← The Wake-Up Call
The Wake-Up Call
The Gifts of the Spirit - Jon Thompson | Wake Up Call Conversations
00:53:58
In this episode, John Thompson, senior pastor of Sanctus Church in Toronto, shares insights on empowering churches and individuals through the integration of spiritual gifts, disciplines, and divine encounters. He explains how Jesus' ministry, rooted in the Spirit's power and spiritual disciplines, serves as a model for believers today. The discussion focuses on the concept of convergence, where spiritual gifts and disciplines intersect to create effective ministry and personal transformation. Listeners will gain practical tools to identify and activate their spiritual gifts, enhancing both personal faith and church growth in a meaningful way. Register for the upcoming New Room Gathering with Jon:https://www.seedbed.com/newroomgathering Watch Jon's sermon series on the Gifts of the Spirit from Sanctus Church's YouTube page:https://www.youtube.com/@SanctusChurch
Loading summary
Transcript92 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:10]
B
JD Walt here. Thanks for joining us for this conversation with John Thompson on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. You're going to see as we're talking through, we're talking about a new room gathering that's coming up and when we're talking, we don't know exactly where it's going to be. We well, good news. We have landed it. It's going to be in Nashville, Tennessee, specifically in Franklin at Southeast new church site, Southeast Christians New church site in Franklin. It's going to be April 16th and the 17th. And get this guys, this little gathering, we used to call them leader gatherings. And I started looking at this and I'm like the topic is waking up to the gifts of the Holy Spirit, y'. All. That's an everybody kind of gathering. And so it's a new room gathering. It's suitable for anyone who wants to be a part of it. It's going to be so rich. John Thompson, you're going to see that this conversation will give you a taste of it. We would love to see you there. 4-16-17, Franklin, Tennessee. You can get more information at seedbed.com/new room gathering. All right, well, J.D. walt here with the wake up call and so delighted to be hosting another one of our conversations. Today we have John Thompson from Sanctus Church in Toronto, Canada. And we're here to talk about a lot of things. So rather than constrict ourselves with an introduction, let's just jump right into it, John, and how about just kind of give us the basic 411 on you.
- [02:07]
A
Sure. It's great to be with your audience. I know I've met some of them at new room and other gatherings that I've been at with all of you. It's great to be with you again. So my name's John. I'm, I'm the senior pastor of a church called Sanctus on the east side of Toronto and I've been on staff for 28 years. So I've done my whole ministry run in this one church. I've helped lead five iterations of this church, married to my wife Joanna. Both her and I turned 50 this year. I've got three kids. An 18 year old, a 16 year old, a 14 year old was born just outside of Toronto, but actually grew up in Ecuador in the 80s. So my parents were missionaries before I was born, after I was born and then for a long time after that. So I'm a third culture kid. And yeah, lots of other things. Been to 40 countries, love good Mexican and Thai food if you care.
- [03:03]
B
40 countries.
- [03:05]
A
Yeah.
- [03:06]
B
My gosh. Well, we're. We're in the midst here. As we're doing this conversation today. We are in the midst of. I would like to think it was a thaw, but we had a big ice snow situation. Basically just your average day in Canada.
- [03:28]
A
Depends on the part in Canada. Like my friends in Vancouver are awesome. So the big storm you're talking about, I don't know when this comes out, but we had it too. So I had the snowblower out this morning. Yeah, we had the same system that crossed. Uh, except I'm prepared for it and you're not.
- [03:45]
B
No, we're not.
- [03:48]
A
Yeah. At least for parts of you aren't.
- [03:51]
B
Well, so, you know, we're in the midst of a. We're participating in a publishing project with you that is a quite ambitious one. And it, and it represents a long span of your work. It's just, it's a big honor to be a part of it and we feel a tremendous stewardship with others to share this, this work with the broader church. And it's three. It's actually three books. Hang on. Four.
- [04:27]
A
Four books.
- [04:28]
B
So why don't we start off and you just kind of give us the span of those. Because this is a long work. This is a long obedience.
- [04:39]
A
Yes. As Eugene Peterson said, in the right direction, I hope. Yeah. So this is four different.
- [04:44]
B
In the same direction, right?
- [04:45]
A
Yeah, that's right. So four works. The first one is Convergence and it's the intersection on spiritual disciplines, spiritual gifts, walking through the difference between those two things in revival, how to use those things when revival doesn't happen, how do you use those things when revival does happen? And rooting the whole conversation, which we'll probably talk about today, in Jesus himself and the interplay between gifts and disciplines. The second book, so that comes out April and then the second book coming out in October, is called how to Witness. Well between Revival and Retreat or Retreat and Revival. And this is actually taking the Incarnation as the epicenter for how we do witnessing well and talking about how the multiple manifestations and styles of church was always God's heart, but also going off convergence, which the three. The spiritual gifts are divided by a guy named Bobby Clinton into three categories, Love, word and power. And talking about how love, word and power are necessary to do evangelism well in a post Christian pre Christian world. Third book coming out is Deliverance and it's a 25 year summary theologically and practically on how to deal with demons. We as a very middle class, historically Non multicultural, conservative, non charismatic church were thrust into the deep end. And so this, you know, this is 25 years of thoughts, reflections. The last one coming out is called Perseverance. And I was writing this just before the pandemic and then during the pandemic. And so the joke I always have is it's my fault that all the things happen so I could learn Perseverance. But in its 15 reflections on how we as leaders might make it to the end. Well, because only 30% of Christian leaders in the scriptures or God followers in the scriptures actually end well. And the stat probably holds well from the last 2000 years. Some of these were pre. Published and then Zondervan, of course, reflective. And you guys were re releasing them globally to the church.
