Leadership: 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.]

Leadership

Those with the Leadership gift might be described as visionary, good motivators, and effective directors—helping lead and inspire others to achieve God’s purposes. These people not only have it as a Spirit-empowered ability, but they also seek God’s guidance and His will in their leadership and decision-making. Leadership involves not only having a vision of the preferred future for the church or an organization, but also having some clarity on goals or next steps to achieve that vision, the ability to communicate the vision in a way that inspires others, and the ability to equip the rest of the team to pursue the direction together.

Scriptures that reference Leadership or show someone exhibiting this gift:

Exodus (Moses); Exodus 18; Numbers 27 (Joshua): Deuteronomy 1;1 Samuel 7 (Samuel); 2 Samuel 7; 1 Chronicles 12 (Amasai); Nehemiah; Daniel; Mark 10; Luke 5; Luke 22; John 1 (Jesus); Acts (James); Acts 15 (Judas Barsabbas and Silas); Romans 12; Hebrews 13.

Questions on the assessment that pertain to Leadership:

• When the path forward for a group is uncertain, people look to me for leadership.

• I motivate others to come along with me as I pursue God’s vision.

• I inspire others to pursue goals that I clearly articulate.

Some words that describe people with this gift:

• Director

• Visionary

• Model

• Goal-oriented

• Persuasive

• Credible

Potential negatives to this gift:

• Can be so vision-conscious that they forget the people-care piece of leadership.

• Can sometimes move too fast for their followers to grasp the need for changes, leaving them confused or weary.

• Can forget that Jesus’ definition of a leader was as a servant.

Some possible ways to serve using this gift:

• Elder

• Trustee

• Committee chair (in a ministry area that relates to your passion)

• Ministry leader/coordinator (in a ministry area that relates to your passion)

• Sunday School teacher

• Adult Education committee member/teacher

• Worship committee/worship leader

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.

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