On Spiritual Gift Testing

I had a conversation with a friend tonight about Spiritual Gifts.  She just took a spiritual gifts test, which was great, but let me share with you my rant on Spiritual Gift tests, which is growing more and more into a pet-peeve of mine.

Now before I go further, let me offer a disclaimer.  I have found some personal enjoyment taking Spiritual gift tests and learning what these things say about me.  I persoanlly use spiritual gift inventories to help people understand themselves and to help them figure out how they might best plug into church ministry.  And I will probably continue to do the same, because I believe spiritual gifting is an important subject, and I currently cannot think of a better way to do it.  That being said, here's my little rant on Spiritual Gift tests where I think they often fall short:

 

1. Every test defines each of the individual spiritual gifts differently, and let's be honest, many of the gifts mentioned in Scripture aren't all that clear in their original meanings or intents either.  In fact there are some examples of words that some scholars say were meant to be used interchangeably with other words, that we labor to split out into unique distinct gifts somehow.  We also assume that we have all of the spiritual gifts on these tests, because they';re all the ones listed in Scripture.  But Paul had four different gifts lists throughout the NT, and none of them are identical or exhaustive.  So why should we assume that if we add them all up, we'd get the full list?
2. Many of the testing mechanisms we use to determine a person's spiritual gifting feel fairly arbitrary.  The way you'd answer one day may be different than the way you'd answer a different day, or at a different stage in life, or depending on the particular role you play, or on past experience.  I don't think these are always the most accurate determiners of spiritual gifting, and many times the use of a single word or adjective can throw off the testee to his or her real answer.
3. Because of the way some tests are designed, people often focus on what they're not, not on what they are. 
4. Many of the applications and definitions of these Spiritual gifts assume a specific style of modern American church.  The problem with that, as I see it, is that it often only reinforces past behavior and tradition, but it doesn't necessarily let people exercise gifting outside of those boundaries because it is so strictly defined.  I would imagine the gift of teaching or intercession or prophecy looked very different to people 250 years ago than it does today.  They may even define it differently.  We might even look at a sermon from a 17th century teacher and say, "Yikes!  He's not a good teacher!"  But why is that?  Did we change or did the Spirit change?  (Here's my cynical side coming out) I think in the development of these tests, we've narrowed these amazing, inspired, supernatural gifts to tiny definitions that we use to fill volunteer rosters. 
5. Which leads me to my last point.  I find that these kinds of tests often imply that I am in a box or a mold in which I cannot change or grow.  I don't get that from Scripture at all.  In fact, I see the opposite, where God takes some of the most screwed up, least impressive people of society and uses them in capacities that a test never would have told them they should have done. . . because it was never about them to begin with.  It was about God and his power.  I also see God taking people who could barely wipe their own behinds and recreating them through God's spirit into a "NEW CREATION" who is never defined by what he or she is not, but by what he or she is now in Jesus Christ.

There's my rant. . . Thank you for listening.