- [06:50]
B
Yeah, well, first, so thank. Thank you for all that work. I'm a writer myself. I know the pain and the loneliness and the utter frustration of writing. I mean, it's a joy, but it's not a happiness. And thank you for that privilege. It's. It's going to be a bl. It already has been. And what I love about it is how this has not come down from an ivory tower. This is. It is thoroughly, you know, researched, but it's not just sort of academic theory. It's not just theological treatise. This has been birthed from the ground of a real church. Tell us a little bit about Sanctus Church.
- [07:47]
A
Yeah. So Sanctus Church was planted in the east side of Toronto in 1985. It wasn't called that back then. As it is in all urban centers. There is a moment where young adults start getting married and having babies and going, hmm, I think I'd like a lawn. And so they move, you know, to the suburbs. And so a small group of young adults back in 1985 decided to go to the east side of Toronto, which was considered the wilderness of nothingness back then. And so this church has been on quite an interesting story and trajectory when, you know, in the early 80s or early 90s, late 90s, we were the first church to introduce small groups in the area, start using drama, started thinking about how we witness to non Christians, well, as well as disciples. Anyway, fast forward. You know, this church now is a church of around 4,000 people, five locations. There are 60 nations in it. Like I said, I've been involved in five iterations of this church. And the iterations have included everything from the discovery of spiritual gifts in a conservative, functionally cessationistic environment, trying to work out multiculturalism in real time, how we wrestle with you Know even how we wrestled with women in ministry in a conservative environment, social justice in the suburbs, global partnerships, going multi site early on compared to a lot of people. And again, I've shared this when we've been together at conferences, but just because the vast majority of your audience probably wouldn't know this, Toronto is the fourth largest city in North America. It is the most multicultural city in the world. There's a minimum of 150 heart languages spoken every day. And in Toronto and Canada, much of Canada moved from, you know, Christendom Christian to sort of questioning that to apathetic, to de Christianizing to post Christian. And interestingly now we're in an environment that many people would be pre Christian, many people are still nominal Christian, but in the middle of it we've got, you know, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha', I Sikhs, agnostics, atheists, witches. So it's a weird combination of the sexual revolution and modern and postmodern and multicultural and hard left and hard right and, and trying to work out how the gospel takes root in a place like this. And I said, you know, in convergence years ago when I did the first non published edition, I said, you can get all the theology you want from Wittenberg or Geneva or because you're all Methodist, you know, I suppose I should say Kentucky, you know, or London or Oxford. But the truth is the great battles of the Reformation were connected of course to just being the wrong type of Christian, where it's actually the church fol fathers who show us how to robustly live in a violent, politically divisive, multicultural religious world. And so that was the beginning of my questioning years ago actually as a youth pastor around the year 2000, where I realized very quickly that we were going to lose and came to the conclusion that political power and the comfort of staying Christian isque was not helpful because it wasn't conversionistic, it wasn't of the heart. And so knowing we were going to lose, asking a critical question for 2,000 years, where have Christians of every stripe, every ethnicity, every denomination, expression actually found real power? And that led to this conversation.
- [11:29]
B
Yeah, so yeah, I mean we know the church isn't going to lose. I oftentimes talk about, you know, Jesus said, I will build my church. And I'm like, that may not be the church we're building. And in fact, if the church we're building is not the church he's building, we're going to lose.
- [11:47]
A
Correct? Yeah, that's one thing. But also that statement by our Lord doesn't mean that we don't culturally lose. That statement from our Lord doesn't mean we're not persecuted. That doesn't mean we're not moved to the margins of society. It just means we don't stop to exist. We don't stop existing. But a lot of times when people read that, it's triumphalistic. Like, Jesus has got this and we're always going to be on top. And I'm like, I'm not sure what Bible you're reading. Our symbol is a torture symbol. Like, you know, how we lose is more important than how we win much of the time. So I just was asking the question of knowing we were going to culturally lose or politically lose or marginalized, become marginalized. Where is real power to change the city? I said this my congregation a few weeks ago. If I can't change my own heart to love my wife better, how in the world can I lead 6,7 million people to Jesus? The answer is, I can't do it. There's no gas in the car.
- [12:46]
B
Right? So converginistic, you use that term. Talk about. What does that mean? Convergence of what?
