How to implement this discovery process at your church

I am so grateful to the many of you who have discovered the God. Gifts. You.: Your Unique Calling and Design six-week workbook—and who have found it so helpful that you have brought it to your small groups and your churches. The calling, purpose, and gifts conversation is a pivotal one, and one that must also be connected to a larger effort and conversation in order to make gifts-based ministry a reality. The following guide should prove useful in that regard:

1. Create a prayer team that will begin praying for the discovery process and planning efforts. Invite people to pray who are passionate about equipping and seeing everyone engaged in meaningful relationships and service in your church and the surrounding community.

2. Invite key people to be on your Equipping Ministry Team or Discovery Team. These are people who also see the importance of having this intentional process, ones who are willing to do the collaborating, creating and implementing, and those who have influence in vital areas in your church community.

3. Gain support from primary leadership—pastors, department heads, other staff, session, board(s), key influencers.

4. As you think this through, see if your focus is simply “plugging people in” or about “growing disciples more effectively”? Is there a culture in the organization that is about filling slots? Or a culture that focuses on helping people understand and live into the high calling described in 1 Peter 2:9: YOU are a “royal priesthood”?

5. Consider a two-pronged approach: one that focuses on equipping the congregation for meaningful involvement and one that focuses on pastors, staff, and ministry leaders to encourage them to adopt the same equipping mindset and make room for others in ministry. (Ephesians 4:11-13)

6. Be clear on your vision and mission. (See sample in this appendix.) Also take time, with your team, to articulate key concepts, set specific equipping ministry goals, and develop a realistic, but challenging, action plan.

7. Create job descriptions for all ministry opportunities at your church (and in the community). Many of these likely exist. Gather them together. See what’s missing and fill in the gaps. Get ministry leaders to help with this. Help them understand the importance of inviting specific people to detailed job descriptions. The entire process improves from start to finish once these are in place.

8. Offer the God. Gifts. You. course as a four-week series at a time that will attract at least ten people to your first class.

9. Encourage participation in the class and the calling/gifts discovery process—so people can discover and/or further clarify their God-given giftedness for ministry and to learn the language of the Body of Christ. As you do, gather gifts, interest, ability, experience information from each person and develop a database. In addition, provide coaching to individuals seeking to connect. Eventually, you will likely want to have a discovery teaching and organizing team and a coaching team—but, early on, people on your vision team may need to fill these positions until you find additional members.

10. From your gathered job descriptions, connect people in your God. Gifts. You. classes to the positions that are the best fit for them in terms of their calling and gifts. Note: Their place of best fit may be outside the walls of your church.

11. Ensure that every invitation to ministry is grounded in a job description, an intentional, personal invitation, and promised follow-up.

12. Interview everyone who is invited and interested. Listen. Be sure that they know the expectations and support provided. Listen for a match between their interests, gifts, and life experience. Prayerfully decide. Remember, desperation never served anyone. Better to leave a position unfilled for a time than push someone into something that’s not a fit.

13. Do your necessary screening and risk-management. Background checks, references, etc. should be mandatory in some serving contexts. Remember to protect your most vulnerable populations and your volunteers.

14. Once someone is invited to serve and accepts, orientation and training are essential. Have an orientation and training plan in place or see that each ministry has such a plan.

15. Determine what sort of ongoing communication, continuing education, evaluation, and recognition are needed. Make a plan for those. One of the principal reasons people leave their volunteer positions is that they feel unappreciated and unrecognized.5

16. The goal is to do all of the above well so that you retain these people as equal and growing-in-Christ ministry partners for the long-term.

Should you need additional assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

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 faith-based organizations, nonprofit agencies, and leaders in a diversity of fields for over 30 years. She has also been Equipping Ministries Director at her church since 1999.

Shirley Giles DavisApril 10, 2023