()
rachel downing
Thoughts, Theories & Therapy.
This weekend our church had a spiritual gifts workshop led by Dr. Dan Green who is a Professor at Moody Theological Seminary. I am pretty familiar with the spiritual gifts listed in Romans 12:7-8 and have read a lot about them, so this workshop was particularly interesting to me. It also required some self-assessment and reflection which the counselor in me always enjoys. Before the weekend our homework was to complete two online spiritual gift tests at http://elmertowns.com/spiritual_gifts_test/ and http://www.churchgrowth.org/analysis/intro.php to determine (if we weren’t already familiar with) our spiritual gifts.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with spiritual gifts, there are different categories. The ones we were studying are the so-called functional gifts (from Romans 12) which include: Evangelism, Prophecy, Teaching, Exhortation, Pastor/Shepherd, Mercy, Serving, Giving, and Administration.
It was interesting to compare the two tests because obviously, they were different and therefore had different results. For me, the top two on Elmerstown were serving and adminstration, while on Churchgrowth serving was replaced with exhortation.
Administration is no surprise to me because I love to plan and organize things. A few weeks ago we had our ISATs at school and though it was chaotic and nerve-wracking at times, I really enjoyed the process. At church, I really enjoy preparing schedules and helping plan events.
Likewise, serving is also not a big surprise because I enjoy helping out and being involved in whatever is going on in church. I am one of those people who has a hard time saying no and tends to get involved in too many things. Probably not the healthiest use of this gift!
The other gift, exhortation, surprised me. When I first think of exhortation, I think of encouragement, and I do not, by nature, consider myself a very encouraging person. However, when I read some of the description listed, I was the one being encouraged.
As an exhorter you are a very practical person, a good counselor, tolerant of others, serious-minded, orderly, and usually impulsive. You are expressive in a group setting; the group listens when you speak. You are comfortable working one-on-one or in groups. You are enthusiastic and talkative and enjoy encouraging others….Beware of Satan’s attack on your gift. He may cause pride in your motivational abilities. He may influence you to lose sight of people because of program emphasis….You may want to be a leadership trainer. You could certainly serve as a counselor in a church or in a counseling center.
Well, if this doesn’t describe my professional job, I don’t know what does! That in of itself was encouraging to see because I have always felt very strongly about my job and God’s calling on my life. I never anticipated using my spiritual gift in my profession. Dr. Green pointed out that is interesting to see, but doesn’t always happen.
So for me, that begs the question, can someone have different gifts for different aspects of his/her life? As I thought about it more, one of the tests seemed to represent my role within our church while the other seemed to reflect my professional life.
And this was all before the workshop! As we went through the gifts, discussing them in detail, learning about others and how to best use our gifts I was certainly pegged with some self-doubt. I could certainly feel the inadequacy of not having developed my gifts much and having a lot of work to do to fulfill the responsibilities God has placed on my life with these gifts. That is both exciting and terrifying.
There were many encouraging things in the workshop and it definitely left me thinking about what I need to do to honor God with the gifts he has given me. Some important points that I think are worth remembering were:
I think sometimes (especially within the Christian world) there is an idea that if I love it, it must be wrong, but in this, God gave us these passions for a reason! Just talking about my gifts and what can be done in the church got me all excited! And that’s okay!
We closed the workshop with discussion on the following question: “If the people of Crosspoint Church were all using their gifts, what would the church look like?” Such a powerful question for The Church too!
Now it’s your turn. How are you using your gift?