- [12:54]
A
Yeah. So one of the things when we began this journey was again asking the question, where have Christians in multiple countries, in multiple socioeconomic status been able to walk in unnatural power to see things change? And so as I started doing a lot of reading, biblically and historically, I realized there was always an intersection between spiritual gifts, spiritual disciplines, and I want to say this, and sometimes revival, not always. And so I realized that if we were going to really wrestle this down, I had to convince a very conservative congregation that this was biblically true before we ever got to experience. And so I started reading, and what struck me was what I found in the life of Jesus, which was very shocking and disconcerting to me. And the two passages that began the journey for me is John 5:19 and John 14:12. John 5:19. You know, very truly, I tell you, this is Jesus speaking. The Son does nothing by himself. He only sees what his Father, Father is doing because the Son does what the Father also does. And then in John 14:12, he says, you know, if you believe in me, you'll do even greater things than me. And so I was like, as you know, as an evangelical, but also as an orthodox Christian. I mean that in the confessional sense. I'm like, I don't understand John 5:19 as a Trinitarian. What? What do you mean? Jesus only does what the Father is doing? And what do you mean that I get to imitate the second person of the Trinity. See, the other shadow thing I was wrestling with was, you know, we tell our people, we tell ourselves that we're supposed to imitate Jesus, and yet he's the second person of the Trinity. So we're setting ourselves up for failure because it is an impossibility. So that leads to deconstruction. This is a lie, and I can't handle it. Leads to legalism. I'm going to pull up my boots and fake it to make it. Or apathy. This world is not my home. I'm just a passing through. And I was like, I'm not okay with any of those things. And so I had to start wrestling with what Jesus meant. And when I paired that with Philippians 2, where Jesus. Yeah, yeah. Where Jesus begins to start saying, you know, Paul starts outlining that though Jesus is equal with the Father, you know, chooses not to access what he had privilege to. And again, I mean, there's so much more. This is a quick podcast theologically. And I realized that Jesus never emptied himself, lost something, de.
- [15:29]
B
Evolved.
- [15:30]
A
He always was, is, and will be the Son of God. He's always existed. He is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. And yet his choice not to access his power began to change things for me, because I realized that if Jesus didn't do ministry out of his divinity, though he never left, he just chose not to access it by choice, then if I have the same Spirit he does, and we have the same Spirit he has, then we can do greater things. And that got solidified for me once I did exegetical work of Philippians 2 and Johannine work, but then also went to Jesus's baptism. And I was like, oh, see, he did need the Spirit by choice. And so, you know the famous passage, you know, he's led by the Spirit into the wilderness. He came back in the power of the Spirit. And so the question that the light bulb moment for me in this convergence was that Jesus between Christmas and the Ascension, didn't use his own power, but only listened to what the Father told him to do and only did it by the power of the Spirit. And then for me, everything went, oh, so that we.
- [16:38]
B
We are in the same position.
- [16:40]
A
We're in this. And that's why Paul calls us the Body of Christ. But the linchpin for me went a little farther than most charismatics do because they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, filled with the Spirit, Filled with the Spirit. I'm like, guys, I don't need another meme or quote, tell me how. I have thousands of people, including Myself. And then I realized that most people never make the connection. That since Jesus didn't access omnipresence or omniscience, for example, that makes sense. That he didn't know when he was coming back. Oh, no, it makes sense. Or, you know, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? All this now gets clarified while you still believe in the Trinity and nothing's broken. But the real thing was I was like, oh, this is why Jesus used spiritual disciplines, because he didn't know what he was going to do next. So he fasted or he prayed. He was in solitude because he needed to hear what the thing was to do next. And then when I realized that, I went, well, then how did Jesus fully God and fully man, do all the things, the God things without accessing his Godness to say it inappropriately? And I was like, oh, of course he had spiritual gifts. So Jesus had the gift of miracles or the gift of. So when it says like, Jesus knew what was in their hearts, I used to think, of course he knows what's in their hearts because he's God and he knows everything. But if he's not accessing omniscience or omnipresence, then that's a word of knowledge. Or when he cast out Legion, that's miracles. Or when he healed the people. And I was like, oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. John 14 came alive. And then I went, oh. So only thing I said to our congregation after we did this was, don't read John 14. Anyone has faith in me. You, you, singular, to use your phrase, bro.
- [18:26]
B
Y'. All.
- [18:28]
A
It's a y' all thing. It's not a you thing. It's not you and Jesus. It's an us and Jesus thing.
- [18:32]
B
It's the second person plural, million percent.
- [18:36]
A
So that was. That was the huge theological moment that led our church to understand this was true. And then we did, I think, 13 weeks on every gift, what it looks like, what it feels like, how it function, and then just everything changed.
- [18:52]
B
That's beautiful. We've had this very similar, I would call it epiphonic journey, epiphanies, Right? I remember, you know, and I really appreciate so much your, you know, Christ centeredness, your Christological core, because we have all grown up in sort of Pentecostal Charismania, and it's just all Pneumatology, right? And I'm like, we need a Pneumatology, which, for those who may not know what that means, a doctrine of the Spirit that is anchored in Christology, which is the person of Jesus Christ. And because, you know, here's the other little epiphany I had several years ago. I'm like, everybody thinks that our character in the Gospels is the disciples. I'm like, no, our character is Jesus. He is our character. He is the one. And he's trying at the end of his time on earth to show us how this is going to work, how's this handoff going to happen? And he's like, you're going to become in essence me.
