For Pentecostals, a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit entails a bestowal of divine gifts of new powers and abilities. They are personally enriching, to be sure, but their primary purpose is the building-up of the church, both through missional outreach and congregational edification. The most common term to describe these gifts is charismata (singular: charisma), a transliteration of the Greek term that Paul uses for divine gifts.

Paul appears to have invented the term “charisma” himself. It has virtually no counterpart in any other Greek literature of his period or before. It derives from the Greek word charis, which means “grace,” so charismata can be understood to mean “graced-things.” You can also see the word charis hiding in one of the terms for the Lord’s Supper: eucharist, which has the more specific meaning of “thanksgiving”…