Spiritual Gifts?

Ok...so I am working on a pre-assessment tool in preparation for a Church Planting Basic Training that Tina and I will attend in a few weeks. A portion of the pre-assessment deals with spiritual gifting. I have completed, I suppose, a dozen spiritual gift inventories in my life. The one consistant among them all is that they are inconsistant. My "gifts" change. Maybe that's why Paul gave at least three different lists of gifts in the Bible--each of them a little bit different. It seems highly likely to me that in any given situation, the Holy Spirit may empower (gift) us however He chooses making spiritual gifts assessments irrelevant. Different situations likely will call for unique gifts.

Anyway, according to the survey tool, I possess the following five spiritual gifts:

• Encouragement--the divine capacity to give strength, support, or comfort.


• Faith--The divine capacity to act on God's promises with confidence and a steadfast belief in God's ability to provide.


• Hospitality--The divine capacity to care for people by making them feel welcome, comfortable, and accepted.


• Leadership--The divine capacity to communicate vision, motivate, and direct people to accomplish the purposes of God.


• Teaching--The divine capacity to clearly explain and apply God's Word, producing spiritual growth in the lives of the hearers.

The tool also suggests that I ask some close friends about my spiritual gifts. With that in mind, do you agree with the list? disagree? Is there something missing from the list?

You may want to work through a spiritual gifts assessment as well to see how you are gifted (at least right now). I've used the Team Ministry assessment for years to help with gift assessment. You can do a free online assessment at http://www.churchgrowth.org/. Look for the "FREE Gifts Analysis" link over on the right side of the page.