major framework I use with students is to consider their life’s mission. I can think of no better way to think about college than to view those years than within a context a long-range vision of why God has placed this person on the planet. It can be difficult for students to have a clear vision of this life mission, so it takes time and good counsel to draw this out of them. Here’s where I think learning about spiritual gifts can be a moment of clarity for students. By gaining an insight into their relationship with God, and a sense of where God wants them to serve, they begin to understand that their life has a mission, and that whatever kind of schooling they do, it should be intimately tied to that mission. It is imperative that counselors use effective questions to draw out of students their own values and sense of their life mission. We must restrain ourselves from inserting our own vision or coaxing them into a preconceived notion of what they ought to want in their lives. Only when they have come to their own conclusions can they genuinely be satisfied with this vision of their mission in life. Some of the questions I ask have to do with what kinds of values to they hold, what kind of person do they want to be when they are 20, 30 or 40, and what kind of parent would they want to be.
This does not mean that one’s spiritual gift is somehow tied to a college major or career. That being said, it could be that discerning a spiritual gift could lead some students to pursue training in ministry. For many or even most students, they can start to map out a mission where their interests, talents, and giftings come together into a clearer life plan. The aspiring architect can now see how their talent in physics intersects with their interest in design as well as their spiritual gifting of mercy. How these come together is very personal and unique to that person.
Whether a unit on spiritual gifts is explicitly connected to college guidance or not, teaching students about spiritual gifts can be a key moment in their growth as young Christians. During the high school years, most of these students will learn how to drive and work their first job. Shouldn’t we also hand them the keys to a deeper walk with Christ that gives them a start in how to practically live out their faith. Just like Timothy was entrusted with responsibility at a young age, we can likewise guide our students toward a mature faith.
