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Catch the Wind of the Spirit: How the 5 Ministry Gifts Can Transform Your Church
Many are asking what's next for the church while leaders search for fresh ways to revitalize old structures. In this revised edition of Catch the Wind of the Spirit Carolyn Tennant shares five essential keys to church transformation which provide a pathway for focusing, impacting, and invigorating the body of Christ.
Based on the five ministry gifts described in Ephesians 4 (apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher), Dr. Tennant is emphatic that God has provided these gifts for all believers to engage-not just a few superstars.
After selling out every last book of her first run of thousands, Catch the Wind of the Spirit remains highly sought after for study, teaching, and personal growth. With its easy-to-understand but revelatory style, the book is also popular with small groups who utilize the chapter discussion questions to apply the content. The deep implications of strengthening your church team and involving more people in using their gifts will have everybody talking and thinking.
Based on the five ministry gifts described in Ephesians 4 (apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher), Dr. Tennant is emphatic that God has provided these gifts for all believers to engage-not just a few superstars.
After selling out every last book of her first run of thousands, Catch the Wind of the Spirit remains highly sought after for study, teaching, and personal growth. With its easy-to-understand but revelatory style, the book is also popular with small groups who utilize the chapter discussion questions to apply the content. The deep implications of strengthening your church team and involving more people in using their gifts will have everybody talking and thinking.
262 pages, Paperback
Published July 11, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 18, 2022
Incredible book. It wrecked me in so many ways. Now I need to go and re-read it again.
May 6, 2025
D'excellents et honnête constat sur les faiblesses actuelles de l'église
March 4, 2016
Carolyn Tennant, Catch the Wind of the Spirit: How the 5 Ministry Gifts Can Transform Your Church (Springfield, MO: Vital Resources, 2016).
In Ephesians 4:11–12, the apostle Paul wrote: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up…” These five ministries played an obvious and fundamental role in the Church, according to the apostle, yet they are the occasion of no small amount of controversy today. Do the apostolic and prophetic ministries continue to operate today? If so, do they constitute offices within the Church? Should we call specific ministers “Apostle So-and-so” or “Prophet Such-and-such”?
Many classical Pentecostals believe that too much emphasis has been placed on office and more emphasize should be placed on function. In other words, the question should not be whether such-and-such a person bears the office and title of apostle or prophet but whether apostolic and prophetic functions are taking place in the Church. This emphasis on function is the position of the Assemblies of God. It is also the emphasis of Carolyn Tennant in her new book from Vital Resources, Catch the Wind of the Spirit. “The vast majority of teaching on this [subject] has focused on church leadership,” she writes. “I’m firmly convinced, however, that God is focused upon the ministry currents that each person is supposed to oversee. He means for the whole church to get involved.”
What are the five currents Ephesians 4 identifies? Tennant outlines them this way:
Seeing people come to Christ (The Powerful Wooing Current)
Ensuring new believers learn to follow Him closely and mature into what He desires them to be (The Radical Forming Current)
Caring for His disciples in the body of believers so they may stay health, and connected, and know they are loved (The Synchronized Choreography Current)
Providing direction for the church: correcting and restoring, affirming and encouraging (The Housecleaning Directional Current)
Pushing back the darkness and taking new territory for the kingdom of God (The Miraculous Sending Current)
Each chapter describing these currents is paired with a chapter describing, “what kind of people are needed to oversee the current and where they might be in our churches.” Tennant seems indifferent to whether these “overseers” are church offices filled by paid ministers, and she pays careful attention to “misconceptions” that frequently attach themselves to the ministries of apostles and prophets. Here are the “overseers” for each of the currents above, respectively:
The Evangelist
The Teacher
The Pastor
The Prophetic Servant
The Apostolic Emissary
Tennant clearly longs to experience the renewal and revitalization of North American churches. She is thoroughly Pentecostal in both theology and practice. (If you doubt that the Holy Spirit speaks directly to believers today, make sure to read the story she tells on pages 160–162 about the Spirit sending her to talk to a man in the parking lot of a run-down strip mall. It’s like a contemporary version of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.) In addition to sharp biblical insight and poignant personal anecdotes, Tennant highlights the Spirit-filled missionary endeavors of St. Patrick and other Celtic missionaries in the early medieval era. That’s a surprising move, given how many Pentecostals, charismatics, and evangelicals view the state of the early medieval Church. On the other hand, when you see how downright “Pentecostal” those missionaries could be—including St. Patrick’s experience with speaking in tongues—you realize that the connection between a vibrant experience of the Spirit and power for mission to the world have always gone together, both biblically and in Church history.
I’ll wrap up my review by quoting Tennant’s concluding words:
When God is free to move, as He is in revival, the Triune God brings a fresh flow of each and every current. The Trinity has been working in every one of them all along from the beginning, and the Three are all desirous of pouring out even more upon us. Will we receive it?
That’s a very good question.
______
P.S. This review first appeared at InfluenceMagazine.com.
P.P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon review page.
In Ephesians 4:11–12, the apostle Paul wrote: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up…” These five ministries played an obvious and fundamental role in the Church, according to the apostle, yet they are the occasion of no small amount of controversy today. Do the apostolic and prophetic ministries continue to operate today? If so, do they constitute offices within the Church? Should we call specific ministers “Apostle So-and-so” or “Prophet Such-and-such”?
