Today I will be posting some questions which my last blog post prompted. They come from my friend, Greg. We go to church together and have talked about DMM on multiple occasions. Greg has some concerns about aspects of DMM and I appreciate him and his heart for truth and making disciples. He posted the following questions on my Facebook wall, where I had shared a link to my previous blog article, https://dmmcoach.com/2021/09/09/what-about-the-other-gifts/. If you have not read that article, yet, Greg’s questions will be more meaningful if you read it first.

Thanks, John. Various questions arise. We can talk in person if commenting becomes ponderous.

1. Do you think Paul has clearly delimited distinctive roles in mind here? Relatedly, do you think this is a comprehensive Pauline account of leadership gifts/roles?These are general questions about what you think Paul is doing in this text, the answers to which will, I assume, relate to the way you are using the text to answer your DMM-specific question. Watson’s reduction to two categories at the end of the post seems to indicate that you take Paul’s categories to be sort of broad strokes that get at tendencies. Is that fair?

2. My second question, regarding the evangelist, is threefold.

(A.) I’m having trouble distinguishing it from your account of the apostle. “Apostolic workers are those who intentionally go to new places,” and evangelists are “able to cross many cultural barriers” and “intentionally bring good news into dark places.” Both seem to be about “going.” Is it that you see evangelists as a subset of apostolic goers who specifically cross cultural barriers?

(B.) I’m curious where you derive the cross-cultural component of the evangelist from. Obviously, one needn’t cross cultures to bring good news into dark places. But more the point, what about Paul’s claim suggests crossing cultures is a specific feature of this gift?

(C.) The phrase I’m struggling most with (as you’ll have guessed) is “without requiring specialized training.” As with the cross-cultural dimension of your definition, I’m wondering where this assertion comes from. It seems to me that, on the one hand, this is a claim that you (i.e., those who understand “gifts” this way) would be interested in appending to each of the gifts. Because it is a gift (and not an accomplishment of “training works”?), the apostle’s ability to be apostolic requires no training, and so on. On the other hand, it seems to me that this is a commitment DMMers are bringing to the text, which makes no claims about the means through which God bestows gifts. Isn’t it the case that DMM is already committed methodologically to leaders not needing specialized training? If so, does that lead you to find an affirmation of that presupposition in the definition of gifting?

Finally, I’m wondering what specialized training includes, given that the training (equipping) of the church is in view in this text. If we assume that being gifted definitionally entails no specialized training, then once the gifted train the church for service, can those so trained “become” gifted, or does being trained rule that out? Or is it just that such training is not “specialized”? Or perhaps the training—say, for crossing cultures—is simply irrelevant to the question of being gifted, so that those trained by the gifted may be equipped for service, but whether they’re gifted for it is another matter altogether?

More than enough for one comment.  I look forward to the dialogue.

[NOTE: I use social media (Facebook and Twitter) as a place to post invitations for deeper conversations. I prefer having those deeper conversations in person, or here on my blog. Others do not agree that this is best, but it is my choice to this point in time. I do this because I want my deeper conversations to be with people who want to converse. I do not like the “drive-by shootings” which often happen on social media. I want a real dialogue. I plan to respond to each of Greg’s questions here in future posts. I shared that with him and will post my responses here. Due to some travels I may not make my usual Tuesday and Thursday morning times, but will try to stay regular in my responses. After I finish with those I will return to the list of questions which arose earlier this year at the Salt & Light Conference.]