Chalmers' Blog

Stop Trying to Discover Your Spiritual Gift. Start Serving the Church.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve managed to turn spiritual gifts into something they’re not supposed to be.

What God intended for the building up of his church, we’ve turned into an exercise in self-discovery. What was meant to draw attention to the generosity of the Holy Spirit has become another opportunity to focus on ourselves.

And, ironically, we may even have turned spiritual gifts into idols.

Don’t believe me? Just Google “What’s my spiritual gift?” and see what comes up. You’ll find countless websites offering questionnaires, personality assessments, and quizzes promising to reveal which spiritual gift God has given you.

Answer a few questions about yourself, press submit, and apparently you’ll discover how the sovereign Spirit of God has equipped you for ministry.

Does nobody else find that extraordinary?

We’ve taken something that Scripture describes as the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit and reduced it to an online personality test.

Don’t Just Explain the Text: Why Preachers Must Apply It Specifically

There is a sentence that can sound wonderfully spiritual at the end of a sermon “Now go and apply this to your life.”

The problem is that it may mean almost nothing.

A congregation can hear thirty minutes of careful exegesis, understand the structure of the passage, appreciate the historical background, admire the preacher’s theological precision – and still walk out of church without knowing what obedience should actually look like on Monday morning.

Worse still, vague application can leave people free to make the Bible say whatever they already wanted it to say.

That is why preachers need to be specific.

Not Old, Not Young, Not Done: Why the Church Needs Christians Who Still Have Plenty Left in the Tank

There is a phrase I have heard more than once in church life

“I think it’s time for me to step back and let the younger people do it.”

Sometimes that is exactly the right instinct. Churches need mature Christians who are willing to train others, hand over responsibility and rejoice when a younger believer grows into meaningful service.

But sometimes that sentence hides another assumption – My useful years are behind me.

Saturday Snippets

As well as reading a lot of books, I also read a ton of articles every week. Here are some of the articles that I’ve read recently and have found interesting, helpful, challenging and encouraging. I hope that they will be the same for you, my dear readers.

Should Christians Eat Halal Meat? What 1 Corinthians Teaches Us About Food, Freedom and Conscience

Can Christians eat halal meat?

It sounds like a fairly modern question. Walk into a supermarket, order food from a takeaway, or eat in certain restaurants in Britain and you may discover that the meat being served is halal. For some Christians that barely registers. For others it raises an immediate concern: Has this meat been offered to another god? Am I participating in something Islamic by eating it? Should my conscience trouble me?

Those are not silly questions.

In fact, as I have been preaching through 1 Corinthians, I have been struck by just how contemporary Paul’s discussion in chapters 8–10 feels. The Corinthians were not asking about halal chicken. They were asking whether Christians could eat meat associated with pagan temples.

But underneath their question lay issues Christians are still wrestling with today:
What may I participate in?
When should I abstain?
What does Christian freedom actually mean?
What if another believer’s conscience differs from mine?

Paul’s answer is wonderfully nuanced. He refuses both legalism and careless liberty, and perhaps that is exactly what we need.

Want to Preach Better? Learn to Write Better

Over the past year, I’ve received more positive feedback on my writing and, perhaps more significantly, on my preaching.

That has made me wonder: what changed?

I don’t think I suddenly became more theological. I don’t think I discovered some hidden preaching technique. I haven’t spent hours crafting clever sound bites or trying to manufacture memorable quotes.

But I have changed the way I write.

For years, I wrote sermons and articles largely the way I spoke. I put thoughts onto the page as they came into my head. Sentences were often long. Grammar was occasionally negotiable. Illustrations could become elaborate. Paragraphs could wander. The point might eventually arrive, but sometimes it had to fight its way through a lot of words to get there.

Over the last year, I’ve increasingly tried to write like a writer.

And I think it has made me a better writer, and a better preacher.

Saturday Snippets (August 22)

Will Christians Really Judge the World?

There are some verses in the Bible that we can read dozens of times without really stopping to think about what they mean. Then, suddenly, one phrase catches our attention and refuses to let us move on.

For me, one of those phrases came up recently in a sermon I was listening to and it is found in 1 Corinthians 6 “Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world?” (1 Corinthians 6:2)

It is a remarkable statement, Christians will judge the world.

But almost immediately, questions begin to pile up. Aren’t Christians themselves going to be judged? Doesn’t Paul elsewhere say that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10)? If God alone is the Judge, what exactly are believers doing judging the world? And perhaps most puzzling of all – how could ordinary Christians possibly possess the wisdom necessary for such a task?

The more we think about Paul’s words, the stranger they can initially seem.

Yet this little phrase opens up something glorious about the Christian’s future, and something deeply challenging about the Christian’s life now.

Rebuilding Trust in Church Leadership: Biblical Models for Integrity and Transparency After a Season of Scandals

Trust is slowly earned and quickly lost.

That is true in families, workplaces, friendships and churches. Yet when trust is broken by a Christian leader, the damage can feel especially deep. Pastors and elders preach the truth, call others to holiness, offer spiritual guidance and are often welcomed into the most vulnerable moments of people’s lives. When a leader abuses that position, conceals serious sin or protects the institution rather than the wounded, the effects can be devastating.

In recent years, Christians have watched a painful stream of leadership scandals become public. Some have involved sexual immorality. Others have involved bullying, financial dishonesty, spiritual abuse, intimidation or long-standing patterns of deception. In several cases, the initial wrongdoing was compounded by secrecy, defensive statements and efforts to preserve reputations.

A Heart Aflame for God

The phrase spiritual formation can make some conservative evangelicals slightly uneasy. It can sometimes be associated with mystical practices, vague spirituality or disciplines borrowed uncritically from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. Yet the Bible clearly calls Christians to pursue spiritual maturity – to keep our hearts diligently, to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, and to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ.

The question, therefore, is not whether Christians should be spiritually formed, but what should form us, and how that formation takes place.