Spiritual Gifts

So, I had to do this sur­vey for my min­istry for­ma­tions class. I’m believe its a tool to see what types of min­istry we should con­sid­er being involved in, although we haven’t yet talked about the appli­ca­tion of it (that’s for next week).

I’m not exact­ly sure who reads this blog, so here’s your chance to make your­selves known. I’m won­der­ing what you think about this analy­sis of my spir­i­tu­al gifts — do you think it’s right or wrong and why?

This is what I got:

I sus­pect it prob­a­bly also reflects that I have the spir­i­tu­al gift of pick­ing the mid­dle option in mul­ti­ple choice ques­tions, but the analy­sis says that show­ing mer­cy and teach­ing are my strengths. This is what the feed­back rec­om­mends for the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of each of these:

[For Showing Mercy] Your gift is used best in times of sor­row and in times of great joy. It fits well with anoth­er gift of ser­vice such as dea­con, youth work­er or hos­pi­tal vis­i­ta­tion. With a coun­sel­ing course, you could become a good coun­selor. You may serve as a hos­pi­tal, nurs­ing home, or shut-in work­er; a funer­al coor­di­na­tor and provider of sym­pa­thy and sup­port; or a pover­ty cen­ter work­er. You would do well as an ush­er or greeter and wel­come cen­ter work­er or hos­pi­tal­i­ty per­son. You may want to work in a tele­phone min­istry. You would make peo­ple feel wel­come on a new­com­er vis­i­ta­tion team. Other appro­pri­ate min­istry areas include mis­sions, com­mit­tee mem­ber, fur­lough assis­tance, and cor­re­spon­dence helper. You would work well with the elder­ly and with peo­ple who have men­tal and phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties, in nurs­ing, and with spe­cial min­istries to migrants, released offend­ers or abused chil­dren and women.

[For Teaching] You do not nec­es­sar­i­ly have to teach the Bible to be a help to the church min­istry. Although you can help with inter­pre­ta­tion or teach­ing teach­ers and oth­ers, you may teach in areas such as edu­ca­tion, busi­ness, finance, or com­put­ers. You may enjoy writ­ing and devel­op­ing cur­ricu­lum. You would prob­a­bly serve well as a Bible insti­tute teacher or a cor­re­spon­dence course instruc­tor. Your gift also lends itself to the mis­sion field where you could serve as a missionary/teacher. You may want to teach a basic doc­trine course to new­com­ers or new Christians or host quar­ter­ly small group stud­ies on dif­fer­ent top­ics. You may enjoy doing research for the pas­tor or oth­ers who teach.

I did notice that the only job in com­mon between these two is mis­sion­ary. I sup­pose lots of gifts can be used in mis­sion work 🙂

So, what do you think? On the right track or com­plete­ly out of left field?