- [20:12]
A
Yeah, My representatives. The original subtitle of the book was why Jesus is not just Savior and Lord, but model. And that was the moment for us where we went, he has uniqueness in saviorhood, he has uniqueness in lordship, but is modeling the self will of the Father, the Son and the Spirit before time was, was to do this thing. So what this did for us, it allowed me to have the highest view of scripture, allowed me to have the highest view of robust trinitarian theology, made sure that experience was not the ultimate statement. It sat under the scriptures but didn't become dismissive of experience, gave more charismatic people guardrails and forced conservatives to admit they were living a semi powerless life.
- [21:02]
B
And so this is this imitation, not impartation, a thousand percent.
- [21:07]
A
And I kept saying to my people too, like, the Spirit always takes you to Jesus. But interestingly, I'm even teaching it this week, you know, but don't get stuck with Jesus. And people are like, what do you. I'm like, no, no, no, he always takes you to the Father.
- [21:19]
B
Yeah, well, you know, yeah, I mean, he introduces us. It's our Father, right? His in us. It's our Father and he gives us the Spirit. And so it's, it's. There's a great book by one of my mentors, Dennis Kinlaw, called let's Start with Jesus. Are you familiar with that?
- [21:41]
A
Never heard.
- [21:42]
B
I got to get this to you. You're gonna love this book. But anyway, that's another podcast. The, the other thing is I would always be. Be reading. I guess I had the epiphany was if you want to see a picture of the Spirit filled life, I mean Acts is good. The Gospels are better. Okay, because you see all the fruit of the Spirit, you see all the gifts of the Spirit, you see the ways of the Spirit in the person of Jesus.
- [22:23]
A
Yeah. And this was another moment theologically for our church that changed everything. When we move from the Gospels as Jesus's model into actually Paul's writing, not even Acts, we were struck because we literally linearly, almost follow 1 Corinthians 10 or 12. Right. We're baptized in the Spirit when we encounter Christ and then we're invited into the fruit of the Spirit and then we're given the gifts of the Spirit. Like it just literally maps out one after another after another. Everything that happens with Christ, our identity is formed at our Spirit baptism and are firmed at our water. Like it just, it, it totally unite. It builds the spine across discipleship in the New Testament.
- [23:07]
B
Yeah. And all of this is why we were so delighted to, to meet you and to learn about you. Because, you know, it's, it's interesting. You're, you're a reformed kind of Calvinist and we're Arminian Wesleyans, but like we got a lot in common here because we're focusing on our commonality.
- [23:29]
A
Yes. And we're spending eternity with each other, so we better get used to each other now. Yeah, no, I mean, that was the joke I made at one of the conferences when I spoke at, when I said how in the world does a megachurch, evangelical, Calvinist, small C, you know, charismatic, small C, Catholic, end up with all you people? But I suppose that the Methodist equivalent sort of is somewhere. I suppose I'm with more with Whitfield than Wesley, to use all of your vernacular, but here nor there, at the end of the day. No, this is not about our views, views of how we get saved, though we share in the mutual same salvation. This is the question about how in a post Christian, pre Christian nominal Christian world, we walk in guaranteed power. And again, the two things that are so important for the audience, like if you think Jesus did his ministry out of his divinity, you can't imitate him. You're just done. You're screwed. It's done.
- [24:19]
B
It's one and done.
- [24:20]
A
You're done and it just leads. But the other thing is a big conversation we've had is knowing the difference between natural gifts, acquired gifts and spiritual gifts. And Bobby Clinton did this amazing work years ago at Fuller and Natural Gifts is what you're born with. Acquired gifts is what you learn. But spiritual gifts are endowments. And so I kept looking at staff cultures or my own ministry life or key volunteer roles and realized that the vast majority of people, A didn't know what spiritual gifts were, B, did not have a theology. There's a three level conversation for leaders here. You have to theologically identify what that thing is. Prophecy, tongues, administration. Then you need to talk about experientially, what does it feel like and what I've Been struck by, by the way is globally as I traveled the world. They're expressed almost identically in every culture on earth, experientially. So you've got the theology of that thing, you've got the experience of that thing. And then there's the house rules. How do I choose to use that in my church versus your church? So that's the hard work to do that, you know, to help people transfer into this. But then realizing that actually natural and acquired gifts aren't guaranteed power. Except the vast majority of our programming, our leadership, HR strategy, strategic planning, all good and fine. I mean I have 40 staff and an HR director and just launched a five year strategic plan four weeks ago. I'm not against any of that. But that's not guaranteed power, right? So I kept saying to ourselves, it's.
- [25:50]
B
Like skills and talent.
- [25:51]
A
Yeah, and that's great, but it's not guaranteed. So I'm like, oh, if Jesus center pointed gifts literally in his everyday practice, then I'm cornered. So I better do the vast majority of my ministry in the gift or gifts I've been given. So there's guaranteed power, which leads to guaranteed results. Not numerical results, but spiritual kingdom results. And it. And burnout rates drop and like joy goes up, happiness doesn't. Joy goes up, effectiveness goes up. Because it's different.
- [26:28]
B
Talk to. And this is not, we're not talking about like clergy here.
