A Passionate Style of Gifting.

Recently (i.e. last night), me and my Life Group (read: Bible study group, small group, etc.) finished up a series on Spiritual Gifts that the pastors at our church were leading. It was about discovering our own Spiritual Gifts, Personal Style, and Ministry Passion, and using that information to figure out where we fit in the picture of our church; how to use our Gifts, not just knowing what they are.

Spiritual Gifts you've probably heard about at some point, so I won't explain them too much. Things like Faith, Helps, Prayer/Intercession, Leadership, all the way to the impressive-sounding/looking stuff like Miracles, Healing, Tongues, all the way back to things like Administration, or Craftsmanship, which you often don't think of. Had a few on the higher end here, but the three that seemed to come out were Creative Communication, Faith, and Helps.

Personal Style, essentially, is like a simplified personality-type thing. It talks about how you're energised, by people or tasks; and how you're organised, structured or unstructured. Both of them are like a continuum, and you end up somewhere in one of the four quadrants. Though you can be a bit borderline, but that's all cool. Personally, I feel like I flip between Task-Structured and People-Unstructured, but what I ended up with was People-Structured.

Ministry Passion is a bit more diverse. Essentially, it's a specific area that motivates you, that you're passionate about. It could be a group of people; a social issue; a religious issue. It could be youth, or divorce, or perhaps science and faith. I had two that stuck out for me; firstly, helping/motivating/mentoring specific individuals to be the best they can be, particularly in God; and secondly, to encourage awareness/understanding/acceptance/love for people with disabilities/diff-abilities, particularly Autism Spectrum Disorder/Asperger's. They're a bit lengthy, so what I came up with to sum them up is to Motivate Change, and Encourage Understanding. I like the sound of that.

And, yes, the Ministry Passions I have at the end here don't quite line up with my top three Gifts at the beginning. Motivating Change comes more under Shepherding, and Encourage Understanding I would put under Mercy, or something like it. But Shepherding was still fairly high for me (I think the fourth highest on my self-assessment), and Mercy was I think either highest or second highest on my self-assessment. So they're definitely there, just not the top three that I got out.
(If you're wondeirng why they're not in the Top 3, it's because we also take an observer assessment into account. Other people listed Creative Communication, Helps, Faith and Knowledge as my top ones.)

So yeah :) That may very well be old news to you, if you've known me for a couple of years now; you may think that obvious. But I think it's nice to be able to define it a bit, so I can then really use it :)