Helps: Spiritual Gifts Definitions, Scriptures, and Ways to Serve

[If you have not already done so, please take a moment now to take this free spiritual gifts assessment. Once you have your results, come back to this and the corresponding 22 blog posts for a detailed description of each of the gifts, focusing on your own as well as becoming familiar with all of them so you can spot and call them out in others.]

Helps

The gift of Helps is one that meets the practical needs of others and of the church/organization in order to enhance, support, or accomplish ministry. One attribute of this gift is that many of these servants view “helps” as such a natural extension of who they are, they have a hard time acknowledging that it is an essential part of the Body of Christ. Other indicators of someone with the gift of helps is that he/she serves willingly, cheerfully, humbly, and wherever needed. They spot needs before others do and are sometimes surprised when other people don’t notice the practical behind-the-scenes things that need doing.

Scriptures that reference Helps or show someone exhibiting this gift:

Luke 10 (Martha); Romans 12 (service); 1 Corinthians 12; 1 Peter 4 (“serving”).

Questions on the assessment that pertain to Helps:

• When there is a job to be done, I am one of the first to jump in and volunteer.

• I don’t particularly care what I’m doing to serve, as long as it helps further God’s work in the church or the world.

• I enjoy doing the behind-the-scenes things that support others’ ministries.

Some words that describe people with this gift:

• Supportive

• Practical

• Behind-the-scenes

• Humble

• Available

• Dependable

Potential negatives to this gift:

• May not see their serving behind the scenes as a spiritual gift.

• May not value their gift equally with others’ gifts

• May tend to say “yes” to too many commitments out of deep desire to be helpful.

Some possible ways to serve using this gift:

• Useful wherever help is needed!

• Event set-up/clean-up/behind-the-scenes help

• Coffee-time host

• Communion preparer

• Deacon

• Usher

• Food service

• Nursery worker

• Office assistant

• Sunday School teacher and/or assistant

• Stephen Ministry

Shirley Giles Davis, author of the God. Gifts. You. Your Unique Calling and Design workbook, Your Unique Design Class Guide, Your Unique Design Facilitator Guide, and Gifts-Calling-Purpose blog, is a consultant, coach, facilitator who has worked with hundreds of faith-based organizations, nonprofit agencies, and executive leaders in a diversity of fields for four decades. She currently serves as Catalyst for Equipping and overseer of Local Missions at her church.

Photo © Shirley Giles Davis. Signac, Women at the Well, painting Musee d’Orsay.

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