- [26:34]
A
No, actually this is one of the biggest conversations I had. I'll give this story. I don't know if I shared it when we were together, but I remember the first. So I've done three variations of this talk publicly in our community. We just did another one in last year. So the first time I preached it, I was, I came up, I was coming up to the spiritual gift of shepherding, pastoring. So I got up in front of the congregation and I said, I have a confession to make, you know, so the, you know, the air sucked out of the room. Everyone thought I was about to confess some moral failure, you know, or something, you know, and I just said, my name's John Thompson and my confession is, though I'm your pastor, I'm not a pastor. And I remember just watching hundreds and hundreds of people and I said, see, this is the problem. I have the office of pastor, which also could be called elder or deacon or bishop, depending on what part of the dysfunctional family. You've heard of office. But I said, but I don't have a shepherding gift. And the problem is many of you in this audience expect Me to be a shepherd who knows your name and cares about you every day and was there at your baptism. And then I said, so we have a moment. Moment. And I said, and I'm really sorry, but I was a little younger when I said this. I'm a little bit wiser now. But I said, honestly, if I show up at the hospital, you're probably dying. Other than that, I probably won't know you very much. And if you want a shepherd as a pastor, you should leave today, because I'm not even spiritually equipped now. Does that mean I get to be a jerk for Jesus? No. Because my next statement was, but there are hundreds of shepherds in this church. To use another vernacular, they just don't wear a collar. So I said to the congregation, all Protestants believe in the priesthood of all believers till there's a crisis, and then they want a Catholic priest, you know, like, right, yeah. Oh, the real guy didn't show up. The real, you know. But hold on a second. If you have a gift orientation, your starting point is you're a small group leader, might be way more of a gifted shepherd than I will be. I'm way more, to use a Lyle Schuyler phrase, I'm way more of a rancher than I am a shepherd. You know, I'm leading movements. I used to say to young adults that I mentored, I lead more like Moses than like Jesus. They were horrified when I said it. But my point was, Jesus started a movement. He never led one. Moses went up to God and walked in front of the people. I said, it's, of course I want to lead like Jesus, but it's two different starting points. So this clarity helped people, even help clergy, not be pinholed all the time.
- [29:15]
B
Yeah. Okay, so just, just a little bit of a, a pivot here. You're talking to. And I, I, I, I don't even like the term layperson. I, I just, I mean, because people say, oh, I'm just a layperson. I'm like, if you ever say that again, we're done.
- [29:35]
A
Yes.
- [29:37]
B
You're an unbelievable, inconceivable, unrepeatable miracle of God. That's what you are. Wake up. That's what I'll say. But you're talking to that person, and they're like, I mean, you know, mostly what we've seen on spiritual gifts, it's absurd. Take this little inventory. Like you could score it or something. So what do you say to it? Like, they're wanting. They want to know. They're like, okay, I Can do what Jesus did. Help me with that.
- [30:07]
A
Sure. So, you know, what I'm about to say is as important to that incredible layperson as it is that incredible clergy person. So here's the statement. I hate spiritual gift tests for four reasons. They're okay at the end. So I'll just tell you the process we went through and why. Four questions that ever needs to wrestle with about a spiritual gift test. Number one, do you even believe in the theology of the test? So like, do you even believe that they have articulated the gifts? Right. Question one, question two is, does that test understand the difference between natural acquired and spiritual gifts?
- [30:48]
B
Right. Usually not just sort of my preferences.
- [30:51]
A
Correct. Third, are you in a church that's practicing everything you're talking about that. So like I'll, I'll use from the power gift list. If I have never heard someone speak in tongues, how in the world would I know if I have translation of tongues? The answer is I won't. So there are multiple people take tests in environments where not everything's practiced or tried. So of course they mark no. Except the problem is they don't know. And fourthly, it's usually relegated to some Sunday school moment. Right. Or, you know, so here, here's the, here's what we would say. There are four way ways to identify a spiritual gift that has nothing to do with the test. And we use the test at the end of this, never at the beginning.
- [31:37]
B
Confirmation kind of thing.
- [31:39]
A
Yeah, totally. So number one, I outlined it. Let's say five things. The first thing is that's why we did 14 weeks publicly. Every gift, what it theologically is, what it feels like, what it looks like, how we use it. So I think we were at a conference together, we were saying this. You have to have common language around that thing. Because if you say prophecy and I say prophecy and we don't understand what we mean, there's already a problem. So do you have a theological agreement on that? And then the four ways to identify is this one is called the rule of dots and it's this. Why does this keep happening to me and not to you? And so this is why. Community. Very, very Methodist. Your bands would love this. Very Methodist. Right. Like, why do I always end up praying and you don't? Now you could say, oh, because you're, you know, you're an unsanctified Christian. But there's a good chance that there might be a gift involved. Or if you're talking to someone with the gift of mercy and there's brokenness and everyone doesn't want to deal with it and it's too complicated. Person with mercy is like running towards the blood, and we're all running away from the blood. And when you interview them, they're like, well, Jesus is close to the brokenhearted. And, you know, so we presume that every other Christian should be as impassionate and experience what we usually experience without any evaluation. So the rule of dots is, if it happens to you once, interesting. If it happens to you twice, more interesting. More than three times. I ask new questions. Like, we, you know, jd, you and I have been in environments where we've gone. I'm not comfortable. That doesn't mean I have the gift of discernment. It means maybe the Holy Spirit said John, like, like, get out of the bookstore. It's weird, okay? But if that happens to me again and again and again and again, but it doesn't happen to you. Question one. So rule of dots number two is where you're angry at church is usually where you're spiritually gifted. And this is a shocker to lots of people where you are angry. And it doesn't matter what church you go to or what the size is, is. You know, every teacher wants more teaching, every prayer person wants a larger prayer meeting, every administrator wants a plan. Every leader wants to bring America to Christ. You know, every, every pastor is saying, what about Bob? Who's caring about. So where you're frustrated tends to be where you're spiritually gifted. That's why 1 Corinthians 13 is not a marriage text, but a spiritual gift text, because you need character when you're frustrated.
