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Knowledge

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge . . . (Hos 4:6) The church sometimes has difficulty rightly valuing knowledge.  Sometimes people equate head knowledge with spiritual maturity and thereby give to knowledge an importance and a role it does not have.  Knowledge by itself does not make anyone greater in the eyes of God.  God does not care how much you know if you don’t love.  Or if you don’t trust Him.  However, sometimes people devalue knowledge because “knowledge puffs up.”  They see that faith and love are greater than knowledge.  They see that knowledge by itself does…

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Mercy

“Rejoice with those who rejoice.  Weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15). God is a God of mercy, and we, as His disciples, are to love mercy.  God sees us in our weakness and need, has compassion on us, and meets our need.  This is what merciful people do.  People with the gift of mercy are the people you want around when you hurt.  They listen to you.  They hug you.  They hold your hand.  They weep with you.  They sympathize with your plight.  These people feel your hurt.  They want to help you, and they will do what they…

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Pastoral Leadership

“I am the Good Shepherd” (Jn 10:11) “Shepherd the flock of God . . .” (I Pet 5:2) Pastors are shepherds.  And shepherds lead sheep. Some people debate whether the New Testament speaks of pastoral gifting at all.  They argue that the word “pastor” refers only to an office and not to a spiritual gift.  Others disagree and say that the New Testament speaks of pastoral gifting.  Sometimes people argue their points as if the two positions are mutually exclusive.  They are not.  In Ephesians 4, the pastor-teacher seems to be an office that is a gift (Eph 4:8, 11-12),…

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Entrepreneurial Leadership

“I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation” (Rom 15:20) Some people call this gifting “apostolic gifting.”  I will avoid that term because sometimes people hear it and think you are describing a person with the same authority as the apostles.  Instead, I will say simply that this gift is a starter gift.  These people provide the leadership to start works in the spiritual world.  These people plant churches and start ministries.  They are generally task-focused, can operate well alone, and enjoy the challenge of…

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Leadership

Leadership is the gifting I have had the greatest struggle to describe.  Two reasons account for this difficulty. First, leadership comes in different varieties.  A church planter and a pastor are both leaders, but they are quite different beasts.  Paul is not John.  Both have leadership giftings, but they have very different strengths and weaknesses. Second, Paul mentions the gift of leadership in Romans 12, but in Eph 4, he mentions as leaders the gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers.  So is Paul using different terms to refer to the same thing?  And if so, which term in Ephesians…

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