Thriving Church: A Case Study Part III

[Take a moment to read the previous posts: “Thriving Church: A Case Study Part I” and “Thriving Church: A Case Study Part II”.]

 

This final in a series of three posts takes a look at a Thriving Church and their equipping team’s responses to a series of questions. The last post highlighted answers to:

 

·         In what ways has adding the gifts assessment and related classes changed your church for the better?

·         Can you supply a specific example or two of people or teams transformed by discovering, understanding, developing, and using their gifts?

 

This post takes on:

·         What pushback/roadblocks to embracing these gifts concepts have come from your leadership, staff, or congregation?

·         Do you have suggestions for addressing this resistance?

 

As you work to incorporate a gifts-based mindset and practices in an existing congregation, you will encounter some places of resistance and/or misunderstanding. One of this thriving church’s leaders speaks to this below:

 

·         What pushback/roadblocks to embracing these gifts concepts have come from your leadership, staff, or congregation?

 

“One roadblock that I have experienced from all three groups, is the perception of limiting the use of a person’s gifts to spaces inside the church. Whenever I am teaching on spiritual gifts, I explain to the class that they are called spiritual gifts because they come from God, but they are not limited to use in the church. These gifts operate in every aspect of our lives, and I want members, staff, and leadership to understand that we cannot compartmentalize our gifts. We show up with our gifting everywhere we go, and God intends for us to use our gifts in every facet and forum of our lives.”

 

I agree. We are a called people. When we are the church gathered and when we are the church scattered. When we are doing things that are formally termed “ministry” and when we are at work, play, home, our schools, our neighborhoods, etc. God’s call is upon the whole of our lives! The Faith and Work theology and conversation in our churches is pretty anemic. We need, as equippers, to consistently teach a robust Biblical model of Faith and Work as part of our gifts-calling-purpose conversation. [Download a free Faith and Work Study Guide.]

 

This thriving church leader goes on to say: “Another roadblock is the tendency by leaders, staff, and the congregation to elevate certain gifts above other gifts. I make an effort to explain to people that God did not create a hierarchy of gifts, and that he is the one who chooses which gifts a person has. It is important for everyone in the Body of Christ to see their gifts as being equally valuable and equally important to the work of the ministry.”

 

This, unfortunately is all too common, beginning way back with the church in Corinth to whom Paul wrote 1 and 2 Corinthians. In those letters, he spends considerable time correcting their skewed view of gifts—as they had made a hierarchy of “important/flashy” ones and “less important/ignored” ones. Every church and every church leader must work diligently and consistently against the very human tendency to worship those up front and their gifts and overlook those behind the scenes or who are in a quieter, less-visible ministry.

 

·         Do you have suggestions for addressing this resistance?

 

This leader’s response: “I think one way to address resistance is to help people to think of the spiritual gifts assessment as being similar to the various personality inventories that many of us have taken like the Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, or Enneagram, and to understand that it is a tool to help us understand more about ourselves and who God created us to be. I believe it is empowering, encouraging, and inspiring to know your gifts and how they influence and impact your work, your relationships, and your pursuits.”

 

Everything you and your team can do to help people understand God, His crafting of them, His gifting of them, His calling and purposing of them, and His empowering of them to do His work in the world is upside.

 

I am so very grateful for this thriving church and this equipping team. These two who provided these quotations are vitally important congregational leaders who, because they are called and passionate, continue to facilitate the gifts and belonging conversations at their church and, I repeat, in an unpaid capacity. I am thankful for them and for their ongoing commitment and faithfulness.

 

 

 

 

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. 

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Shirley Giles Davis