- [34:00]
B
Yes.
- [34:01]
A
So where you're angry, rule of dots. The third thing is joy, not happiness. When people are working in gift mix areas, there is a joy if you listen to them, that sort of seems almost beyond experiential, you know, and it's just like when I do this thing, I have joy and then there's an ease in results. And so, like, not the paragus, but the love and word gifts, lots of them. We're called to all do, like evangelism or have faith or hospitality and mercy. And so, so it's funny because, right, like we just had this massive snowstorm. You are freezing in some garage somewhere. It's not garage, but the illustration I use is snowblower versus a shovel. If I have the spiritual gift of preaching, it's like I have a snowblower. There's power behind it, there's an ease behind it, there's an effectiveness behind it. If it's a discipline. It's a lot of shoveling. So I think I made the joke when we were together where I said, have you ever sat under someone's preaching and you've gone, thank you, never do that again. But thank you.
- [35:19]
B
I'm greet the church now?
- [35:21]
A
No, but we've all been in the or. You ever met a greeter at a church and you're like, wow, you should never be a greeter. If we got you hotel management training, it still wouldn't help you. That's a discipline. But then you've ever sat beside someone with intercession and you listen to them pray and you're like, that's different. So the difference between ease and effectiveness, Rule of dots, where you're angry, right? Like all of these things, you notice they're all relationally organic statements. And then you get to the test and go, now I've done all that and I understand the theology. I wonder if this will agree up.
- [36:03]
B
It's, it's kind of, it's, it's a tight of spirit filled vocational aptitude.
- [36:12]
A
Correct. And, and again, this gets into some deep theological stuff people need to work through. Some people in your audience have been taught that, you know, you can lose your spiritual gifts. But First Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 doesn't use language. It's literally constitutional language in the original language, meaning, you know, like they are with you. So the image I always use too is like, imagine a gas stove. You know, if you grieve the spirit because of sin or worldliness, or if you, or if you're in an environment where, you know, it's like the gas gets turned down but you don't, it never shuts off, right? So the loss of gifts, you know, and the other thing is, some people are taught, you know, I have an empty tool bag and you know, I just, you know, what gift do I need today? Holy Spirit? And I'm like, can. I mean, I'm the reformed guy in the call. So like, can God into sovereignty give us a gift for a season? Of course. But don't make the exception the norm. The norm is you've got one or two or three gifts. That's what you got for a lifetime. You're not an eye one day and the ears the next day and the foot the next day. You know, you don't say, I want administration today and prophecy tomorrow. Because, because this is about interdependence and mutual submission. And you can't get involved in mutual submission in interdependence if you keep changing body roles.
- [37:35]
B
Yeah. It's interesting. Even In Romans chapter 12, many members, same body, different gifts. Then he starts delineating the gifts. Then he talks about love again. And before all that, he's talking about consecration and transformation. Character.
- [37:55]
A
Correct. It's the illustration I started using a few years ago was love.
- [38:02]
B
Love is.
- [38:03]
A
I said to a community, have you ever watched someone change electrical lines? Now, I said, most of us haven't. But you'll notice very quickly if you ever watch someone changing electrical lines, they wear very thick padded gloves because they realize if they grab the electrical lines without the gloves, they die. And I just said, agape. Love is the gloves that allow us to use the electricity. Well, long term, yeah.
- [38:28]
B
That's a good image, Love. Because even in 1 Corinthians 13, he goes through all the greatest things in the universe you could ever do and says, if you have no love, forget about it. It's worth it.
- [38:38]
A
Totally. I think the opposite struggle lots of us have, though, is we're like, well, if someone's character isn't intact, they obviously can't be gifted. And I'm like, actually, that's also not true, because the Bible's filled with profoundly anointed people who are gifted. And God uses in their brokenness. That's not an excuse to get away with things. That is a call for greater character. But don't be quick to dismiss someone's giftedness or work of the spirit. I mean, if absolute faithfulness is the standard, I mean, we need to throw out the Bible. Like, you know, I think I said in a different talk, Aaron and Miriam and the Jewish community literally built the golden calf while looking at the Shekinah glory.
- [39:24]
B
Yeah, yeah. Yes. Well, so, yeah, this is going to be. Give us the title to that Convergence book. I was mesmerized by its loquaciousness. Let me hear it again.
- [39:43]
A
Yeah, it's very puritaneous.
- [39:45]
B
This is the first book that's going to be coming out.
- [39:48]
A
That's right. So it's called Convergence, the Transforming Power of Living Like Jesus Through Spiritual Gifts, Disciplines, and Unusual Experiences.
- [39:58]
B
That's quite a title. It reminded me I was going to share this. You'll find this fun. There's a great William Wilberforce book that's called A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of professed Christians in the higher and middle classes in this country, contrasted with Real Christianity.