Many classical Pentecostals believe that too much emphasis has been placed on office and more emphasize should be placed on function. In other words, the question should not be whether such-and-such a person bears the office and title of apostle or prophet but whether apostolic and prophetic functions are taking place in the Church. This emphasis on function is the position of the Assemblies of God. It is also the emphasis of Carolyn Tennant in her new book from Vital Resources, Catch the Wind of the Spirit. “The vast majority of teaching on this [subject] has focused on church leadership,” she writes. “I’m firmly convinced, however, that God is focused upon the ministry currents that each person is supposed to oversee. He means for the whole church to get involved.”
What are the five currents Ephesians 4 identifies? Tennant outlines them this way:
Seeing people come to Christ (The Powerful Wooing Current)
Ensuring new believers learn to follow Him closely and mature into what He desires them to be (The Radical Forming Current)
Caring for His disciples in the body of believers so they may stay health, and connected, and know they are loved (The Synchronized Choreography Current)
Providing direction for the church: correcting and restoring, affirming and encouraging (The Housecleaning Directional Current)
Pushing back the darkness and taking new territory for the kingdom of God (The Miraculous Sending Current)
Each chapter describing these currents is paired with a chapter describing, “what kind of people are needed to oversee the current and where they might be in our churches.” Tennant seems indifferent to whether these “overseers” are church offices filled by paid ministers, and she pays careful attention to “misconceptions” that frequently attach themselves to the ministries of apostles and prophets. Here are the “overseers” for each of the currents above, respectively:
The Evangelist
The Teacher
The Pastor
The Prophetic Servant
The Apostolic Emissary
Tennant clearly longs to experience the renewal and revitalization of North American churches. She is thoroughly Pentecostal in both theology and practice. (If you doubt that the Holy Spirit speaks directly to believers today, make sure to read the story she tells on pages 160–162 about the Spirit sending her to talk to a man in the parking lot of a run-down strip mall. It’s like a contemporary version of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.) In addition to sharp biblical insight and poignant personal anecdotes, Tennant highlights the Spirit-filled missionary endeavors of St. Patrick and other Celtic missionaries in the early medieval era. That’s a surprising move, given how many Pentecostals, charismatics, and evangelicals view the state of the early medieval Church. On the other hand, when you see how downright “Pentecostal” those missionaries could be—including St. Patrick’s experience with speaking in tongues—you realize that the connection between a vibrant experience of the Spirit and power for mission to the world have always gone together, both biblically and in Church history.
I’ll wrap up my review by quoting Tennant’s concluding words:
When God is free to move, as He is in revival, the Triune God brings a fresh flow of each and every current. The Trinity has been working in every one of them all along from the beginning, and the Three are all desirous of pouring out even more upon us. Will we receive it?
That’s a very good question.
______
P.S. This review first appeared at InfluenceMagazine.com.
P.P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon review page.
June 16, 2016
A very insightful look into Ephesians 4:11-13 and what this passage of scripture means for the church today. Written in a conversational style that lends itself to both individual and group study, this book allows you to challenge whether and how the five gifts are manifested within you, within your local church body, and within the church universal. Attributes and qualities associated with the gifts are touched upon at a high-level but leaves sufficient broadness to allow for the variety of personalities and styles that comprise the church.
Whether you answer all the questions at the end of the chapter or only a few doesn't matter nearly as much as undergoing the process of reflection this book is intended to inspire. With that in mind, the most important questions may well be found in the final study chapter:
- Is God's mission more important to you than staying in your comfy place?
- Will you risk absolutely everything so that others might be saved (reputation, the possibility of deprivation, loss of personal ease and satisfaction)?
- Will you do it God's way instead of yours?
- Do you have to know the end before you even set out or will you go without knowing more than that He is totally reliable and you will follow Him to the ends of the earth no matter what comes?
I for one, am in the boat going wherever God may steer it. It's my sincere hope that others who read this book will answer the same way.
Whether you answer all the questions at the end of the chapter or only a few doesn't matter nearly as much as undergoing the process of reflection this book is intended to inspire. With that in mind, the most important questions may well be found in the final study chapter:
- Is God's mission more important to you than staying in your comfy place?
- Will you risk absolutely everything so that others might be saved (reputation, the possibility of deprivation, loss of personal ease and satisfaction)?
- Will you do it God's way instead of yours?
- Do you have to know the end before you even set out or will you go without knowing more than that He is totally reliable and you will follow Him to the ends of the earth no matter what comes?
I for one, am in the boat going wherever God may steer it. It's my sincere hope that others who read this book will answer the same way.
May 24, 2019
emboldened to serve after reading
This book is fantastic👍👍 If you need more wisdom on the gifts given to us through the Holy Spirit to empower the Church, then please consider reading this book in its entirety. I believe,as a teacher, it would be valuable for anyone serving at a church to read this book.
This book is fantastic👍👍 If you need more wisdom on the gifts given to us through the Holy Spirit to empower the Church, then please consider reading this book in its entirety. I believe,as a teacher, it would be valuable for anyone serving at a church to read this book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews