Clarifying the Difference Between Discernment and Wisdom—and Addressing Team Conflict Part II: Spiritual Gifts FAQs

[See previous post: Clarifying the Difference Between Discernment and Wisdom—and Addressing Team Conflict Part I: Spiritual Gifts FAQs]

 

In this follow-up post, I go a bit deeper into the team frustrations part of this leader’s question.

 

Question: Can you say more about the difference between the gifts of Discernment and Wisdom, especially with regard to working out frustrations on a ministry team and discerning what is important to carry forward? [A question from a church youth ministry leader, edited for confidentiality by me.]

 

My response:

In my experience working with various youth ministry teams and doing spiritual gifts training/orientation with all of our church’s youth and college ministry interns, staff, and admins for years, I’m not at all surprised at the friction you describe. [And, pretty often, the friction is not simply about gifts but is over personality/behavioral style differences.] It is by far most common for youth ministry to attract and hire people in the people-unstructured zone who also have an abundance of gifts like Exhortation, Shepherding, Hospitality, Faith…and then have one lone person on the team (sometimes in a formal administrative role, sometimes not) who is more task-structured and has gifts of Administration. This all starts out quite well…until a few months into the academic year (or into the team’s life together) when most of the team is spending time relating to and hanging out and having fun with students and the lone administrator (and/or Helps person) feels left doing ALL the planning, organizing, consistent communication, clean-up of the messes left by the “unstructured” folks…and also is vastly underappreciated. This is where the gift of Administration is incorrectly viewed by others as “less than” or a secular function—instead of a holy and essential contribution to a team, and the preference for “tasks” first can be incorrectly judged as less important to the whole or even as less spiritual. The rub surfaces in the administrative person asking for meetings, planning time, calendaring, responses to emails/texts/messages, having a clear vision/plan, etc. and the rest of the team resenting having to do/participate in this “unfun” stuff. It’s not that the administrator does not like doing the organizing and providing a structure for the ministry—this is their wheelhouse! It’s that the gift (and/or behavioral style) and what it offers doesn’t appear to be important nor respected by the others.

 

A well-facilitated team conversation about the importance and value of each and every gift and our charge to do everything in love and with humility is essential, especially at these kinds of team inflection points.

 

In future, when selecting team members, be sure you are not setting this same scenario up for your future by conducting your process the same way. Also, be sure to orient the new people on the team and re-orient the existing ones as an opportunity for a re-set.

 

The article Working on Clarity of Purpose Eclipses Other Team Issues

was written for a non-church audience, but might help team diagnosis in this and other situations.

 

 

Important resources:

 

 

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, DIOS. DONES. TÚ.: Tu llamado y diseño único (Spanish Edition), 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 at her church.

 

Photo © Shirley Giles Davis. 

All rights reserved.

 

 

Shirley Giles Davis