What are your Spiritual Gifts?
Going through some old blogs in Bloglines, I bumped into one by Tony Morgan that pointed to a site that evaluates spiritual giftedness. That site starts with the passages in the New Testament that refer to spiritual gifts (Romans 12:3-8; 1 Corinthians 12:1-31; 1 Corinthians 14:1-40; Ephesians 4:7-16; 1 Peter 4:7-11) and builds a list of those gifts, then asks a lot of questions (125 in all) designed to draw out your gifts. It’s all a bit Myers-Briggs-ish (not a bad thing – INTJ here three times in a row). I don’t see it as the complete be-all and end-all, because I think that neither Paul nor Peter was doing anything more than giving a list of examples of giftedness – those listed weren’t God’s full list; if they were, they’d all be listed every time.
However, it does give an indication of inclination to certain ministries based on the gifts it draws out. My church uses a list similar to this in the SHAPE class that we have everyone take when they become a member. So just for griggles and gins, I took it again. It only takes about 10-15 minutes.
Unsurprisingly, the areas that take no major physical effort were my high scores – Wisdom, Apostle, Leadership, Shepherd, Administration, Knowledge & Teaching. Mid-range were the more physical gifts – Missionary, Voluntary Poverty, Giving, Evangelism, Service, Hospitality & Helps (Service was dead center!), and the purely spiritual were mostly and pathetically waaay down at the bottom – although I was surprised that Prophecy, Exhortation and Faith fell above the physical gifts.
Give it a go – what are your high points? Spill the beans in the comments below.
Mike
Dave Travis
Rose
Thanks for this great synopsis. (BTW, “No Name” near bottom of your list was Mel Lawrenz, Elmbrook...