- [40:20]
A
Well, lots of people have accused me, though I don't lean this way. They say that many of my subtitles of my books feel very puritan they are a book within themselves.
- [40:31]
B
Yes. Well, so you know, we're also doing a gathering together in Nashville. If you're watching this in time. We're going to be together in Nashville, Tennessee, April 16th and 17th, 2026.
- [40:50]
A
Yep. Or maybe Louisville. I don't know if where it's going to land, which city. I think there's debate.
- [40:56]
B
We better hurry.
- [40:57]
A
Yes. Well, anyway, I just work for the guys. I'm just here. But yeah, there's going to be a gathering where. What are we doing there?
- [41:04]
B
Prayer.
- [41:06]
A
So my understanding is this is going to be a gathering for leaders, pastors, but also your whole community. And this is going to be a two day experience where we systematically walk through everything we've said and so much more. You know, walking through Jesus's model, the trinitarian implications, how to identify gifts, what do the gifts feel like, working out the definitions, what they feel like, what they look like, how this can be transferred into multiple different environments. And then even a conversation about how this intersects with revival but is not revival and how revival is sovereignly started and stopped. But gifts are actually normative and disciplines are normative. And the reason why we have a conversation about this is because expectations kill relationships, expectations can kill faith. Faith. And so if we over promise or under promise in and around these areas, we can do great damage. And these amazing moments that we are both leading in where, you know, in the global church there is really profound things happening, like things that we have heard about and are now witnessing. We have to be really careful to do the good work on not tying those three things together. So people really do well. So when it's revival, we can label it right, but when it's not, we can label it right. So people aren't under or over hoping.
- [42:35]
B
Yeah, and yes, exactly. And their hopes aren't in their hopes. Their hopes are properly anchored in the great hope Jesus.
- [42:43]
A
Correct.
- [42:44]
B
Yeah. Well, so this is what people are wondering. They're like, man, I've. First of all, there's a lot of mind blown emojis that are going off as this is happening because they're like, you know what? I knew, I knew I knew something. And this is starting to kind of make sense to me. Like I've read these things before. I've, I've known. We've just kind of a little bit been half baked in our understanding of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But this is beginning to give me some handles. Right. There's, there is no, you know, total understanding. But we, we see Dimpley in A. In a glass, but. But we can see. And so this. This is possible in a local church, right? You see it in your church. What do you see there? Let's.
- [43:40]
A
Yeah. So, like, of course, this is. I mean, this. This hap. This was built in local churches. This was built in the original 12. This was seen in the Book of Acts. And so ye. Absolutely possible. Now, one of the things that frustrates so many people, and I will say, especially it seems sometimes Americans, because Americans, like, give me the package.
- [44:02]
B
You're an American.
- [44:03]
A
No, no, I am not, sir. I am a Canadian. Don't do that.
- [44:06]
B
A North American.
- [44:07]
A
I'm a North American, but I'm not an American. You are correct. But this is really like this idea that we, you know, sort of package everything. And I know the five baseball things, the five diamonds, or I've got the six points, and I'm like, okay, here's what really frustrates a lot of people. Once you establish the theology of what it is and what it feels like, you have to make decisions of how that looks in your church. And that's actually some of the really hard work people don't want to do. Right? So it's sort of like, you know, how would we use it? How in a church of 4,005 locations with 60 nations, it's going to feel very different for me than it would in your context. So here's the truth. This is God's will and desire for the church. Jesus modeled this. This is not exceptional. This is not capitalist sainthood. This is normative. This is normal. This is not. You know, it's funny. This is not amazing. Most people who pray for revival aren't praying for a revival. They're praying for what a church should look like on Monday morning. They're actually praying for. This revival is way more terrifying than this, way more concerning than this. So of course it's possible. So in our church, we hire staff through this lens. We ask volunteers, do you know your spiritual gifts? We try putting it. It's in our core DNA documents. We're in a hiring process now. Some of the very first questions we ask in an interview is, tell us your spiritual gifts. How do you think they apply to this job? It's in the DNA of how we now talk. Is it perfect all the time? No. Do we still have to fill glue pot and do coffee? Yes. Does everything match perfectly? Not at all. I mean, just like your church and my church doesn't matter the size or place. People come and people go. So you're continually re educating people. But we make this like at the center, Core value, hiring, volunteer driven, talking about this all the time. And so if you came to our church in six months, someone's going to say to you, so do you know your spiritual gifts or your serving at the them? And if you say something like I love playing guitar, we're going to be like, that's amazing. But that's not what I asked you. They're going to be like, what are you talking about? So we've DNAized this to such a degree, it influences us, even our strategic planning. I mean, this was a really huge deal for us. For some of you as leaders out there, most of us don't even know the difference between common faithfulness and, and vision given assignment by the Lord. And God doesn't always give visions to movements. He sometimes does. But for us, we realized that using spiritual gifts and disciplines, we needed to use the Old Testament phrase, needed to inquire of the Lord to even see if he wanted to say something uniquely to us. Like in Revelation. Right. He says different things to different churches. So like we just released a five year strategic plan. It's very detailed, thoughtful, you know, there's finances and there's Gantt charts and there's strategies. But it all started in the prayer meeting where people with discernment and words of knowledge and silence and solace, we started using that and asked the Lord, is there anything uniquely you want us to do? If there's nothing, then we use common sense and wisdom. But if there's something and there was, it becomes the epicenter of before the planning. And so that's another example of like literally across our whole church. Our actual strategic planning is rooted in disciplines and gifts. Because if Jesus only did what his Father told him to do, we should take that seriously. As serious as he did, even on a strategic level, not just a devotional level.
