How to Use Spiritual Gifts and More to Build Effective Ministry Teams
I’m coming off a branding coaching session at the Go + Tell Gals coaches licensing retreat just yesterday and I’m so floored by these humans God’s called to bring His kingdom to earth. “These humans” = you, too! The wild variety in story, vision, gifts, talents is so multifaceted and makes for a dynamic, diverse church.
It got me thinking about the body of Christ, especially building ministry teams to help serve the body. What are the things we’re looking for? What are the drivers of our choices?
I think the major categories of “Christian people strengths” get a little jumbled together: Personality, talents/skills, experience/information, and spiritual gifts aren’t all the same.
Let’s break down each of these strengths and gifts so that you can ask the right questions when you’re developing an individual or building a ministry team.
Personality
Personality I think as the lens through which we see the world, which can offer us a lot of strength. For example, the Enneagram 6 can offer the strength of context or troubleshooting. The Intuitive type from the MBTI offers us patters and strategies. If you like StrengthsFinder or DISC or all those, those things fall here too.
We need different people's strengths in the context of ministry, but personality is about natural bent, not identity or holiness or even learned skill.
When we take personality as the primary indicator of calling or fit-ness for a role, we can fall into our own cultural biases. For example, the charisma and power of the Enneagram 8 can be quite persuasive as a leader, pastor, or executive. It’s tough for us to right-size our experiences of people, how they make us feel, with their calling by God. And while personality and spiritual gifts can have experiential overlap, let’s not have personality lead us to assume gifting or favor.
Explore personality and spiritual formation with this introductory journaling guide: Personality and Spiritual Formation Workbook
Talents/Skills
Talents and skills are about those tangible things we can offer to a ministry.
Knowing how to use a video camera, or public speaking, or writing, or calling people on the phone are all skills. Soft skills like compassionate listening, leadership, program building, and visionary thinking are also included.
They can be both learned and are natural. It's in these skills that we can confuse natural gifts with spiritual gifts. Effective preaching doesn’t essentially mean there’s a spiritual gift of teaching, it could mean there’s a great talent for communication. Really great skills with Excel or time management doesn’t mean that person is spiritually gifted with administration.
Does the church need—and does God desire to use—these skills and talents? 1000%! But confusing skillsets with spiritual gifts puts too much pressure on the human. The weight of calling can be supported by spiritual gifts because they’re empowered by the Spirit. Great communication skills cannot bear the spiritual weight of the congregation, it’s only part of the equation, of the co-laboring
Spiritual Gifts
Spiritual gifts are the gifts that are given and sustained by the Spirit of God after we choose to follow Jesus and have His Spirit dwelling within us. Every single believe in Jesus has them! Some might be really aligned with your personality, natural gifts, etc. Some might be require a radical shift in your paradigm to accept and operate in. (Check out Pastor Jon Thompson story for a great example of this.)
Across the New Testament, there’s a list of 18 widely accepted gifts found in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, and Ephesians 4.
If you’re wondering “am I skilled or is this a gift?” I’d ask you to consider how it feels to be operating in your gifting? When you’re using this ability to serve the church, how natural does it feel? Do you have much higher capacity to engage with God’s mission using this gift than others using the same skill? You’re probably looking at a movement of the Spirit.
If you’re building a ministry team, choosing members of that team based on where the Holy Spirit most naturally moves in them makes a lot of sense. Helping your people understand their own spiritual gifts as well as highlighting and celebrating those gifts as much as if not more than their personality and learned skill will help build a culture of expectancy, reliance on, and co-laboring with the Holy Spirit, as compared to our own strength (as helpful and essential as our participation is).
Body of Knowledge
This sector isn’t often confused with spiritual gifts, but I wanted to highlight it! When we’re building ministry teams, experience is so valuable. It’s part of the beauty of diversity God’s woven into his people. We can speak the gospel to one another in incredibly specific ways when our teams are diverse in history.
When you’re gathering a team, pay attention to the experience and lenses the team is bringing. Just like personality, story, race, gender, education, location, and so much more contribute to Jesus’ unique relationship with that person.
Is your team ready for a workshop or retreat to dive deep into team dynamics, personality, soul care, and much more? Learn more about team coaching HERE.