Re-orienting the "gifts": Part I

This commences part one of my reflections on the nature of what is often referred to as "spiritual giftings". I will begin by reviewing the nature and mission of the Church, so that we have a context in which to understand the "gifts".

Robert L. Saucy says that “The church is God’s assembly… It is a people called forth by God, incorporated into Christ, and indwelt by the Spirit.” Theologian Lewis Sperry Chafer considers this divinely called assembly as a “new order or class of humanity”. He furthers this understanding by noting that there is a visible expression of this “new order” where there exist any who convene together in the name of Christ and includes within that local gathering any ministry or service that they are involved in.
Within this context the church seems to be called for one purpose: “the glorification of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit." I believe that this glorification should be understood in a very specific way according to the manner in which it has been revealed to us - which that the whole of the Scriptures can be understood as an account of the Creator God revealing Himself to created man with the intention of His own glorification by means of cosmic redemption. It reveals that the God who created all and is in control of all wishes to establish with us, the dependant created creature, a lasting covenant – establishing with us a precedent for an understanding of ourselves in relation to God.
It is from this relationship that the human draws his entire existence (indeed, according to Colossians it is from this relationship that all of the cosmos draws its existence). In order to have a correct understanding of oneself and the world in which we live one must understand himself in light of humanity and his relationship to the Creator God. Then, understanding the broken nature of our relationship to that Creator God, we realize the importance of His covenant redemption. Which, upon entrance into the promise, by means of Christ’s sacrificial death, as established in His Holy Writ, provides for the human being a communal context in which to live, create, love, work and worship according to man’s reflection of the divine nature, and will one day result in the redemption of the whole cosmos as it is submitted to the supremacy of Christ, at which time God will deal justly with the forces of evil. The Church then is an outworking of this cosmic intervention of the Trinitarian God as is the mission of the church. In fact, theologian Jurgen Moltmann posits that mission does not come from the church but that the church is a result of Christ’s mission, and as a result functions as an extension of that mission. Thus the goal or mission of Christ/Holy Spirit is cosmic redemption of which the church is an integral part of in the present age. Further, as we function in the body of believers as an extension of Christ so also our role in the world can be seen as an extension of this divine mission. This would cast the work of the believer in a way that should be seen as the redemption of human civilization, which is understood as a collective term generally embodying the sum of human relationships but more specifically refers to culture; that is, the traditions, institutions, and communal structures that form the context in which our consciousness is aware of existence, interacts with reality, and interprets all experiences. Thus the goal of the church is the worship of God which happens as a result of the building up of the Christological community.
This view of the church, that is, understanding the church as a universal body of believers that is expressed locally with the ultimate purpose of worshiping and glorifying God will serve as the broad basis within which we inspect the more specific ministry roles and functions of what has come to be known as “spiritual gifting.”