- [47:53]
B
Yes. So people are going to be asking, what is that thing that your church do you feel is uniquely assigned to do? If you share that, that.
- [48:02]
A
Sorry, say that. Oh, they're going to ask what it is. Oh yeah. So for us it's not a sharing thing, it was an assignment thing. So for years, for years we were given a very specific assignment related to a place, a geography and a number that we were responsible for in the kingdom. We didn't go to Texas and say, hey, let's be a big church. Actually, in a Canadian context, big is viewed as bad. There's a Britishness to us, a conservatism to us, but we have A very specific vision statement to become a missional church of 10,000 reaching people, helping people physically, emotionally and spiritually in Jesus name. That whole thing didn't come out of a Strat plan. It didn't come out of knocking on doors. It didn't say, bigger churches are better. It literally came out of prayer meetings. It was voted on by three elders. Boards discerned, and that became the epicenter for what we're doing. And then we ask, in every iteration, is there new strategies or new things you want to do? And there have been very specific, specific things at every strategy. Like just before the pandemic, as we come near the end, I'll give you this great example. Just before the pandemic, we had launched our second plan. We were preparing to launch multiple new sites. And we were in a prayer time. And the Lord told us, we actually, we heard Og and Shion. I don't know if you know that reference where Og and Shion are the kings on the east side of Jordan that the Jews destroyed before they cross. And the Lord said, you must deal with Og and Shion. Don't cross the Jordan River. We're like, this is so weird. Weird. Well, if you know Toronto's geography, we're on the east side of Toronto. There's literally a river that runs between the east side called Durham in Toronto proper. Our site that we were going to launch in 2020 was going to be in Toronto. And the Lord said, no, do it in Pickering on this side of the river. And so it made no sense. It was only 15 minutes away from our main site. We obeyed. The pandemic happened. That site would have been decimated. That site's now thriving. Our larger site's now thriving. And it now is the inception point for us going into Toronto. And that was prompting prophecy, spiritual discipline, solitude. That shows you the attunement. God's not a genie. He doesn't have to tell us anything. But if he does, tell us through gifts and disciplines, like we see in Acts 13, Barnabas and Saul were sent out by the Spirit when they were fasting and praying. That's how we. We do that. And then we plan. We jokingly say we pray like John Wimber, and then we plan like Andy Stanley. And I'm not making any comments about theology of those two groups. I'm just saying, like, we want the charismatics in the room. We want the strategy people in the room. We want the preachers in the room. We want the spiritual formation people in the room. Because that's actually how Jesus planned it in the first place.
- [50:43]
B
Yes. Well, there's so much more I'd like to get into here right quick. I mean you've got so much already online like these sermon series. Like how can people access if they want to just begin to dive into this.
- [50:57]
A
Yeah, sure. So I'll do this real quick. A little weird because a lot of my books were self published, went global and now they're being redistributed. So Convergence has disappeared. It comes out April 14th and that's this conversation, the Spiritual Gift sermon series. If you go to sanctistchurch.com under media, there is a 14 week, the latest version I think is 2025 that's available. Deliverance is going to be available only till like I think May 1st. It's going to disappear for a while. But there's some sermon series on that topic. All of them, they're all there.
- [51:33]
B
Yeah. Well, and we want you to be watching for this book release and we'd love for you to come to the Convergence to the new room leaders gathering April 16 and 17. And you can find out about that@neuromconference.com. excuse me, I need some water. Well, John, thank you. Thanks for again. You know, I've been in hospital situations and I've witnessed like miraculous surgeons do incredible things like on family members and I always am careful to go up to them and I'm like, man, I just want to thank you because is you gave 25 years of your life to be able to do what you're doing. And they light up. They're like, somebody sees me, that's you. You've given 25 years of your life to be able to just understand and then to relate it and write it down on tablets so that runners can run with it and teach it. And that's, it's hard. It's very hard. And so on behalf of, you know, the church, thanks for serving us like this and we're looking forward to being together and we're so thankful that we're friends and we'll get to run the way together for a while here.
- [53:01]
A
It's awesome. Thank you for your encouragement. And by the way, if anyone wants to understand gift, understanding, that's called a spiritual gift. That's a spiritual gift of encouragement right there. Just so everyone's aware. Just pointing that out because he does this everywhere. I've watched him in multiple environments though we don't know each other super well. And it's not just because he's a nice guy from the south. It is an endowment of the spirit.
- [53:23]
B
Huh? Amen. Amen. Well, listen, thanks, everybody, for joining us for this conversation with John Thompson. And it's another one that's going to be. It's kind of. This is encouraging. The church is going to be encouraged by this and the body of Christ built up and praise the Lord. So we'll catch you next time. In the meantime, we'll see you on the field.