Gospel Community Church

As it concerns our connection to a church family, our attitude should never be, “They can't do it without me," or "They don't need me.” Both fail to understand our frailty and dependence.

God, in His sovereign plan, brings believers to local congregations, and He gives them the gifts they need, according to His will, to serve the body. This leaves no room for boasting or self-loathing.

The church and its members are designed by God to be diverse in our giftings, yet united in Christ.

The office of Apostle was reserved for the original Twelve plus Paul and is no longer in operation today, but the Holy Spirit still gifts people with some of the same giftings as the Apostles without giving them the authority that came with the office.

The spiritual gift of apostleship can be defined as a Spirit-empowered ability to do the types of work that Apostles did: planting churches, holding elders accountable, helping people and churches through crisis, holding people and churches to doctrinal standards, exercising church discipline.

The spiritual gift of teaching is the Spirit-empowered ability to explain the Word of God, apply the Word of God, in a way that exalts Christ, and brings joy to the hearers.

The spiritual gift of helping is Spirit-empowered compassion paired with drive to meet the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of the people around you.

The spiritual gift of administration is the Spirit-empowered ability to take a big idea and turn it into actionable steps.

A cessationist is someone who believes that the miraculous spiritual gifts (prophecy, healings, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues) ended with the Apostolic age.

1) The cessationist will argue that the miraculous gifts were used to authenticate the message of the Gospel through the Apostles. Now that the message of the Gospel has been authenticated and the Apostles are all gone, so are the gifts.

2) Miraculous gifts undermine the sufficiency and authority of Scripture.

Response 1) This argument is invalid, because you have to make the point that the use of miraculous gifts were only and solely to authenticate the message of the Apostles.

Response 2) The miraculous gifts do not undermine the sufficiency of Scripture because it is the all-sufficient Scripture that tells us to seek the miraculous gifts.

A continuationist believes that all the spiritual gifts continue to be given by God and are therefore operative in the church today and should be sought after.

1) We should seek for and exercise the miraculous gifts because there is not one single Scripture that will point us to the gifts going away.
2) We should seek for and exercise the miraculous gifts because there is no evidence from church history that they ceased. As a matter of fact, it shows the opposite.